Guinea-Bissau leader backtracks on second term pledge

Bissau — Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo said on Monday he would run for a second term in November, backtracking on earlier vows to step down and potentially stoking tensions over when his present term ends and over postponed elections.

“I will be a candidate in my own succession,” Embalo told reporters at the airport after a trip to Russia, Azerbaijan and Hungary.

He has been at odds with the political opposition in the West African nation over when his current five-year term, which began in 2020, ends. The opposition says it expired at the end of February, while the supreme court of justice has ruled that it ends on September 4.

There has also been disgruntlement after Embalo said presidential and legislative elections would not be held until November 30.

Originally scheduled for November 2024, the parliamentary polls were indefinitely postponed after technical and financial obstacles and scrambling the electoral calendar.

“I will talk to the political parties first about the forthcoming elections, and then I will issue a presidential decree,” Embalo said late on Monday.

A 52-year-old former army general, Embalo inherited a long-running political impasse in a country where coups and unrest have been common since independence from Portugal in 1974.

He has said there were two attempts to overthrow him during his presidency, the latest in December 2023.

The president said last year that his wife had dissuaded him from running for a second term.

Reuters