The military in Guinea-Bissau has installed a general as the country’s new transitional leader, a day after President Umaro Sissoco Embaló was deposed in a coup that the opposition claims was fabricated.
The small West African nation held an election last week, and its electoral commission was expected to release final results on Thursday. Opposition leaders and a member of the West African observation mission said Mr. Embaló had lost the vote. The opposition insists that the president staged a coup to stay in power, installing allies from the military so that he could lead by proxy.
“Umaro lost the elections, and instead of accepting the result, he fabricated a coup d’état,” Fernando Dias, the leading opposition candidate in the election, said a video shared widely on social media.
General Horta Inta-a, a special adviser for defense and security and a close ally of Mr. Embaló who previously served as his chief of staff, was sworn in on Thursday at the army headquarters in the capital, Bissau, flanked by about a dozen military officers. He said the transition would last one year.
“I have just been appointed by the high military command to assure the command of the country in order to restore constitutional order,” Gen. Inta-a said during a ceremony that was broadcast on state television.
The whereabouts of Mr. Embaló and Mr. Dias, who said an attempt was made to arrest him yesterday, were not immediately known. Domingos Simões Pereira, a key opposition figure who was barred from the race and had aligned himself with Mr. Dias, was arrested yesterday.
Mr. Dias said once Mr. Embaló realized he had lost the election, “He couldn’t handle defeat, so he sent the presidential guard and the forces of the Ministry of the Interior to arrest me.”
Guinea-Bissau, a tiny country between Senegal and Guinea, has a long history of coups. Since multiparty elections were introduced more than three decades ago, no president has ever been re-elected because of coups and political assassinations.
The only incumbent to have sought re-election was voted out of office after serving only one term.
Ricci Shryock contributed reporting.
Saikou Jammeh is a reporter and researcher for The Times based in Dakar, Senegal.
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