Guinea-Bissau’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) on Wednesday declared former Prime Minister and ex-army general Umaro Cissoko Embalo as the winner of Sunday’s presidential election, reported Reuters.
“I declare Umaro Sissoco Embalo to be the winner of this second round,” said CNE President Jose Pedro Sambu.
The CNE put turnout at 72.67 percent, similar to the first round of voting. Embalo secured 54% of the votes beating his opponent Domingos Simoes Pereira in a run-off vote. Pereira, the head of the country’s ruling PAIGC party, got 46.45 percent of the votes.
Embalo will succeed incumbent President Jose Mario Vaz who came to power in 2014. Vaz’s tenure was marred by widespread allegations of corruption, political infighting, and an ill-functioning parliament. He failed to win a second term in office when he got just 12 percent of the vote in the first round in November.
Both Embalo and Pereira served as prime ministers during former President Vaz’s five-year term.
While the election observers found no evidence of any kind of vote tampering in Sunday’s run-off, Pereira claimed the voting results were full of irregularities, annulment, and manipulation as he vowed to mount a challenge in the Supreme Court.
“There has been an infringement of the electoral truth and the most legitimate rights of the people of Guinea Bissau,” Pereira said.
Pereira got the lead in the first round of voting in November, but he lost in the second round to Embalo who secured the support of the other main contenders.
Meanwhile, the newly elected President Embalo has vowed to modernize Guinea-Bissau, one of the world’s poorest nations, which is home to some 1.6 million people.
As the new President, Embalo will face some big challenges including poverty and drug trafficking, and an unstable political system in which the parliament can appoint the prime minister, but the president can fire the appointee.
