Guinea-Bissau Accuses Angola Of Staging Fraudulent Elections

Guinea-Bissau considers Angola as a country without substantive Democratic practices and largely dictatorial.

This was in response to remarks made by Angolan President João Lourenço, about the Guinean political crisis at the African Union summit.

The Angolan head of state condemned the unconstitutional changes of government in Guinea-Bissau.

Guinea-Bissau’s National Transitional Council (NTC) reacted, in a statement read by spokesperson Fernando Vaz and transmitted by the local press, to the positions taken by the President of Angola, João Lourenço, during the weekend in Addis Ababa.

“The posture of certain heads of state who, under the guise of false diplomacy, try to lecture Guinea-Bissau on morality and democracy, while their own homes suffer from many other ills,” Fernando Vaz said.

” The Angolan President conveniently forgets that fraudulent elections and rigged processes constitute, in themselves, constitutional coups. In Angola, the world has witnessed electoral processes in which transparency was sacrificed on the altar of maintaining power ,” he states.

For the power established in Bissau, what occurred in Angola was a coup d’état “carried out through manipulated ballot boxes — more pernicious than a military coup — because it is a faceless coup that silences the opposition, muzzles institutions, and maintains a democratic facade for external consumption.”

” Those who govern under the shadow of fraud cannot point the finger at crises of legitimacy elsewhere. Guinea-Bissau demands respect. Before looking at Bissau, these leaders should look at their own internal problems ,” the statement continues.

According to Guinean authorities, “Cape Verde should focus on resolving its growing social tensions and the erosion of its own institutions,” while ” Angola should first hold elections that do not raise global doubts about their legitimacy .”