Guinea-Bissau has approved a new constitution in a referendum, provisional results showed on Tuesday, expanding presidential powers and reshaping electoral rules ahead of a presidential election scheduled for December.
The West African country, led by military officers who seized power in a coup last November, voted on Sunday on reforms allowing the president to appoint and dismiss the prime minister and cabinet, create or abolish ministries and dissolve parliament in the event of a grave political crisis.
Under the current constitution, Guinea-Bissau’s legislature names a prime minister who appoints a cabinet.
The result gives the military government backing to reshape Guinea-Bissau’s political system before the presidential election, but the main opposition party boycotted the vote.
The new constitution was approved by 70% of voters in favour and 30% opposed, according to the provisional results announced by the National Electoral Commission. It also said some 544,060 people had voted, almost 60% of registered voters.
Polling stations in the capital Bissau were largely empty on Sunday, a Reuters witness said, while some residents told local media they had not known the referendum was being held or did not understand its purpose.
Guinea-Bissau’s main opposition PAIGC party urged its supporters to boycott the referendum, saying the process lacked adequate political and institutional safeguards.
PAIGC leader Domingos Simoes Pereira said in a video message that the backers of the referendum sought to “kill our freedom and bury our democracy.”
A spokesperson for the military government could not be reached for comment.
The constitution will cut the size of parliament to 65 seats from 102 and reduce the number of electoral constituencies to 12 from 29.
It further requires presidential candidates to have lived continuously in Guinea-Bissau for the preceding five years.
The coup last year was the ninth in West and Central Africa over five years and part of a cycle of instability in Guinea-Bissau. The country is widely known as a cocaine trafficking hub and has a long history of military interventions.
