By Paul Ejime
Guinea-Bissau’s junta has requested the “immediate withdrawal” of the 500-strong ECOWAS Stabilisation Support Mission in the country, ESSMGB, in its latest defiance of the regional bloc.
Critics had even accused ECOWAS of treating the coup makers and their alleged mastermind, former President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, with kid gloves.
In an official correspondence dated 22nd December and addressed to the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr Omar Touray, the Gen. Horta Inta-A-led junta “…formally request the immediate withdrawal of the ECOWAS security forces deployed to Guinea-Bissau, taking into account the resolutions contained in the Final Communique of the 68th Ordinary Session,” of the ECOWAS leaders.
According to the statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Cooperation and Communities, the withdrawal of the ECOWAS security forces is so that the “transition process can proceed under the direction of the Transitional Government, with the full participation of all political currents and civil society, ensuring fundamental freedom, the rule of law and due process.”
At their 14 December Summit in Abuja, Nigeria, ECOWAS leaders ratified the suspension of Guinea-Bissau following the military coup of 23 November, which Embalo was believed to have staged in an attempt to avoid an electoral defeat.
Fernando Dias da Costa, who claimed victory in the presidential vote, has taken refuge in the Nigerian embassy in Bissau, while several opposition leaders are still detained by the junta, despite the ECOWAS demand for their release.
Sources close to the junta said some of the detainees would face trial.
The ECOWAS summit had also demanded “a short transition programme,” rejecting the 12-transition announced by the junta, made up mainly of Embalo’s loyalists, including Gen. Inta-A, former head of Presidential Guard, and Prime Minister Ilídio Vieira Té, his Campaign Director during the 23rd November elections.
The junta, which seized power on 26th November, a day before the National Electoral Commission, CNE, was to announce the results of the 23rd Legislative and presidential elections, has dug in, naming a 28-member cabinet as part of efforts to consolidate its hold on power.
Diplomatic sources believe Embalo is pulling the strings from an undisclosed refuge. After the coup, Senegalese authorities arranged his evacuation to Dakar, from where he travelled to Congo-Brazzaville and later to Morocco.
Currently, his wife and close allies are facing alleged charges of smuggling and money laundering in Lisbon, after Portuguese authorities found five million euros in a private plane on which they were travelling.
In 2020, after winning a disputed presidential election, Embalo also demanded the withdrawal of the ECOWAS military mission in Guinea-Bissau, only to request their return in the aftermath of a reported coup attempt against his government in 2022.
His regime has been characterised by a clampdown on opposition, civil society groups and the media, under political instability, including four reported coups, using the excuse of the first two in 2022 and 2023, to suspend the country’s constitution to allow him to rule as a dictator.
In October, just before the 26th November staged putsch, Embalo also used the excuse of a third coup attempt to arrest some officers and opposition figures, who are still in detention.
ECOWAS had also decided to send two delegations led by the Chair of Authority and the regional Committee of Chiefs of Defence Staff.
However, according to diplomatic sources, the Horta Inta-A-led junta, in another act of defiance, turned down the ECOWAS Committee’s request for a visit, but at the same time, received a Senegalese Ministerial delegation in Bissau at the weekend.
In March, Embalo threatened to expel an ECOWAS-United Nations fact-finding Mission to Guinea-Bissau for daring to meet with opposition parties and civil society groups.
As in several other instances of clear violations of ECOWAS protocols and texts, there have been no consequences, and it is believed that Embalo and other regional leaders like him have been emboldened in impunity and authoritarian tendencies, blamed for the resurgence of military incursions into politics in the region.
Five of the 15 ECOWAS member States – Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau – are now ruled by soldiers. Guinea plans a transitional election next week (28 December), while the juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have withdrawn their countries from ECOWAS, to form the Alliance of Sahel States, AES.
The Guinea-Bissau junta is said to be toying with the idea of joining the AES group. But observers warn that such a decision could spell doom for the region and, particularly, the “narco-state plagued with political instability, and which depends mainly on financial support from development partners for its annual budget.
Apart from Liberia and Sierra Leone, where ECOWAS ended civil wars, Guinea-Bissau has been a drainpipe to the regional bloc.
According to informed sources, ECOWAS is spending about one million US dollars on the ESSMGB’s monthly personnel costs, excluding the operational expenses. The regional bloc also incurs approximately the same expenses on a similar Mission in The Gambia, thereby owing the troops’ contributing countries more than US$60 million.
From 2012, ECOWAS has supported Guinea-Bissau’s political, socioeconomic and security stabilization, including the electrification of the nation’s capital, Bissau, with millions of dollars, such as the US$500,000 financial support for the 23 November elections.
The implementation of the ECOWAS-led Security Sector Reform in Guinea-Bissau, agreed under the 2016 Conakry Peace Accord, has been stalled by domestic political intolerance and infighting.
Analysts consider the 26th November self-coup as an own goal by Embalo, who apparently underestimated the negative international reactions that would follow.
But by expelling the ECOWAS military force, which has provided him with cover over the past five years, and even contemplating joining the AES nations, with which Guinea-Bissau shares no common borders, smacks of an act of desperation by a dictator consumed in self-ambition without consideration for his country or the more than 400 million citizens of the Community.
ECOWAS has a Herculean task ahead of it.
Embalo has shown his hand, beyond all reasonable doubt.
If his sympathisers among his peers in the region fail to re-examine their consciences and change their ways after the latest developments, then democracy and good governance stand no chance in Africa’s politically restive coup-belt.
Paul Ejime is a Media/Communications Specialist and Global Affairs Analyst
