CPLP focuses again on Guinea-Bissau with a dialogue mission

O guinean opposition leader Domingos Simões Pereira said today that the trip of a CPLP mission to Guinea-Bissau represents that the international community has put the situation of the country back on its agenda.

“ I think we are all dealing with a new leaf of the international community in relation to the situation in Guinea. Putting it another way, there was a time when it seemed that the international community had abandoned the issue of Guinea and now back on its agenda. It is always good, because it is never too late to try any positive influence,” said the leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

Domingos Simões Pereira spoke to the agency Lusa on the side of the colloquium entitled “The Influence of the Thought of Amílcar Cabral: from the Fights for Independence to Our Days”, which took place today in the Seixal district of Setúbal.

The transition Prime Minister of Guinea-Bissau announced the arrival of a mission of the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP), scheduled for November 3-5, reported on Tuesday the Guinean media.

Asked about what you expect from this mission, Domingos Simões Pereira said that “you cannot expect a mission however important it is” to take a magic wand and solve the problem.

“I hope, above all, that it will take a clear message that if the current authorities want, in fact, to establish a clear differentiation between the period of [former President Umaro] Sissoco and post-Sissocism, because even those who served the Sissoco regime seem to want to have a different attitude today. They cannot do so selectively, choose what should be left of the period of the Sissoco and preserve what favors them ", stressed.

Domingos Simões Pereira argues that “what concerns all Guineans is that there is a genuine intention, through dialogue, through understanding, to return to constitutional normality”.

“There is no constitutional normality other than that resulting from the free choice of the Guinean people,” he said, stressing that the people must make the decisions of those who have legitimacy to represent them.

Guinea-Bissau has been suspended from participating in the activities of the CPLP since December 2025, following the military coup of 26 November that year, which interrupted the electoral process. The decision of the CPLP provides that the suspension shall apply until the constitutional order is resumed.

New elections were scheduled for 6 December this year, but the conditions for voting were not met by the beginning of October.

The previous presidential and early legislative elections had taken place on 23 November 2025, but the process was interrupted by the military coup on 26 November before the announcement of the results.

Domingos Simões Pereira has been in Lisbon since 24 July, after leaving the prison in Guinea-Bissau, where he was in protective custody.

The former Guinean Prime Minister and elected president of parliament had been serving preventive detention since July 10, in a process in which he is accused by military justice of participating in an alleged coup attempt in October 2025 and was authorized by the judge of Criminal Instruction Mamadú Embaló to travel to Portugal.

Today in statements to the agency Lusa assured that he left Bissau as a free man and that the day after he was in Lisbon there was a ruling from the Supreme Court, through a judgment, which made it clear that there is no case against him.

“ In all the appearances I made in the courts that called me while I was in Bissau, all the hearings began by making it clear that these entities had neither competence nor authority to judge me. Not only because, as a civil citizen, I never understood the fact that he was summoned to a military court, because he was a Member of a nation in office, but above all because he was the president of the People’s National Assembly, a body of sovereignty for which there is specific legislation on the conditions of the existence of some judicial process,” he said.

The leader of the Guinean opposition stressed that the Guinean people know who he is and assured them that he is not associated with any practice that could set up any kind of crime.

“It is this awareness that makes me absolutely at ease,” he said.