The president of the Guinean parliament, Domingos Simões Pereira, called for Wednesday, 13th, the plenary session of the body currently dissolved by orders of the President of the country, says a statement from the body to which Lusa had access.
In the document, Simões Pereira calls on deputies to appear in parliament so that the plenary session, interrupted on the 4th, can be resumed and also urges the Government to guarantee the conditions of inviolability of the space, according to the rules.
On the 4th, the plenary session was interrupted when the dissolution of parliament was announced by a decree from the Guinean President, Umaro Sissoco Embalo.
The President mentioned the existence of a serious institutional crisis in the country as a result of armed clashes between elements of the National Guard and the Armed Forces, days before, a situation that Sissoco Embalo considered to be an attempted coup d’état.
The Guinean head of state held parliament responsible for the institutional crisis and said he had taken the decision to dissolve it to “prevent the country from entering a new civil war cooked up” in that institution.
Since the day the dissolution of parliament was announced, the body’s leader, Domingos Simões Pereira, has repeated that the head of state’s decision has no legal force in light of the Constitution of Guinea-Bissau.
Article 94 of the Guinean Constitution says that parliament cannot be dissolved within 12 months after the legislative elections, recalls Simões Pereira, highlighting that the last electoral act took place on June 4th.
The parliamentary facilities in Bissau have been occupied, since the 4th, by security forces who Pereira says are unknown to their services in light of Guinean law.
In interviews with the media, the president of parliament states that if deputies are prevented from accessing the facilities on Wednesday, the situation will constitute “an effective institutional coup by the military”.
In his note calling for the session to resume on Wednesday, Domingos Simões Pereira urges the Government to restore the security body that the law says must be under the guidance of the president of parliament.
With the dissolution of parliament, the Guinean President informed that the Government led by the Prime Minister, Geraldo Martins, will remain in management until the formation of a new executive, which he promised for this week.