Guinea-Bissau cannot finish the presidential election, according to the commission
The electoral commission of Guinea-Bissau announced on Tuesday that it was unable to finish the presidential election on November 23 due to the destruction of servers holding the results and the seizure of ballots and vote counts from its offices by armed persons.
On November 26, one day before the electoral commission was scheduled to declare the outcome of the contentious election, army officials in the West African state took control.
“We do not have the material and logistic conditions to follow through with the electoral process,” a statement from Idrissa Djalo, a senior electoral commission officer, stated.
When the army officers seized power, buildings, including the offices of the electoral commission, were attacked. The electoral process was put on hold on November 27 when Major-General Horta Inta-a was sworn in as the new interim president.
A one-year transition period has been guaranteed by Inta-a.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) regional bloc in particular has put pressure on Guinea-Bissau’s new military government to reinstate constitutional order and permit new elections.
On Monday, officials from the electoral commission and military leaders in Bissau met with a high-level delegation from the bloc, headed by President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone.
Destroyed servers
According to Djalo, the commission informed the delegation that on November 26, a gang of unidentified armed and hooded people broke into and looted its property.
He added that the election tally sheets from the various regions had been seized and that the server containing the results had been destroyed. “They confiscated the computers of all 45 staff members who were at the commission that day,” he said.
“It is impossible to complete the electoral process without the tally sheets from the regions,” Djalo stated.
On December 14, ECOWAS leaders will gather to resolve the problem after threatening sanctions against individuals upsetting the constitutional order.
Only one president has served a complete term in office since the small West African coastal nation, which is sandwiched between Senegal and Guinea, gained independence from Portugal in 1974.
Due to the ongoing unrest, the nation has become a major transit hub for cocaine shipments from Latin America to Europe, where competing cartels vie for control of the profitable drug trade.
During his swearing-in, Inta-a stated that a scheme by “narco-traffickers” to “capture Guinean democracy” was the reason for the coup.
