On November 27, Major General Horta Intaa was sworn in as the new interim president.
Published December 2, 2025
Guinea-Bissau’s electoral commission has announced that it will no longer be possible to complete the Nov. 23 presidential election after armed groups seized ballots, tabulation papers and computers from its offices and destroyed servers storing results.
The army general took power on November 26, the day before the commission was scheduled to announce preliminary results of the hotly contested vote. Several buildings were attacked during the occupation, including the election commission headquarters.
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“We do not have the physical and logistical conditions to carry out the electoral process,” Idrissa Jaro, a senior official at the electoral commission, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“They seized the computers of all 45 officials who were at the commission that day,” he said, adding that the tally sheets for all regions were seized and the servers where the results were stored were destroyed.
“It is impossible to complete the election process without the tabulation sheets from each region,” Jaro said.
On November 27, Major General Orta Inta A was sworn in as the new interim president, and the electoral process was suspended. Since then, the military has tightened regulations and banned demonstrations and strikes.
Inta-A has promised a one-year transition period and on Saturday appointed a 28-member cabinet made up mostly of sympathizers of the ousted president.
Controversial votes and political influence
The coup took place three days after the presidential election, in which the main candidates, incumbent President Umaro Sissoko Embalo and opposition candidate Fernando Díaz da Costa, declared victory before preliminary results were released. No results have been published since then.
During the takeover, Embarro told French media by phone that he had been fired and arrested. He then fled to Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo.
Nigeria announced that President Bola Tinubu had granted protection to Díaz da Costa, citing an “imminent threat to his life.”
PAIGC, one of the country’s leading political parties, was barred from fielding candidates in the election, a decision that civil rights groups denounced as part of a broader crackdown on opposition parties.
Guinea-Bissau’s new military authorities are facing increasing pressure from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to restore constitutional governance and restart electoral procedures.
A high-level delegation from the bloc, led by current chairman and Sierra Leone President Julius Maada Bio, met with military leaders and electoral commission officials in Bissau on Monday, calling for a “full restoration of constitutional order.”
ECOWAS leaders, who have threatened sanctions against those undermining the democratic process, are scheduled to meet on December 14 to discuss the crisis.
