2023-08-13 01:21:10
Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo (left) and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during the Russia-Africa Summit in Saint Petersburg, Russia, July 27, 2023. SERGEI BOBYLEV / AP
The President of Guinea-Bissau, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, appointed a new government on Saturday August 12 after legislative elections won by the Pai-Terra Ranka coalition, imposing cohabitation on the Head of State.
This new government has thirty-four members against thirty-one in the previous one, according to a decree published by the presidency. Nineteen positions, including the key portfolios of foreign affairs, interior and finance, go to the main component of the Pai-Terra Ranka coalition, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde ( PAIGC), whose vice-president, Geraldo Martins, was appointed prime minister of the country on August 7 by President Embalo.
Two allied parties of the coalition are also represented in this government which has ten women, against four in the previous one, including Indira Cabral Embalo, daughter of the founder of the PAIGC, Amilcar Cabral.
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The president’s party “will remain in the opposition”
The Madem G15, the president’s political family, is not represented in the new government. He “will stay in opposition”, said its leader, Braima Camara, whose party won only twenty-nine seats in the legislative elections, far from the fifty-four won by the PAIGC coalition. This heavy defeat is attributed, according to observers, to internal dissension and the fall in the price of cashew nuts, an important source of income for the population.
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Guinea-Bissau, plagued by chronic political instability, has experienced a string of coups or coup attempts since its independence from Portugal in 1974, the last in February 2022.
The 200 or so international observers deployed to ensure the smooth running of the June legislative elections had not however noted any major incident and affirmed that the ballot had been “free, transparent and peaceful”.
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