By RFPosted on 30-08-2019Modified on 30-08-2019 at 02:53

In a country in the grip of a long political crisis, President José Mario Vaz announced Thursday (August 29th) that he would run for a second term in the presidential elections of November 24th as an independent.

" I will be a candidate. The candidate for peace and stability, "President José Mario Vaz told thousands of supporters from across the country on Thursday night. The movements that support it have joined fourteen small formations without representation in Parliament.

Excluded from the PAIGC who brought him to power in 2015, José Mario Vaz presents himself without a label. At age 62, he is the only president for 25 years to complete his term. His predecessors were either overthrown by a military coup or assassinated. Assassination is considered a way of doing politics otherwise in this small Portuguese-speaking country.

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In front of him, five other contenders: Domingos Simoes Pereira, his former Prime Minister and leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), who dominated the political life since independence in 1974. The two men hate each other since the 2015 crisis when President José Mario Vaz fired his prime minister, Domingos Simoes Pereira.

Other candidates are in the running: former Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior, without a label, Umaro El Mokhtar Sissoco Embalo, pennant bearer of the Movement for Democratic Alternation (Madem) or Nuno Gomes Nabiam, unhappy presidential candidate of 2015.

There is, however, a climate of mistrust around the revision of the electoral register that the opposition considers biased. But the government remains deaf to their demand for a new census.

Bissau-Guineans will choose their new president on November 24, with the hope that this vote will help end an interminable crisis at the top of the state.

    On the same subject

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    V. Foucher: "For five years, the tension in Bissau is spreading on the institutional"

    Appointment of a new government in Guinea-Bissau

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