Guinea-Bissau's junta wins referendum expanding presidential powers

Guinea-Bissau's ruling military junta secured a sweeping mandate to concentrate power in the presidency after the West African nation's National Electoral Commission announced Tuesday that voters had approved a new constitution by a roughly 70 percent margin. The referendum, held Sunday under a transitional government that seized power in a coup nine months ago, replaces the country's semi-presidential system with one that gives the head of state authority to appoint and dismiss the prime minister, dissolve parliament and shrink the size of the legislature — all before a general election scheduled for December 6 that the Economic Community of West African States has been told will restore civilian rule.

The count

Electoral officials said roughly 70 percent of ballots cast favored the new charter, with turnout put at just over 60 percent of registered voters, according to figures the commission read out at a nationally broadcast news conference. Support was heaviest in the country's interior: the Gabu and Bafata regions each returned "yes" majorities above 85 percent, and most other provinces topped 70 percent approval. The capital, Bissau, was the lone exception, rejecting the constitution by a narrow majority — a split that underscores how the changes landed differently in rural strongholds loyal to the transitional authorities than in the more politically organized capital, where opposition parties and civil society groups are concentrated.

The electoral commission's executive secretary told reporters the vote had passed "without any incidents that would call into question the credibility" of the process, and the commission's chairperson credited poll workers with demonstrating transparency. No legal challenges to the outcome had been filed as of Tuesday, and final certification now rests with the Supreme Court.

A coup, a charter and a vote

Guinea-Bissau's military seized power on November 26, 2025 — the country's fifth coup or attempted coup since independence in 1974 — a day after a disputed presidential election in which both leading candidates claimed victory. General Horta N'Tam, who now heads the transitional government, dissolved state institutions and installed a one-year transitional charter the following month. The National Transitional Council, appointed by the junta, approved amendments to that charter in January, and the military announced in July that the constitutional referendum would go forward on August 30, ahead of December's general election.

The new constitution does more than reallocate presidential authority. It cuts the number of parliamentary seats from 102 to 65 and reduces electoral constituencies from 29 to 12, while imposing a roughly $90,000 candidacy deposit and a five-year residency requirement on anyone seeking the presidency — thresholds critics say are designed to narrow the field of eligible challengers. The document also creates a new Constitutional Court and formally ends the power-sharing arrangement between the president and prime minister that Guinea-Bissau adopted in 1993, in part to prevent the kind of one-man rule that marked the 19-year rule of former president João Bernardo Vieira.

Boycott, a jailed opposition leader and a disputed process

The main opposition party, the PAIGC, boycotted the referendum, arguing the military-drafted text would weaken parliament, political parties and the courts relative to the presidency. Civil society groups and Guinea-Bissau's Human Rights League said the "no" campaign faced restrictions on rallies and media access and that the draft was written without consulting political parties or the public. Domingos Simões Pereira, the PAIGC leader and a former prime minister, has been jailed since July on economic-crimes charges and an accusation — which he denies — of involvement in an alleged coup attempt last October; he had briefly been under house arrest earlier this year. A pro-democracy activist who organized protests against the junta in December, Vigário Luís Balanta, was found dead in April, a death that further chilled open opposition to the transition.

General N'Tam has framed the overhaul as a stabilizing measure rather than a permanent power grab, and he is barred from running in December's election under the terms of the transitional charter.

"What we want after this referendum is to allow whoever wins the elections to see out their mandate without hindrance," General Horta N'Tam told voters ahead of the ballot.

A muted international response

Guinea-Bissau was suspended from ECOWAS, the African Union and the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries after last year's coup, and the bloc has treaded carefully around the referendum itself. At its summit of heads of state in Freetown in July, the bloc pressed the junta to "unconditionally release all detained political figures," including Pereira, saying doing so would "bolster the credibility of the transition process," but it stopped short of demanding the referendum be postponed or restructured. Britain, addressing the Security Council after the coup, said it would urge a swift return to constitutional order, the publication of official election results and the release of political prisoners. The office of the United Nations secretary-general likewise condemned the takeover when it occurred, though neither body has yet issued a formal assessment of Tuesday's results.

Analysts at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies have noted that the timing sits uneasily with ECOWAS's own protocol discouraging constitutional changes within six months of a scheduled election, a tension regional diplomats have so far avoided addressing directly. The West African bloc has grappled with a wave of military takeovers since 2020 and has struggled to enforce consistent consequences on juntas that promise, as Guinea-Bissau's has, an eventual return to the ballot box.

What comes next

Attention now turns to the December 6 general election, which the junta has cast as the culmination of the transition. The Supreme Court is expected to certify the referendum's final results in the coming days, formally putting the new constitution into force before campaigning begins. Whether Pereira and other opposition figures remain jailed through that vote, and whether the tighter candidacy rules narrow the field enough to favor a junta-aligned successor, are likely to shape how credible outside observers judge the eventual election. For now, the referendum hands General N'Tam's transitional government the strongest legal claim yet that its post-coup order rests on a popular mandate — even as the boycott and the capital's rejection of the changes leave that mandate contested at its center.