Guinea-Bissau’s latest coup sparks allegations of a staged takeover. Here’s what to know

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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — In West Africa’s latest military takeover, soldiers in Guinea-Bissau followed up a disputed presidential election by seizing power last week in what some critics allege was a staged coup to avoid having the incumbent lose.

Here’s what to know about the Nov. 26 coup in Guinea-Bissau:

Incumbent President Umaro Sissoco Embaló and the main opposition candidate, Fernando Dias, both claimed to have won the Nov. 23 presidential election.

Three days after the vote, military officers appeared on state television to announce they had seized power and suspended the election after discovering what they said was a conspiracy to manipulate the results. Embaló told media outlets he had been deposed and arrested.

Soldiers said the conspiracy had involved “some national politicians with the participation of a well-known drug lord, and domestic and foreign nationals.” Guinea-Bissau is known as a hub for drug trafficking between Latin America and Europe, a trend that experts say has fueled its political crises.

A day after the announcement, soldiers installed Gen. Horta Inta-a as the head of a one-year transitional government.

Meanwhile, Embaló arrived in neighboring Senegal on a flight chartered by the Senegalese government, before leaving again over the weekend for the Republic of Congo, where he is currently staying.

Foreign dignitaries and Guinea-Bissau’s opposition have claimed that Embaló and his supporters in the military staged the coup because he was headed for a possible defeat in the presidential election.

The military takeover and the reported arrest of Embaló were manufactured to disrupt the election results, presidential candidate Fernando Dias alleged.

Former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who was heading an electoral observer mission during the military takeover, agreed, accusing Embaló of staging a “ceremonial coup” to stay in power.

“A military doesn’t take over governments and allow the sitting president that they overthrew to address press conferences and announce that he has been arrested,” Jonathan told reporters.

Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko echoed the accusation, describing the military takeover in Guinea-Bissau as a “scheme.”

West Africa has seen a wave of coups since 2020, typically with the stated purpose of better protecting the country against insurgencies or fixing bad governance.

Military leaders in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso took power by force on pledges of providing more security to citizens against extremist armed groups. In neighboring Guinea, Gen. Mamadi Doumbouya overthrew the president in 2021 on a promise to rid the country of corruption.

The military takeover in Guinea-Bissau doesn’t fit the mold because it looks more like an attempt to maintain the status quo than overturn it, analyst Beverly Ochieng at Control Risks told The Associated Press in an interview.

“It was carried out by people who are Embaló’s close allies in the military,” Ochieng said, adding that one of the generals who led the coup, Dinis N’Tchama, was a personal military advisor of the president. “The sentiment coming out from the opposition and civil societies is that it was staged because Embalo was losing his grip on power.”

Embaló, who has been in power since 2020, already was facing a legitimacy crisis ahead of the election in a dispute with the political opposition, which had argued that his tenure had expired early this year.

Embaló’s treatment during the coup, including his ability to address the press and his subsequent permission to leave the country, has contrasted with the fate of other ousted leaders, notably Niger’s Mohamed Bazoum, who has remained in military custody for two years.

Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s poorest countries, previously has had four coups and several attempted ones since its independence from Portugal more than 50 years ago.

The first successful coup came in 1980, when President Luis Cabral was ousted by Prime Minister Joao Bernardo Vieira, who had accused Cabral’s government of mismanagement. Vieira himself was deposed in 1999 after a military revolt sparked by a mutiny over arms-smuggling allegations.

In 2003, President Kumba Yala was deposed in a bloodless coup led by one of his own generals, who accused him of mismanaging the economy. In 2012, soldiers seized control between rounds of a presidential election, halting a vote that was expected to return the ruling party to power.

“Guinea-Bissau’s long history of political coups is largely linked to the fact that it has had weak institutions since independence from the Portuguese,” Ochieng said.

Courts in the country of 2.2 million people have often been unable to rule on electoral disputes or constrain government overreach, creating a vacuum for military intervention.

Meanwhile, the opposition-dominated parliament has not convened since Dec. 2023, when it was dissolved by Embaló after an attempted coup.

Weak local institutions have also allowed drug trafficking to influence the country’s politics. Last year, a son of former President Malam Bacai Sanha was sentenced to more than six years in prison by a U.S. court for leading an international heroin trafficking ring.