On November 26, 2025, Guinea-Bissau plunged into a new political crisis when a group of officers identifying themselves as the "High Military Command for the Restoration of Order" announced they had seized control of the country. This military intervention, which led to the arrest of President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, raises questions about the very nature of this event: are we witnessing a classic coup d'état or a political manipulation of unprecedented sophistication?

It is first necessary to place these events within the long history of instability in Guinea-Bissau. Guinea-Bissau has experienced four coups d'état and a plethora of attempted coups since its independence in 1974. This pathological recurrence reveals the failure of democratic institutionalization and the persistence of endemic political militarism.

The 2019 election had already triggered a protracted post-election crisis, demonstrating the fragility of the democratic consensus. At the end of October 2025, the military announced it had thwarted an "attempt to subvert the constitutional order" with the arrest of several high-ranking officers. This sequence of events suggests either genuine military instability or a strategy to create a climate of permanent threat justifying exceptional measures.

At the regional level, this crisis is part of an alarming continuum of instability in West Africa. This region has experienced a cascade of coups d'état since 2020 (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea-Conakry). This contagion of coups reveals a systemic crisis of democratic governance in West Africa, which regional institutions like ECOWAS are struggling to contain.

A telling timing

What is immediately striking about this political and military sequence is its suspicious timing . The coup d'état occurred on the eve of the announcement of the results of the presidential and legislative elections held on Sunday, November 23. This synchronicity is not a coincidence: it reveals the manipulation of the electoral process as a trigger or pretext for military action.

The coup leaders announced two major measures: the suspension of the ongoing electoral process - which implies the cancellation of the presidential and legislative election results - and the suspension of programs in the media.

The narrative developed relies on a relatively sophisticated security argument. They invoke the need to "guarantee national security" following the discovery by intelligence services of a "plan to destabilize the country with the involvement of national drug lords" and the introduction of weapons to change the constitutional order.

However, this security rhetoric, however legitimate it may seem in a country genuinely plagued by drug trafficking, is too opportune not to arouse skepticism. The use of the threat of a narco-state as justification for military intervention falls within a classic repertoire of post-facto legitimization of coups d'état.

The disturbing hypothesis of a "simulated coup"

This theory of a "self-coup" is not without empirical basis. Several elements support it:

First, the presidential communication itself. The fact that Embaló was able to directly contact international media to announce his own overthrow is, to say the least, unusual in the phenomenology of coups d'état.

Next, the chief of the general staff of the armed forces and his deputy are among those arrested, suggesting that the traditional military hierarchy has been bypassed, perhaps by elements close to the president.

Finally, the electoral context is important. While the official results were expected on November 27, Umaro Sissoco Embaló and his rival Fernando Dias da Costa both claimed victory as early as Tuesday. This dual claim foreshadows a challenge to the results. Consequently, a "providential" coup d'état could suspend a potentially unfavorable electoral process.

Towards a new type of postmodern coup?

We are probably facing a hybrid and cynical form of institutional manipulation: a coup bearing the mark of presidential orchestration aimed at suspending an electoral process whose outcome would be unfavorable, while maintaining control of the country under the pretext of restoring order.

This hypothesis of a "simulated coup" illustrates the increasing sophistication of authoritarian strategies, which borrow the forms of the classic military pronunciamiento while serving the objective of maintaining an elected president in power. Guinea-Bissau thus becomes the laboratory for a new generation of postmodern coups, where the boundary between legality and illegality, between civilian and military power, becomes deliberately blurred.

What are the prospects for Guinea-Bissau?

The immediate future will depend on the ability of the "international community" and internal democratic forces to expose this "manipulation" and demand the transparent publication of the election results. The National Electoral Commission, attacked by unidentified armed men on the day of the coup, is at the heart of this crucial issue.

Without a coordinated response, Guinea-Bissau will sink further into the vicious cycle of chronic instability that has plagued it for half a century. The already fragile democracy of Guinea-Bissau risks succumbing definitively to this new form of disguised authoritarianism, where the military becomes the instrument of a power grab by the very people who should be relinquishing it democratically.

The case of Guinea-Bissau reveals that threats to democracy do not always take the form of tanks in the streets and generals in fatigues. Sometimes, they cloak themselves in the garb of legality and order to better subvert institutions. This is perhaps the most disturbing lesson of this crisis: the evolution of techniques for seizing power in contemporary Africa.

Amadou Moctar Ann, Lecturer-Researcher at BEM and Dakar Sciences Po, Researcher at the Doctoral School of Legal, Political, Economic and Management Sciences at Cheikh Anta Diop University