By Antonio Sanha
Of all the tools in the arsenal of an illegitimate regime, the most crucial is not the gun, but the story. It is the narrative hastily constructed to justify the unjustifiable, to paper over the cracks of a fractured reality.
The recent events in Guinea-Bissau, presented to the world as a sudden coup d’état, do not hold up even before the most basic scrutiny. What we are witnessing is not a seizure of power, but a theatrical production, a phantom coup scripted by the very man it supposedly targeted.
The details, when laid out plainly, reveal a plot so audacious it would be comical if the consequences were not so dire for the people of Guinea-Bissau. The first and most glaring anomaly is the source of the announcement.
Our president, Umaro Sissoco Embaló, was the one calling media organisations to announce his own ousting. This fundamental break from the brutal logic of all past coups is the thread that, when pulled, unravels the entire fabric.
Former Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, confirms this mise en scene, stating pointedly, “I’m a Nigerian, and I know how heads of states are treated when there’s a coup.” He is correct. In a real coup, presidents do not get to play news anchor.
They are silenced, detained, or worse. They do not have the liberty to narrate their own downfall. The very fact that Embaló was the public narrator of this crisis should have been the international community’s first clue that the script was upside-down.
It is not a surprise that Embalo’s allies are still in power. His campaign director, Illidio Vieira Te is the new prime minister and remains the finance minister. His military aide, Denis N’Canha is the spokesperson of the government. His ally, Gen. Horta N’Tam is the interim president.
So, what was the plot? The timeline is critical. This “coup” unfolded with less than 24 hours remaining for the National Electoral Commission (CNE) to proclaim the definitive results of the November 23rd general elections. This was not a coincidence. It was the climax of a premeditated political strategy.
Embaló had long resisted holding these elections, and when forced, he ensured they began “crookedly.” The Supreme Court, in a move of convenient judicial activism, disqualified the two largest opposition parties, PAIGC and PRS, from the legislative elections and barred the PAIGC’s strongest candidate, Domingos Simões Pereira, from the presidential race.
Having tilted the board, Embaló presumably expected a straightforward victory. Yet, in a stunning masterstroke, the PAIGC backed an independent candidate, Fernando Dias, who, from all authoritative assessments, looked likely to win the presidential election. The results were imminent. With this final, democratic checkmate looming, Embaló launched his last, desperate move; the “coup d’état.”
The execution of this farce appears to have been an internal elite manoeuvring. The plan had three acts. The first was assault the CNE, kidnap the winning candidate, and if all else failed, “detain” the president himself.
The first two acts failed. The winning candidate, Fernando Dias da Costa, was arrested but evaded immediate harm and later went into hiding or was released amidst chaos. The assault on the CNE was thwarted by civilians who confronted the military.
This left only the final, absurd card: the self-coup. Here, the casting was perfect. The Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General N’Tam, handled the “bureaucratic issues.” Then, the Head of the Civil House of the Presidency, N’Canha, appeared on television to suspend the constitution, halt the electoral process, and declare a state of siege. The president’s office was conveniently “moved” to a military barracks, and his “arrest” was announced.
The intended finale was clear: create chaos, have the military assume power for a “transition” of one year, allowing Embaló to govern from the shadows while the international community decried a putsch. It was, as the script notes, a “fair deal” where “everyone wins.”
But the curtain fell too quickly. The world did not buy the performance. The rapid, almost nonchalant departure of Embaló from the country less than 24 hours later, a soldier, supposedly detained by a junta, simply allowed to leave, exposed the charade for what it was. This is the first time in history that a military junta takes over power and immediately allows a deposed president leave the country in less than 24 hours of its coup d’état. Even the new conscious generation knows it is a “twist of theatre.”
This was not a coup. It was a putsch, sanitised for international consumption, designed to nullify an election the president knew he had lost. It would be of paramount importance that regional bodies like ECOWAS and the AU do not stay silent or simply issue the usual condemnations.
They must impose necessary sanctions, especially as this intervention came at a time when the majority of Bissau-Guineans backed the electoral process and do not support this intervention by the military. EVOWAS’s swift sanctions against military takeovers that were largely welcomed by the people, like in the Sahel states, as opposed to its subtle condemnation against the one in my country, speaks volumes.
When the president is the playwright, the director, and the lead actor in his own deposition, the world must not be a passive audience. We must call this what it is: a poorly-scripted phantom, a desperate act of a leader willing to burn the constitution to avoid the verdict of the ballot box. The people of Guinea-Bissau deserve more than this cheap theatre. They deserve the truth, and the government they voted for.
