The military rulers of Guinea-Bissau have issued a transitional charter lasting 12 months, barring both the interim president and prime minister from standing in the country’s forthcoming elections.
The 29-article document requires presidential and legislative polls to take place at the conclusion of the transitional period, with the transitional president setting the election date.
The charter comes two weeks after the Military High Command, a group of army officers, deposed President Umaro Sissoco Embalo on 26 November. Maj.-Gen. Horta Inta-a was sworn in as interim president the next day, while former finance minister Ilidio Vieira Te was named prime minister.
The coup disrupted the announcement of election results by the national electoral commission. The charter gives the military oversight of legal and institutional reforms, including revisions to the suspended constitution, and establishes a Constitutional Court to oversee political party regulations and appoint new electoral officials.
The transitional legislature, the 65-member National Transition Council, will include ten senior military officers.
Guinea-Bissau, a coastal West African nation situated between Senegal and Guinea, has a long history of political instability, with only one president completing a full term since independence from Portugal in 1974.
