A group of young Guineans demonstrated yesterday in front of the headquarters of the West African Economic Community (ECOWAS), in Guinea-Bissau, to call for the annulment of President Umaro Sissoco Embaló’s decree dissolving Parliament.
ECOWAS is holding a summit today in Abuja, Nigeria, at which, among other issues, it will discuss the political situation in Guinea-Bissau, where, on the 4th, President Umaro Sissoco Embaló dissolved the parliament.
The young people, mostly from the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), called with a megaphone for ECOWAS to “take a clear position on Guinea-Bissau” at the summit in which Sissoco Embaló participates.
The PAIGC, which led the winning coalition in the last legislative elections in June and which has governed the country since then, has considered that the decree that dissolved parliament “is illegal and unconstitutional” for violating the deadline established in the Constitution.
The leader of PAIGC, who is also president of parliament, Domingos Simões Pereira, has repeated that the Constitution requires that the body cannot be distributed before 12 months of legislative elections.
The Guinean President mentioned the existence of a serious institutional crisis in the country and an attempted coup d’état on the 1st, only to dissolve Parliament on the 4th, which he accuses of being the focus of instability.
In the youth demonstration, ECOWAS is called upon to “order the presidential decree to be annulled” and “restore democratic order” in Guinea-Bissau.
“We don’t want violence, we just want justice and democracy”, say the protesters who held signs that read that the presidential decree “is null” and that “ECOWAS cannot fail Guinea-Bissau”.
The protesters also ask that ECOWAS “enforce the Constitution and the vote” of Guineans.
ECOWAS is made up of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Togo.
On Saturday, the same group of young people held a demonstration in front of the United Nations headquarters, in Bissau, to make the same demands.