BISSAU: Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embalo said he will run for a second term in November, amid tensions with an Opposition that refuses to recognise him as the country’s current President, reported africanews.com Meanwhile, a delegation from the West African regional bloc ECOWAS that had been sent to Guinea-Bissau in hopes of resolving the country’s political crisis departed after what they said were threats of expulsion from Embalo.
Embalo, who dissolved the opposition-dominated parliament in late 2023, told reporters at the airport following his trip to Russia, Azerbaijan and Hungary that he will run again. “I will be a candidate for my own succession,” he said.
Guinea-Bissau’s Constitution sets the presidential term at five years, renewable once, and Embalo would be running for an allowed second term. But the details of his first term are complicated, and the Opposition argues that his first term already has ended. Embalo’s announcement, said the news portal report, risks escalating tensions in the small West African nation, which has endured multiple coups since gaining independence from Portugal over 50 years ago.
Embalo won an election on November 24, 2019 and was sworn in as the President on February 27, 2020, but the Opposition contested the result and the Supreme Court did not recognise his victory until September 4.
