Voters went to the polls yesterday in Guinea-Bissau for a presidential runoff between two former heads of state of the coup-prone West African nation, whose veteran leader was assassinated in May.
Observers hope the new president will bring a degree of stability to the former Portuguese colony of 1.3 million people, which has suffered repeated coups since independence in 1974 and now is a haven for drug runners.
Some 2,700 polling stations nationwide began opening at 7am and around 700,000 voters were eligible to cast ballots before they closed at 5pm.
Lines began to form outside polling booths on the Amilcar Cabral avenue in central Bissau as voting got under way.
Sidi Mankale, the electoral official in charge of a polling station in a former soccer club, said: “We began at 7 am and its about the same turnout as the first round.”
In the Chao Pepel district of Bissau, voters were thin on the ground, but electoral official Ankouan Lopez said: “There aren’t many voters because people are going to church first before coming to vote.”
Two former presidents, Malam Bacai Sanha and Kumba Yala, won the biggest share of the vote in the first round on June 28. Sanha secured 39.59 percent of the first-round ballots — a 10-point advantage over Yala.
The vote was triggered by the killing of long-time president Joao Bernardo Vieira by soldiers on March 2, in an apparent revenge attack after the assassination of army chief General Batista Tagme Na Waie in a bomb attack.
Last month the army killed two senior political figures in what they claimed was an operation to foil a coup plot.
Guinea-Bissau has been overwhelmed by the international drugs trade, becoming a key transit point in cocaine smuggling between South America and Europe.
But another priority for the new president will simply be clinging on to power. None of the three presidents elected in the past 15 years has managed to complete his full five-year term.
The murder of Vieira, who ruled Guinea-Bissau for much of the past 25 years, came about a decade after the military ousted him during a previous stint as president.
Sanha, 62, the candidate for the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), served as interim president from June 1999 to May 2000.
And Yala, 56, who was running yesterday as head of the Social Renewal Party, was forced out by the army in 2003.
Yala and Sanha have already faced each other in a second-round runoff for Guinea-Bissau’s presidency in 2000, when Yala emerged victorious.
Yesterday’s runoff round was originally to have been held on Aug. 2 but was brought forward to encourage a higher turnout as the later date could have intefered with harvest work.
Both rounds of the election have been financed entirely by the international community at a cost of 5.1 million euros (US$7.2 million ).
The national electoral commission (CNE) said about 150 international observers would be on the ground for yesterday’s vote and nearly 4,900 soldiers, police and paramilitary would be deployed to ensure security.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS