A very peculiar military coup, this one in Guinea-Bissau, announced live, in dialogue with journalists, by the overthrown president himself, Umaro Sissoco Embaló.
Sissoco is an artist. To his credit we can even add to the annals of Politology the invention of the self-coup as a resource to get out of a lost election. Because, with 55 thousand votes counted in Bissau against 90 thousand for the opposition competitor, Fernando Dias da Costa, everything led to the belief that the elections were lost to Sissoco Embaló.
Another originality of the Guinean coup was the fact that the opposition leaders were immediately arrested. It was as if, on April 25th, the MFA had let Américo Tomás and Marcelo Caetano announce for the Times or by Figaro that they had been overthrown, and the communists, socialists and dissidents of the Liberal Wing had been thrown in jail as a result.
But Sissoco really is an artist. We just need to remember the expeditious way in which he managed to be received in Lisbon by the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister, during the election that he won and was contested by Domingos Simões Pereira. It was simple: he, or someone like him, convinced the Portuguese President and Prime Minister that he would go to Paris, where he would also be received at a high level. In Lisbon, they received him promptly, in Paris no one received him; but with this Sissoco gained credibility and decided the pending election in Guinea.
It is said, and we are not hard to believe, that it began in African politics as Gaddafi boythat is, as one of the young people that the “Brother Leader of the Revolution”, Muammar al-Gaddafi, sent with briefcases of cash to politicians in the region. This is where Sissoco’s popularity and political influence came from.
The former president of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, one of the voices with moral authority on the African continent, was very clear, when he said in an interview with News Central TV who did not believe in the Guinean “military coup”, classifying it as “a “ceremonial coup”: “It was President Embaló himself who announced the coup, even before a military man came to speak to the world, saying that they were in control of everything”.
ECOWAS, the organization that had observers in the elections on Sunday, November 23rd, gave Fernando Dias the victory when there were already results from the nine regions of the country. However, before the results were announced, Embaló activated his military associates for the “coup”.
The situation remains confusing: Embaló left the country for Senegal, on a private Senegalese plane. Now, he went to Congo (Brazzaville), also on a plane belonging to President Sassou Nguesso. In Bissau, the PAIGC headquarters was invaded and looted by military personnel, confirming the uniqueness of a coup in which it is the opposition to the “deposed” president that is the victim of the violence of the coup plotters.
The main concern at this time must be to guarantee the life and physical integrity of the opposition leaders detained by the coup plotters, such as Domingos Simões Pereira, leader of the PAIGC, and Octávio Lopes, deputy of the PAIGC. As for Fernando Dias, the presumptive winner of the November 23 election, he appears to have found refuge in the Nigerian embassy, which, in principle, the self-coup plotters will not dare to violate. But you never know.
As for Portugal, which was largely responsible for the international recognition of Sissoco, it is expected that it will be attentive and will not fail to commit itself to clarifying the self-coup, protecting those opposed to Sissoco and restoring democratic normality and popular will in Guinea.
Political scientist and writer
The author writes according to the old spelling