Guinea-Bissau opposition chief wins presidential election

Opposition leader Umaro Sissoco Embalo won presidential elections in the volatile West African state of Guinea-Bissau, picking up 53.55 percent of the vote, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) announced on Wednesday.

Domingos Simoes Pereira, head of the country's historic ruling party PAIGC, was credited with 46.45 percent in Sunday's runoff.

"I declare Umaro Sissoco Embalo to be the winner," CNE President Jose Pedro Sambu said.

Embalo declared he would be a "president of national harmony" and appealed for the country to rally behind him, but Pereira blasted the result as a fix and vowed to overturn it.

Supporters of Embalo erupted with joy close to the tightly policed hotel in the capital Bissau where the results were announced.

They beat pots and cans and sang and danced. Some bore giant red-and-white keffiyehs, the Arab headdress that became Embalo's campaign trademark.

Embalo, 47, takes over from Jose Mario Vaz, who came to power in 2014 in hopes of stabilising a country notorious for coups since gaining independence from Portugal in 1974.

But his tenure was hampered by a paralysing faceoff with parliament under the country's semi-presidential political system.

'Harmony' and 'fraud'

The CNE put voter turnout at 72.67 percent, virtually identical to the first round of voting on November 24, which Pereira won with 40.1 percent against 28 percent for Embalo.

Embalo, in a news conference at his campaign headquarters, said, "I will be a president of national harmony."

But, he cautioned, "the campaign euphoria is over. I need [the support of] all Guinea-Bissauans in order to make a new Guinea-Bissau."

In contrast, Pereira said he had taken advice from legal counsel and would file a petition to have the result annulled.

"The provisional results that have just been announced are full of irregularities, annulment, and manipulation, which [constitutes] electoral fraud," he said at a meeting of PAIGC activists.

"We cannot accept a result of this kind," he said. "We are going to put forward all the evidence to show that the results have been changed."

Embalo is nicknamed "The General," a reference to his rank as a reserve brigadier general. He quit the army in the 1990s.

Like Pereira, he is also a former prime minister, serving under Vaz between 2016 and 2018, before representing Madem, a party formed by PAIGC rebels.

He fought to overcome his first-round vote deficit by portraying himself as a unifier of the country and by gaining the backing of eliminated candidates, including Vaz.

'Difficult times' 

The United Nations calls on all parties "to continue to exercise restraint during the post-election period," UN envoy for West Africa, Mohamed Ibn Chambas said in a statement, congratulating the electoral commission on its "exemplary conduct of the electoral process."

Elisa Pinto, an election monitor representing Guinea-Bissau civil society, said the vote had proceeded smoothly and there was a clear result.

"The election went off well. One candidate won," she told AFP.

But, she added, "he will have a lot of responsibilities at these difficult times ... [he] will have to address the public's concern, and the public needs stability and national reconciliation."

"Without that, there cannot be development," Pinto warned.

Embalo's prime task will be to deal with a legislature dominated by the PAIGC — the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which led an 11-year armed struggle to end Portugal's colonial rule.

Under the constitution, the parliament has the right to designate the prime minister, but this appointee can be fired by the president — a circular problem that led to the paralysis during Vaz's presidency.

Poverty and coups

Nearly 70 percent of Guinea-Bissau's 1.8 million people live on less than $1.90 a day.

The country ranks 178th out of 189 on the UN's Human Development Index. The average life expectancy is just 57.8 years.

Latin American drug runners have exploited the instability and poverty to make the country a hub along the cocaine-smuggling route to Europe.

It also has a notorious image of corruption. It was placed 172nd out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2018 index for perceived levels of corruption.

Since independence, Guinea-Bissau has been through four coups as well as 16 attempted, plotted or alleged coups.

After the last coup, in 2012, the regional bloc ECOWAS sent a stabilisation force comprising more than 700 troops and police.

Armed forces chief General Biague Na Ntam repeatedly declared during the latest election campaign that the military would not intervene.