Guinea-Bissau’s National Electoral Commission announced on Tuesday 1 September that about 70 per cent of votes cast in the country’s constitutional referendum were in favour of the new text, on a turnout of close to 60 per cent. The ballot was held at the end of August, and the count began the same weekend.
The document reorganises where authority sits. Under it the president may appoint and dismiss the prime minister and the cabinet, create and abolish ministries, and dissolve parliament in defined circumstances. The legislature itself shrinks: the National People’s Assembly falls from 102 seats to 65, and the number of electoral constituencies from 29 to 12. Taken together these are not adjustments at the margin but a redrawing of the relationship between the presidency and the chamber — in a country whose post-independence history has been shaped, repeatedly, by exactly that relationship failing to hold.
The vote sits inside a transition. The military authorities that have governed Guinea-Bissau since November 2025 put the text to the country, and general elections — for the presidency and for the reduced parliament — are scheduled for the end of the year, intended to return the country to civilian rule. The main opposition party, the PAIGC, together with several civil society organisations, said it did not accept the process.
A smaller chamber elected from fewer constituencies changes the arithmetic of any future coalition, and it will be the December elections, rather than this week’s percentages, that show what the new arrangement does in practice.