Guinea-Bissau’s President, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, said on Monday night he would run for a second term in November.
This remark means the president has backtracked on an earlier promise to step down and will stoke tensions in the West African nation.
Embalo disclosed this to journalists at the airport shortly after he returned from a trip to Russia, Azerbaijan, and Hungary.
He said: “I will be a candidate in my own succession.
“I will talk to the political parties first about the forthcoming elections, and then I will issue a presidential decree.”
Embalo has been at odds with the political opposition in the coup-prone West African nation over when his current five-year term, which began in 2020, ends.
The opposition claims it ran out at the end of February, while the Supreme Court of Justice has ruled that it would end on September 4.
There has also been disgruntlement after Embalo said presidential and legislative elections would not be held until November 30 this year.
Originally scheduled for November 2024, the parliamentary polls were indefinitely postponed over technical and financial obstacles and scrambling of the electoral calendar.
A 52-year-old former army general, Embalo inherited a long-running political impasse in a country where coups and unrest have been common since its independence from Portugal in 1974.
He has said there were two attempts to overthrow his presidency, the latest in December 2023.
The president said in 2024 his wife had dissuaded him from running for a second term.
Source: Ripples