Guinea-Bissau’s transitional military adopts charter barring leaders from elections

By Alberto Dabo

BISSAU, Dec 10 (Reuters) – Guinea-Bissau’s military junta adopted a 12-month transitional charter that bars the interim president and prime minister from running in the next ‍elections, two weeks after officers staged a coup that suspended the constitution.

The 29-article charter, published on Tuesday, requires presidential and legislative elections to be held at the end of the one-year transitional period, with the polling date to be set by the transitional president.

Army officers ‌in Guinea-Bissau, branding themselves the Military High ‌Command, toppled President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on November 26 and installed Major-General Horta Inta-a as interim president the following day.

Ilidio Vieira Te, a civil servant and former finance minister, was named prime minister a ​day later.

The coup came one day before the electoral commission was due to announce the results of presidential and ‍legislative elections.

The Military High Command will ​control legal and institutional reforms during the transition, ​including drafting revisions to the suspended constitution, setting up a new ‍Constitutional Court, changing regulations for political parties and overseeing the appointment of new electoral officials, according to the charter.

A 65-member National Transition Council, including 10 senior army officers representing the Military High Command, will serve as a transitional legislative body, ‍the charter says.

Guinea-Bissau, a small West African coastal nation wedged between Senegal and Guinea, has experienced repeated instability since gaining independence from ‍Portugal in 1974, with ‍only one president ever completing a full ​term in office.

Following a coup in Guinea in ​2021, ⁠a transitional charter stipulated that coup leader ‌Mamady Doumbouya would not be able to run in that country’s next elections.

However the country adopted a new constitution in September that dropped that provision, and Doumbouya is on the ballot in an election scheduled for December 28.

(Writing by Ayen Deng Bior; Editing by Robbie ⁠Corey-Boulet, Aidan Lewis)