Guinea Bissau: Seeking Post-Poll Stability in Guinea-Bissau

Dakar — Guinea-Bissau will hold elections on 16 March to end yet another post-coup regime, with many hoping the polls will help calm an internecine and drawn-out instability.

Observers believe that a political coalition and deeper commitment by the international community after the polls can shore up the country's recovery.

Multiple coups and assassinations have marred the West African country's political history since the first free polls in 1994. Corruption and misrule have bogged down governance and public services, and over the last decade drug trafficking has worsened power struggles between the military and the political class.

Political power in Guinea-Bissau is largely centralized - a legacy of its colonial past. Until the introduction of multi-party democracy in 1991, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) was the only party, ruling from independence in 1974.

With limited checks, the presidency has become a powerful office that draws intense political competition due to a winner-take-all culture. The country has both a president and a prime minister, but the prime minister is named by the president, who also makes key military and government appointments, dismisses officials and can dissolve the government. As a result, the president's allies have access to opportunities at the expense of opponents.

Polls and coups

Joao Bernardo Vieira came to power in 1980 through a coup; he later won the 1994 elections. Five years later, he was overthrown following his dismissal of army commander Asumane Mané over arms-smuggling allegations. Vieira then fled and parliament speaker Malam Bacai Sanha was installed as interim president.

The country then held elections in 1999. Kumba Yala of the Social Renewal Party (PRS) was elected. In 2000, army chief Mané was killed.

Yala was deposed three years later, following a stint characterized by misrule and antagonism with the military. He was ousted by Mané's successor, Verissimo Correia Seabra, who was himself killed in a 2004 army revolt.

New elections were organized in 2005 and were won narrowly in a run-off by Vieira, who had returned from exile. But in 2009, he was slain by renegade soldiers following the killing of army chief Batista Tagme Na Wai, who had replaced Seabra, in a bomb attack.