The man tipped to win Guinea-Bissau's presidential election was in army custody on Friday after troops seized control of the capital of the coup-prone west African country. Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior - the favourite in a second-round run-off ballot set for April 29 - was arrested during the apparent coup late Thursday, as well as interim president Raimundo Pereira.
As heavily armed soldiers patrolled the capital Bissau, a "military command" said it was not interested in power but acted because of an alleged "secret deal" between Guinea-Bissau and Angola, which has 200 troops in the country ostensibly to help reform the military.
Violence had been feared for days in the former Portuguese colony, which has seen half a dozen coups or attempted coups since 1980 and has become a hub for drug-running between South America and Europe. The opposition - led by second-placed Kumba Yala, a former president who claims the March 18 first round of the election was rigged - has called for a boycott of the run-off, originally set for April 22 but postponed on Wednesday to April 29.
"Whoever dares to campaign will be responsible for what happens," Yala warned at a news conference with another four main opposition candidates on Thursday, denouncing what he called "massive fraud." Then in the evening, soldiers armed with rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles seized the ruling party headquarters and the state radio station as gunfire resounded and ambulance sirens wailed in Bissau, which was plunged into darkness as electricity was cut off.
A rocket strike gutted the living room of Gomes' residence, and his wife Salome told AFP that soldiers whisked the prime minister away in a pickup truck. A military source said those arrested were taken to army headquarters at Amura, near the coast of the impoverished country of 1.6 million people.
But the junta's leadership as well as its intentions remained unclear by Friday afternoon following the coup, which claimed no known casualties. "The military command has no ambition for power," it said in a statement, alleging instead that it acted because the government was bent on "eliminating the army with a foreign military force."
The Angolan troop presence has been a bone of contention between the Guinea-Bissau government and army amid suspicions that it was being secretly built up. However Angolan Foreign Minister Georges Chicoty said during a visit to Bissau on Monday that the force would be withdrawn soon. "The problem in this affair is that the putschists are revealing neither their faces nor their ambitions, at least for the time being," a political commentator told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The apparent coup sparked widespread condemnation. The US embassy in neighbouring Senegal called for a return to civilian rule, saying: "It is regrettable that elements of the Bissau-Guinean military have chosen to derail the democratic process in Guinea-Bissau."
The African Union's commission chief Jean Ping condemned what he called "outrageous acts which undermine the efforts to stabilise the situation in Guinea-Bissau and tarnish the image of the country and Africa." West African regional group ECOWAS, which has been grappling with a putsch and rebellion in nearby Mali, "rigorously condemned" the coup bid, while former colonial power Portugal appealed "for a halt to the violence and respect for the law".
Soldiers patrolled the streets Friday, clustering outside the finance and justice ministries as well as the headquarters of the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC). Gomes garnered 49 percent of the votes in the first round against Yala's 23 percent. The election campaign for the second round was supposed to start Friday and end April 27. The first round was also tainted by the assassination of former military intelligence chief Colonel Samba Diallo, who had been accused of involvement in a 2009 bombing that killed the country's then army chief and prompted the murder of president Joao Bernardo Vieira in a revenge attack.
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