By
Alberto Dabo, BISSAU Guinea-Bissau
A dozen
soldiers have occupied the grounds of Guinea-Bissau’s Supreme Court, the court
said on Tuesday, deepening a post-election crisis that has resulted in the
appointment of rival presidents and the silencing of state media.
The West African country’s military, which has
regularly intervened in politics in recent decades, vowed to remain neutral
ahead of the December election. But the presence last week of senior army
officials at the contentious inauguration of Umaro Cissoko Embalo as president
appeared to signal it had picked a side.
The electoral commission has repeatedly confirmed
Embalo as the winner of the Dec. 29 run-off despite complaints by the Supreme
Court and the declared runner-up that the commission had not respected the court’s
orders to conduct a full audit of the vote.
On Monday, soldiers occupied the Supreme Court’s
grounds of in Bissau, the capital, blocking entry to judges and officials,
court spokesman Salimo Vieira told Reuters.
“The soldiers are still refusing entry to the
Supreme Court, which cannot function,” he said, adding that other courts had
also been occupied by the military.
State radio has been silent and the state
television channel has shown only a blank screen since Feb. 29. Streets in
Bissau have remained quiet.
An Embalo representative, Bamba Cote, said Embalo
had asked the army chief of staff for troops to occupy “public institutions as
well as radio and TV stations in order to enable the formation of the new
cabinet and its installation in the state institutions.”
Umaro Cissoko Embalo |
The soldiers will return to their barracks on
Wednesday or Thursday, Cote told Reuters.
Domingos Simoes Pereira, candidate of the majority
party in parliament and shown by the official results as losing the run-off to
Embalo, has denounced his rival’s inauguration as a coup.
In the ongoing standoff, Pereira’s allies in
parliament had appointed the speaker as a rival interim president after
Embalo’s inauguration. The speaker, Cipriano Cassama, withdrew his claim to the
presidency on Sunday, citing the risk of civil war.
Guinea-Bissau has witnessed nine coups or attempted
coups since independence from Portugal in 1974, most recently in 2012 when an
election was abandoned after soldiers stormed the presidential palace.
In a statement on Sunday, West African regional
bloc ECOWAS said Embalo’s inauguration had taken place “outside legal and
constitutional frameworks” and warned about “the interference of the defense
and security forces in the political sphere”.
The December election was meant to end five years
of institutional chaos in which then-President Jose Mario Vaz cycled through
seven different prime ministers during a series of political disputes.
“The military seem to be trying to give the final
word on things,” said analyst Vincent Foucher of the French National Center for
Scientific Research. “It’s clear whose side the army is on.” - Reuters
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