Guinea-Bissau’s Constitutional Gamble: Can More Presidential Power Break the Coup Cycle?
Guinea-Bissau’s Constitutional Gamble: Can More Presidential Power Break the Coup Cycle?
By Matthew Eloyi
By rewriting the rules of government months before a presidential election, Guinea-Bissau’s military rulers say they are laying the foundation for stability. Critics fear they may instead be giving the presidency the very concentration of power that has repeatedly destabilised the country.
There is a familiar sound in Guinea-Bissau’s political history: gunfire in the capital, soldiers on the streets, and the suspension of institutions.
Now, after decades of coups, mutinies, assassinations and political crises, the tiny West African nation is attempting something different: changing the rules of the political game itself.
But the question confronting Guinea-Bissau is whether constitutional engineering can succeed where political institutions have repeatedly failed.
Voters have approved a new constitution that dramatically strengthens the presidency and redraws the country’s electoral architecture, just months before a presidential election scheduled for December. Provisional results released by the National Electoral Commission showed that 70 per cent of voters backed the reforms, while 30 per cent opposed them. About 544,060 people voted, representing almost 60 per cent of registered voters.
The vote gives the military-led transitional government an important political victory. Yet it also places Guinea-Bissau before a difficult constitutional experiment: can a stronger presidency provide the stability the country has desperately sought, or will concentrating power at the centre create another source of political conflict?
That question will become especially important when voters return to the polls in December.
A country accustomed to political rupture
To understand the significance of the referendum, it is necessary to look beyond the ballot box and into Guinea-Bissau’s turbulent past.
Since independence from Portugal in 1974, the country has struggled to establish a durable relationship between civilian institutions and the military. Its political history has been marked by repeated coups and attempted coups, military revolts and political assassinations.
The first major rupture came in 1980, when Prime Minister and former armed forces commander João Bernardo Vieira overthrew President Luís Cabral in a relatively bloodless coup.
Vieira would eventually become one of the central figures in Guinea-Bissau’s political history. His rule survived several alleged coup plots before another crisis in 1998 triggered a devastating civil war. In May 1999, Vieira was overthrown after months of fighting. The instability did not end there.
In 2003, President Kumba Ialá was removed in a military coup. In 2009, Vieira was assassinated by soldiers, only hours after the country’s army chief of staff was killed in a bomb blast. In 2012, soldiers again seized power in the middle of an electoral process, detaining the interim leadership.
Even after civilian government returned, the threat of military intervention remained.
There were further coup attempts in 2022 and 2023, while Guinea-Bissau entered another political crisis following disputed elections in November 2025. The military eventually intervened, establishing a transitional authority.
The latest constitutional reform must therefore be viewed against this extraordinary record.
For Guinea-Bissau, the issue has never simply been who wins an election. It has been whether the winner can govern without provoking a constitutional crisis, whether institutions can resolve political disputes and whether the military will remain in its barracks when civilian politics becomes difficult.
The presidency takes centre stage
The new constitution attempts to address that instability by fundamentally altering the distribution of executive power.
Under the existing arrangement, parliament has a central role in determining the prime minister, who then appoints the cabinet. The new system gives the president the power to appoint and dismiss the prime minister and cabinet.
The president will also be able to create or abolish ministries and dissolve parliament in the event of what is described as a grave political crisis. That is not a minor constitutional adjustment.
It represents a significant movement away from a system in which executive authority is divided between the president and prime minister towards one in which the presidency becomes the dominant political institution.
Supporters of the reforms are likely to argue that this is precisely what Guinea-Bissau needs.
A government that spends too much time fighting over who controls the executive can struggle to deliver policies. A president with clearer authority may be able to form a government, implement programmes and respond to crises without becoming trapped in institutional confrontation.
The transitional authorities have presented the reforms in broad context, arguing that future governments should be able to complete their mandates without being paralysed by political disputes.
But there is another side to the argument. A stronger president requires stronger checks and balances. If parliament becomes weaker, the judiciary is unable to act independently, political parties are restricted and civil society has limited room to scrutinise government, presidential power can quickly move from being a tool for stability to an instrument of political dominance.
That is the central constitutional dilemma now facing Guinea-Bissau.
A smaller parliament, a different political map
The changes do not stop at the executive branch. Parliament will be reduced from 102 seats to 65, while electoral constituencies will be reduced from 29 to 12.
On paper, a smaller legislature could mean greater efficiency and a less fragmented political system. But electoral boundaries are never merely administrative lines.
They determine how communities are represented, how parties build their political bases and how electoral influence is distributed across the country.
Reducing the number of constituencies could therefore alter the balance between national parties and local political interests.
The December election will offer the first major test of how these changes work in practice.
Another provision may prove even more politically consequential: presidential candidates must have lived continuously in Guinea-Bissau for the five years preceding the election.
That requirement could affect politicians who have spent significant periods outside the country and could narrow the field of potential presidential contenders.
In a country with a politically active diaspora, the residency rule is more than a technical qualification. It could influence who is eligible to compete for the country’s highest office.
The referendum’s democratic question
The most uncomfortable question surrounding the referendum is not necessarily the 70 per cent approval figure. It is the political environment in which that figure was produced.
The main opposition African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, or PAIGC, boycotted the referendum and urged its supporters to stay away.
PAIGC leader Domingos Simoes Pereira accused the proponents of the reforms of seeking to “kill our freedom and bury our democracy.”
That accusation matters because constitutions derive their strength not simply from majorities but from broad political acceptance.
A constitution is supposed to establish rules that remain legitimate even when political power changes hands.
If one political camp regards the constitutional process as fundamentally illegitimate, the document can become another source of political conflict rather than the foundation for resolving conflict.
Reports from Bissau also suggested that some polling stations were sparsely attended and that some residents said they were unaware of the referendum or did not fully understand its purpose.
The provisional turnout, nearly 60 per cent according to electoral authorities, gives the result a significant numerical base. But questions about awareness, opposition participation and institutional safeguards are likely to remain part of the political debate.
December: the real constitutional test
The referendum may have been about constitutional reform, but the December presidential election is where its consequences will become visible.
The first question is whether the election itself will be broadly accepted.
Guinea-Bissau’s most recent political rupture occurred after the November 2025 presidential election, when rival candidates disputed the outcome and the military intervened before official results were fully released.
That history casts a long shadow over December.
If the election produces a clear winner whose victory is accepted by the opposition, military establishment and wider public, the new constitution could be presented as the beginning of a more stable political era.
But if the result is disputed, the expanded powers of the presidency could become a source of even greater tension.
The president will possess more authority over the government. Parliament will be smaller. Electoral constituencies will be fewer. Presidential eligibility will be more restrictive.
In other words, the stakes of winning the presidency will be higher. That could make political competition more intense, not less.
The military’s paradox
There is an irony at the heart of Guinea-Bissau’s constitutional experiment.
The military has repeatedly intervened in politics, often claiming that civilian institutions have failed.
Yet the latest political transition again places the military at the centre of an effort to redesign those very institutions. This creates a paradox.
If the new constitution produces stronger institutions and credible elections, the military could eventually claim that its intervention helped create the conditions for political stability.
But if the reforms are perceived as an attempt to entrench the interests of those who currently hold power, the constitutional process could deepen mistrust and reinforce the very political culture it is supposed to overcome.
The distinction between strengthening the state and strengthening whoever controls the state will therefore be crucial.
The cocaine economy and the cost of instability
Guinea-Bissau’s political fragility also has consequences beyond its constitutional politics.
The country has long been identified as a major transit point for cocaine trafficking between Latin America and Europe. Political instability and weak state institutions create opportunities for criminal networks to operate, further undermining the authority of government.
The problem is therefore bigger than elections and constitutional clauses.
A country that cannot guarantee predictable political succession, strong institutions and effective law enforcement becomes vulnerable to networks operating outside the formal state.
Political instability can also discourage investment, weaken public administration and deepen poverty.
That makes the search for stability an economic necessity as much as a constitutional one.
A gamble with two possible endings
Guinea-Bissau’s new constitution can be interpreted in two radically different ways.
The optimistic interpretation is that the country is finally acknowledging a structural weakness in its political system and attempting to create clearer executive authority. A stronger presidency, a streamlined parliament and more clearly defined political responsibilities could help prevent the institutional deadlocks that have repeatedly contributed to crises.
The darker interpretation is that the reforms concentrate too much power in one office while reducing the strength of institutions that might restrain that power.
Both possibilities will be tested in December.
The election will reveal whether the new constitutional framework can accommodate genuine political competition. It will test whether opposition parties accept the new rules, whether the military remains outside day-to-day politics and whether the eventual winner can govern without provoking another institutional confrontation.
Most importantly, it will test whether Guinea-Bissau has finally found a way to make political disagreements less dangerous.
Beyond the ballot
For more than four decades, Guinea-Bissau has struggled to escape the shadow of the barracks.
Presidents have fallen. Governments have collapsed. Soldiers have intervened. Political rivals have contested elections. Institutions have repeatedly been suspended or weakened.
The new constitution is an attempt to break that pattern through a different route: not simply changing the occupants of political offices, but changing the structure of power itself.
That is an enormous gamble.
A constitution cannot, by itself, create democratic culture. It cannot compel political opponents to trust one another. It cannot guarantee that soldiers will never again intervene. And it cannot make an election legitimate merely by changing the rules under which it is conducted.
Those things require institutions, political restraint and public confidence.
For Guinea-Bissau, December will therefore be about more than choosing a president.
It will be the country’s first major test of whether its latest constitutional gamble can turn decades of political instability into a more predictable democratic order, or whether the country is simply rewriting the rules of an old struggle for power.
The ballot box will provide the verdict. But the real measure of success will be what happens after the votes are counted.
