Former Prime Minister Umaro Cissoko Embalo was sworn in as the new president of Guinea-Bissau on Thursday despite ongoing row over the results of the December 29 elections, reported All Africa.
“I swear on my honour to defend the constitution, to respect it and have it respected,” Embalo said before a crowd at an upscale hotel in the West African state’s capital, Bissau.
The National Electoral Commission declared Embalo as the winner of the December election after he won 53.55% of the votes. Domingos Simoes Pereira, the presidential candidate from Guinea-Bissau’s ruling party, the PAIGC, won 46.45% of the votes, the number that he has denounced as a fraud. Pereira got the lead in the first round of voting in November, but he lost to Embalo in the second and final round of voting.
After the party of defeated candidate Pereira filed a lawsuit citing irregularities in the election, the Supreme Court issued a ruling requiring a check of the vote tally sheets.
On Tuesday, the election commission confirmed that the election results were accurate, but the PAIGC stood by its objections.
Embalo’s inauguration on Thursday has bypassed the Supreme Court, which he said did not have the authority to rule over the election result dispute, as well as parliament, which has to give its approval to the swearing-in.
In his inaugural speech, Embalo did not mention anything about the electoral dispute as he vowed to tackle widespread poverty in Guinea-Bissau, a country dependent on a main export, cashew nuts, for which prices are volatile.
“The record of 46 years of independence is characterized by the total collapse of the dreams of our ancestors,” he said, wearing a sash with the red, yellow and green of the national flag.
Embalo added that the current generation of leaders will work to have a better health and education system and to pull the country from the slump in which it is mired.
