Another alternative summary, which would also make a good title, regarding the latest coup in Bissau, would be, “Guinea does not exist”, an expression that was once spoken to me, by a Spaniard who knows the thing inside out!
Elmer Araújo, journalist and political scientist from Bissau-Guinea, reported for a Portuguese radio, “a coup de theater”! Why?
On Wednesday 26th, the first manu militari coup d’état was registered in the world, during which the target, the kidnapped person, picked up the phone and warned/reported to the magazine Jeune Afrique, what was happening, live and in the first person. The narrator was the main actor. Unprecedented!
Secondly, there are records from ordinary citizens with cell phones at the ready, which show that the presidential palace was taken from the inside out and not the other way around. As if they were coming to gather weapons in the courtyard, this unit took up attack positions against doors and windows.
Thirdly, the occupation/shooting at the National Elections Commission (CNE), without resistance, one of the most watched places in the capital, established the priority of this Military High Command for the Restoration of National Security and Public Order (High Command). They did not occupy national television, radio or the airport, as is seen in the books. They occupied the CNE and decreed the annulment of the electoral process, the day before the results were announced. The calculations were done, the dice were just not released and they gave victory to the opposition candidate, Fernando Dias, with 53%.
Fourth, in Elmer Araújo’s analysis, it is necessary to analyze who is who in the High Command. They are from the most trusted men of the deposed PR, Umaru Sissoko Embaló. The current Interim PR, Brigadier-General Horta Inta-A Na Man, is a soldier who unofficially occupied what his peers called “Private Chief-of-Staff-of-the-President”, a non-existent position, but demonstrative of the intimacy between Sissoko PR and his CEMGFA. The current Interim PR also had a rise within the ranks, questioned by many, inside and outside the institution, due to the violations of military regulations and the meteoric shape of the course. Another Brigadier General is Tomás Djassi,
Commander of Presidential Security, who naturally accompanied Sissoko on the election campaign.
Now Djassi is the new CEMGFA of the new PR, his predecessor in office! According to Araújo, these are signs of a “self-coup”, so as not to hand over the presidency, the power of the borders, the air and the seas, to strangers who ruin business(ies) set up since 2020.
Sissoko, safe in Dakar, should now be called Godfather!
Political scientist/Arabist, Professor at the Piaget Institute of Almada
The author writes according to the old spelling