After suffering through terrible years under a populist madman who suspended the national legislature when free parliamentary threatened his rule, and following three years of a bloodless military coup, the people of Guinea-Bissau are ready to return to multi-party democracy. Indications are showing that, indeed, today will be a good day for the otherwise turbulent nation.

In Guinea-Bissau, voters are hoping Sunday’s runoff presidential elections will bring stability to the West African nation, which has seen numerous coups and coup attempts.

Voter turnout is expected to be high in Guinea-Bissau, where many people see the runoff presidential election as an opportunity to restore stability and full democracy to the tiny, turbulent West African nation.

Voters are choosing between former military strongman Joao Bernardo Nino Vieira and ruling-party candidate Malam Bacai Sanha, who placed first in the first round.

Voters say they are looking forward to installing a new president, after being governed by a transitional government since a bloodless coup in 2003.

“In this country, we have a lot of problems,” explained one voter. ” And we want somebody who is capable, somebody who is going to take this country out of all of its trouble. We need a leadership. This country has a lot of problems, because we do not have a leadership for many years. We are still struggling.”
…
Macarai Baria, head of a civil society group monitoring the elections, says the election will help move Guinea-Bissau toward a more democratic process. “No matter who wins, we just want a president to be in office, so that we can move from this confusing situation to begin again to improve our reputation internationally,” she said.

Final results are not expected until early next week.

Freedom House has much more on the history of the election and overthrow of Yala, the transitional government headed by Sanha, and the general amount of freedom in the country. Right now, Guinea-Bissau is rated as “partially free.” For those not familiar with the history of democracy in this country, the account is pretty fascinating.

In the November 1999 presidential elections, the populist Yala of the Social Renewal Party (PRS) won a January 2000 second round runoff over Malam Bacai Sanha of the PAIGC. However, fighting broke out in 2000 between military supporters of Yala and those of Mane after Mane declared himself the head of the armed forces; Mane was subsequently killed. In legislative voting, also held in November 1999, the opposition PRS obtained 38 of the 102 seats, followed by the Resistance of Guinea with 29 and the PAIGC with 24. The 11 remaining seats went to five of the ten other parties that fielded candidates. In November 2002, Yala dissolved the National Assembly. He failed to promulgate a constitution approved in 2001, and Guinea-Bissau was governed by decree.

The general public, which had become increasingly frustrated by Yala’s erratic rule and the economy’s continual slide, applauded a military overthrow of President Yala in September 2003. Civil servants had not been paid for nearly a year, there was no constitution, strikes were rampant, and parliamentary elections had been postponed four times. By the time the military stepped in, a Transitional National Council (TNC), headed by General Verissimo Seabra, who led the coup, was overseeing a pledged return to elected government. Parliamentary elections were to be held in six months and presidential elections in one year. Henrique Rosa, a businessman who had previously led the national electoral commission, was named interim president. Rosa and Prime Minister Artur Sanha were appointed after the 56-member TNC held consultations with the country’s spectrum of political leaders. The TNC was serving as the country’s parliament; it includes 25 military officers, delegates from 24 political parties, and representatives of 8 civil society groups. After the coup, a blanket amnesty was granted to all those involved. Yala and his cabinet ministers were barred from standing in elections for five years. Yala was detained during the coup and released the next day. Although his overthrow was greeted with public enthusiasm, a smooth transition is not guaranteed, with divisions remaining in the military.

Luckily, Yala didn’t make the cut for the runoff polls and had to sit this one out. Now the race is down to the former military ruler Vieira and current ruling party candidate Sanha. AllAfrica.com has a great article detailing how even the two main parties are split between who to vote for, as though Yala has pledged his support to Vieira, his own party isn’t so sure about it.

The second round of Guinea-Bissau’s presidential election is heading towards an unpredictable finish on 24 July, with both the country’s main political parties split over which candidate to support.

Former military ruler Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira looks best placed to win on paper, having picked up the support of former president Kumba Yala, who took 25 percent of the vote in the first round of the election on 19 June.

But Yala’s Social Renovation Party (PRS) is split down the middle over whether to agree to support Vieira, who first came to power in a 1980 coup and ruled this small West African country for 19 years until he was forced to quit in 1999 as a result of civil war.

The PRS is the main opposition party in parliament and draws most of its support from Yala’s Balanta ethnic group, which accounts for 30 percent of Guinea-Bissau’s 1.3 million population.

But the Balantas have traditionally regarded Vieira as someone who persecuted them and many leading figures in the PRS have chosen to openly support his rival, Malam Bacai Sanha, instead.

Bacai Sanha, the official candidate of the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), came top of the poll in the first round of voting with 35 percent, but the PAIGC is also split by divided loyalties.

Many leading figures in the PAIGC, which won parliamentary elections last year, are backing Vieira, who won 29 percent in the first of the vote in the first round of the election. The former army general was a popular PAIGC guerrilla commander during the bush war against Portuguese colonial rule that led to independence in 1974. He used the party to rule the country during his long rein as military head of state.

Bacai Sanha, a former speaker of parliament who briefly served as interim president after Vieira’s overthrow in 1999, is stressing that he stands for peace and stability.

“If I win the elections, there will never again be bloodshed in Guinea-Bissau,” he told a rally in the northern town of Patche on Thursday.

These elections look to be a great leap forward in establishing a solid leadership in Guinea-Bissau, as long as a self-serving populist or strongman doesn’t get elected (though that doesn’t seem to be the case). However, Guinea-Bissau needs more than just a leader who can will the country in any direction he chooses. They need a constitution that gives them a system by which to shape their country so that they don’t have to chalk their future up to the chance of bad leadership. Hopefully, that’s what they’ll be getting this time around.