Professor at the Autonomous University of Lisbon Fernando Jorge Cardoso considers the military coup d’état of November 26 “successful”, although it is a “strange” coup, in which the deposed president, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, has time to give interviews and leaves the country “calmly”.
“The military showed itself united and, despite civil society protesting, the executive was dissolved — although some figures from it are now in the new transitional regime —, the ballot boxes were ‘thrown out on the street’ and various pretexts were invoked for the coup”, contextualizes the university professor.
“I, sincerely, I think the situation is a bit, as they say in São Tomé and Príncipe, ‘light-light’. In other words, it is a situation that neither moves forward nor backwards, on the contrary.”
The analyst argues that, internally, there is no force capable of opposing the military that took power, at least apparently. On the other hand, Guinea-Bissau’s main financiers and donors — Portugal and the European Union —, despite having condemned what happened, did not apply sanctions.
ISCTE university professor Ana Lúcia Sá highlights that the situation has worsened in terms of repression and violence and is increasingly “more suffocating”.
“A member of the Movement for Democratic Alternation (Madem G-15) was brutally beaten for making a post on Facebook saying that he supports any democratic decision and not coups. Two employees of the Guinean Human Rights League were also brutally beaten and the atmosphere is becoming increasingly suffocating”, he warns.
For the researcher, there is no doubt that the deposed president “continues to govern from a distance”, maintaining direct influence over the current executive, a phenomenon that she considers “unparalleled in previous coups in the country”, which has a history of coups and attempts.