News
Guinea-Bissau: ECOWAS backs parliament speaker as interim president
“I will continue to work to find a consensus on the prime minister who will be tasked with forming a transition government. I know it won’t be an easy task but we will all buckle down,” he said.
The ousted ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) rejected the decision outright, which one of its leaders, Augusto Olivais, said was “unconstitutional.”
“We will not recognise a president who has not been democratically elected,” he said.
Since independence from Portugal in 1974, the military and state in the west African nation have been in constant competition, leading to countless coups, political assassinations and chronic instability which has allowed cocaine trafficking to flourish.
The latest coup aborted an election process, in which Gomes was the favourite to win, and came as soldiers felt threatened by government’s growing reliance on several hundred Angolan troops in the country.
Gomes and Pereira have taken refuge in Ivory Coast since their arrest and subsequent release by the junta.
The new transition leader Nhamadjo, came third in a first round of voting in a presidential election with 15.75 percent of the votes. Gomes was first with 49 percent and was expected to win in a run-off on April 29.
