The junta in Guinea-Bissau on Saturday said its plan for a two-year transition had only been a suggestion, in an apparent climbdown following threats of UN and regional sanctions.
Hours afterwards the opposition politician picked as transitional president by the junta said he was turning down what he described as an “illegal” appointment.
“It was only a proposal, not an official announcement,” junta spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Daba Da Walna said by telephone from Bissau, in reference to plans for a lengthy transition before a return to democracy.
Photo: EPA
The junta has come under fire from the UN and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for failing to restore civilian rule after an April 12 military coup.
The UN Security Council on Saturday threatened “targeted sanctions” if the junta did not step down and return civilians to power, reiterating its “strong condemnation” of the coup in the tiny West African state.
It demanded the “immediate restoration of the constitutional order as well as the reinstatement of the legitimate government of Guinea-Bissau,” rejecting the two-year transitional council proposed by the junta.
Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo, named as transitional president by the junta, came third in the first round of a presidential election aborted by the coup and was thus eliminated from the second-round run-off.
On Friday he had protested that he had not been consulted over the move. And shortly after the junta’s apparent backtracking on Saturday, he declared that he would not be taking the job.
“I do not accept this appointment,” he said.
“I am a defender of the rule of law and I do not recognize any institution created outside the law,” he added, speaking by telephone from the parliament building in Bissau.
Da Walna, meanwhile, asked about the fate of ousted leaders Bissau-Guinean interim president Raimundo Pereira and Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, repeated that they would be released as soon as security allowed it.
“We do not want them to become victims of any private vengeance or reprisals. We are committed to protecting people’s lives,” he said.
Da Walna said they could be released sometime this week, but dismissed as “premature” the possibility of a resumption of the electoral process interrupted by the coup.
Also on Saturday, Bissau-Guinean Foreign Minister Edouard Nyankoi Lamah said an ECOWAS summit on the crisis, set for today in Conakry, had been canceled because of the junta’s intransigence.
The decision to scrap the summit was made “following the junta’s grave decision to name a president, set up a transitional council and provide for a two-year transition,” Lamah said.
The Security Council also demanded “the immediate and unconditional release” of Pereira, Gomes and several other top officials.
On Thursday, Ivorian Ambassador to the UN Youssoufou Bamba, speaking on behalf of ECOWAS, said it intended to deploy a “military contingent’” to Guinea-Bissau to ensure protection of VIPs and institutions as well as “the envisaged transition and electoral process.’’
The Security Council statement of condemnation on Saturday made no mention of a UN force, but supported measures taken by ECOWAS, the African Union and Portuguese-speaking nations to restore constitutional order.
Defying calls for a return to democracy, the junta struck a deal with opposition parties for the two-year transition period, which excludes the former ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde and smaller allied parties.
Gomes had been tipped to win the second round of a presidential election set for next Sunday in the coup-prone country of 1.6 million people.
In Lisbon, nearly 200 people, mostly from Guinea-Bissau, protested against the coup.
“Our people must rise up and say no,” Mamadou Djalo Pires, who was foreign minister in the ousted government, told the rally.
“It is the people who give legitimacy to the organs of state, not violence,” he said.
Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Portas warned that “those who continue to violate the constitution, hold the prime minister and president and destroy ballot papers will have to answer for their acts.”
A separate protest took place in the central Portuguese town of Coimbra.
Since 1998, the former Portuguese colony has been through one war, four military coups and the murder of one president and four military chiefs-of-staff. No president has ever completed a full term in office.
This has allowed cocaine traffickers to exploit the struggling state as a transit point for cocaine being moved from Latin America into Europe.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the