Military officers said they seized “total control” in Guinea-Bissau after arresting the president, following a contentious election.
Gunfire erupted near the presidential palace in the capital of Bissau on Wednesday. President Umaro Sissoco Embalo was quickly arrested by the military, who detained him at the general staff headquarters. A military source told AFP that he was being “well-treated.” After his arrest, Brig. Gen. Denis N’Canha, military spokesman and apparent leader of the coup, gave a press conference, surrounded by armed soldiers in camouflage fatigues, declaring that the military seized “total control.”
“The High Military Command for the reestablishment of national and public order decides to immediately depose the President of the Republic, to suspend, until new orders, all of the institutions of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau,” N’Canha said.
The coup, he said, was in reaction to “the discovery of an ongoing plan” to destabilize the country by trying to “manipulate electoral results” in a scheme set up by some “national politicians with the participation of a well-known drug lord, and domestic and foreign nationals.”
Guinea-Bissau has become a major drug trafficking hub, with alleged drug cartel influence on politics a significant source of discontent. The United Nations has gone so far as to call it a “narco-state.”
N’Canha called the new government the High Military Command for the Restoration of National Security and the Public Order, set up by the “various ranks of the armed forces.”
Ironically, N’Canha was the head of the presidential guard before the coup, Al Jazeera reported.
“The man supposed to protect the president himself has put the president under arrest,” Al Jazeera reporter Nicolas Haque said.
BOLSONARO ARRESTED DAYS AHEAD OF IMPRISONMENT TO ‘ENSURE PUBLIC ORDER’
“We’ve just heard that the military is trying to cut off the Internet. There’s a curfew in place,” he said, adding that the head of the main opposition PAIGC party, Domingos Simoes Pereira, was also detained.
Guinea-Bissau has been beset by chronic instability since its independence from Portugal, experiencing four successful and five attempted coups since 1980, according to the BBC. The latest alleged attempt happened last month.
