A powerful bloc of Africa’s most respected statesmen, diplomats, scholars and civil society leaders has issued an unprecedented demand: Guinea-Bissau must release its November 23 election results immediately, and ECOWAS must protect the true winner.
In a blistering joint statement titled “Restoring Constitutional Order and the Rule of Law in Guinea-Bissau,” the group of 20 eminent Africans, including former Cabo Verde President Pedro Pires, former ECOWAS Executive Secretary Dr Abass Bundu, and leading pro-democracy voices from across the continent, warned that West Africa cannot afford another stolen transition.
Their message was direct: the military has hijacked the process, detained political actors, and seized the very documents needed to announce the results.
“Under threat from security services and the army, the electoral commission was forced to declare its inability to continue compiling the results,” the group wrote. Soldiers allegedly stormed the headquarters of the National Electoral Commission (CNE), confiscating or destroying machines, data, and tally sheets in a move the signatories describe as a last-minute attempt to “destroy the archives.”
The situation deteriorated rapidly after the dramatic events of November 26, which the group bluntly labelled a “staged coup” orchestrated by senior officers aligned with outgoing President Umaro Sissoco Embaló who is now shuttling between Dakar, Brazzaville and Morocco as he seeks a path back to power.
The signatories ridiculed what they called the “comic arrest” of Embaló, who rushed to inform global media of his own supposed ouster even as the army targeted electoral officials believed to be sympathetic to the opposition.
What remains, they argue, is unmistakable: Guinea-Bissau’s citizens voted, the tallies exist, and the military’s interference cannot be allowed to erase the people’s choice.
With ECOWAS Heads of State preparing for a December 14 summit, the group has thrown down a gauntlet.
They urge African leaders, especially Sierra Leone’s Julius Maada Bio, the current ECOWAS chair, to take a “bold move” to safeguard democracy in one of the bloc’s most fragile member states.
“We salute ECOWAS’ condemnation of the coup,” the statement said, praising the regional body for convening a virtual summit and dispatching a fact-finding mission to Bissau. But goodwill alone, they argue, is not enough.
Perhaps the most explosive claim in the statement is that multiple copies, even original versions, of the vote tallies have survived despite military attempts to sabotage the process.
“It will only take coordinated international pressure to have them published,” the group insists.
The signatories called on the African Union, the UN, and the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP) to step in, warning that silence would embolden would-be putschists across the region.
“Accepting that a group of military and political players can collude to deprive citizens of their right to choose their leaders would signal to the whole of West Africa that the only rule… is that of the most powerful,” they wrote.
In a rare appeal, the group urged Africans everywhere to mobilise legally against the subversion underway in Bissau.
They paid tribute to the “maturity” of Guinea-Bissau’s people, invoking the legacy of Amílcar Cabral, whose homeland now finds itself once again on democracy’s frontline.
Story: Lawal Mohammed
