Guinea-Bissau’s military on Thursday named a new interim leader, appointing a general to steer the country for one year after seizing control, detaining the president, and stopping the release of election results.
General Horta N’Tam, the army chief of staff, was sworn in at military headquarters, declaring, “I have just been sworn in to lead the High Command,” according to AFP journalists present at the ceremony.
Troops maintained tight security around the presidential palace in Bissau on Thursday morning, with only a handful of residents moving along the main road leading to the complex, where heavy gunfire had erupted the previous day.
Armed soldiers formed a strong perimeter around the venue as N’Tam told reporters that the move was necessary “to block operations that aimed to threaten our democracy.”
The takeover was first announced on Wednesday when a group of officers declared they had assumed “total control” of the nation, suspending the electoral process as the country awaited results from last Sunday’s vote, which President Umaro Sissoco Embaló had been widely expected to win.
N’Tam, who has long served as chief of staff and is known to have been close to Embaló, defended the intervention, saying the evidence was “sufficient to justify the operation,” and adding that “necessary measures are urgent and important and require everyone’s participation.”
The small West African nation, bordered by Guinea and Senegal, has experienced four successful coups and several failed attempts since independence from Portugal in 1974.
Later on Wednesday, General Denis N’Canha, who heads the presidential military office, told journalists that the military was taking charge “until further notice” after uncovering a plot involving “drug lords,” including “the introduction of weapons into the country to alter the constitutional order.”
He said military authorities had suspended “the entire electoral process,” halted “all media programming,” and imposed a nationwide curfew.
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Although land, air, and sea borders were initially closed following the coup, General Lassana Mansali announced on Thursday that they had been reopened.
President Embaló was arrested on Wednesday and held at the general staff headquarters, where he was “well treated,” according to a military source. A senior officer also confirmed that “the chief of staff and the minister of the interior” had been detained.
Opposition leader Domingos Simões Pereira, who was barred from contesting last weekend’s presidential election by the Supreme Court, was also taken into custody on Wednesday, according to two sources close to him.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) issued a strong rebuke of the military takeover, with its chair stating the bloc “unequivocally condemns the coup d’état,” and reaffirming its “strict zero-tolerance for unconstitutional changes of government.”
(AFP)