Guinea-Bissau's president on Monday officially postponed legislative elections scheduled for November 24, indefinitely prolonging the small West African country's political limbo.
Umaro Sissoco Embalo had previously set the November 24 date after dissolving parliament in December 2023 in response to armed clashes three days earlier, which he described as an attempted coup.
But expectations had risen since last week that the vote would have to be postponed, a deferral symptomatic of the instability plaguing the Portuguese-speaking nation.
On November 1, the minister for territorial administration, Aristides Ocante da Silva, warned that the vote was unlikely to go ahead in the face of logistical difficulties and a lack of money.
Cancels July decree
Embalo then said on Saturday that he would formalise the elections' postponement this week.
On Monday, he cancelled the decree of July 2024 that set this month's vote, his political adviser Fernando Delfim da Silva told journalists at the presidential palace in Bissau.
But Embalo has yet to fix a new date, and Silva said the timeline would be set in a future decree.
The uncertainty surrounding the legisl ative elections is compounded by similar doubts over the election to replace Embalo as head of state.
Series of coups
A coalition formed around the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), long opposed to the president, had held an absolute majority in parliament since elections in June 2023.
That forced Embalo into a tense "cohabitation", with tensions between the head of state and the PAIGC's leader complicating the path to new elections.
Guinea-Bissau has also struggled to find the money to fund the vote.
Since its independence from Portugal, the country has been hit with a series of coups.
Constitutional order
Though Guinea-Bissau has paved a path towards a return to constitutional order over the past decade, it continues to suffer from political turmoil.
That persisted after Embalo was elected president in December 2019 for a five-year term, while the terms of his mandate and the date of the next presidential election remain controversial.
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