Guinea-Bissau President dissolves parliament

Guinea-Bissau President Oumaro Sissoko Embalo today decided to dissolve parliament following clashes between security forces on Thursday and Friday, which he described as a coup.

The President of the Republic made this decision after a meeting of the State Council.

Sissoko Embalo considered it a “coup d’etat” when the National Guard removed Finance Minister Suleiman Seidi and Finance Minister António Monteiro from judicial police cells on Thursday evening.

After this act, armed clashes arose between the National Guard and the Presidential Battalion, which were settled with the intervention of the military police and led to the arrest of the commander of the National Guard, Vitor Chongo.

At the end of the meeting of the State Council, which lasted only a few minutes, the President of the Republic announced to journalists that he had made “the decision to dissolve parliament in connection with the attempted coup on December 1.”

“I realized that parliament is always a source of instability. Let’s convene the people, because the people are sovereign in making decisions. This is the only path and the only path we can take,” he said, referring to the call for elections.

The head of state did not indicate the date of the electoral act to select the new composition of the National People’s Assembly, elected in June this year with a majority in the Terra Ranca Platform for Inclusive Alliance (PAI) coalition, led by the African Party. for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which governs Guinea-Bissau.

Umaro Sissoko Embalo views the assembly as a hotbed of destabilization and believes that if the position is not accepted, the country will return to “a civil war prepared in parliament,” as he understands it on June 7, 1998.

He said that “it was also in parliament on February 1” 2022, referring to the coup attempt that day, and believes that the latest events that occurred on December 1 were “the end of all monkey business.”

The President admitted that the law does not yet allow calling elections, since it defines a one-year period between electoral acts, and only six months have passed since the last legislative elections.

Sissoko made it a rule “to tell people that the legislator did not foresee everything, did not foresee the outcome of the coup d’état” and considered that the year between elections provided for by law was “in vain.”

“We suspended the Constitution of the Republic, we suspended all institutions, and what remained was the military committee or military council,” he said.

“The President of the Republic, as a guarantor of stability and normal functioning of all institutions, decided to dissolve parliament,” he repeated.

The head of state also justified the absence from the Council of State of the President of the National People’s Assembly and PAIGC, Domingos Simões Pereira, the party leading the government.

“Do you want to know why the Chairman of the Assembly was not invited to the State Council? It’s simple: members of the State Council take office, my office contacted me with a request to come and take office, I said that I was in an open presidency, in the southern region of the country. He did not show up when he returned, he did not say anything to the president ( Republic) also has its own agenda, which is why the President of the Assembly is not here,” he clarified.

The President of Guinea also said that “the country cannot stop” and signed a presidential decree to immediately dissolve parliament.

At dawn and on Friday morning, a battalion of the Presidential Guard and military police attacked the National Guard command to remove the Minister of Economy and Finance, Suleiman Seydi, and the Minister of Finance, António Monteiro.

The two government officials were taken there by the National Guard, who removed them from the cells of the judicial police, where they were being held in preventive detention by order of the Ministry of Justice, which is investigating them as part of the process of paying off debts to 11 companies.

The attack on the National Guard barracks resulted in the death of two people, the withdrawal of two government officials who were taken back to the PS cells, and the arrest of the corporation commander, Colonel Vitor Chongo, and several other elements.