# Guinea-Bissau election commission says armed men destroyed tally sheets after coup
*Event date: 2025-12-02*
Guinea-Bissau’s electoral commission says it cannot publish the results of last month’s election after armed men destroyed most of the vote count during the coup.
The National Electoral Commission, or CNE, said the tally sheets were destroyed except for those from Bissau, leaving the body unable to conclude the electoral process. Deputy executive secretary Idrissa Djalo told reporters that armed men wearing balaclavas burst into the tabulation room on the morning before the coup, seized phones and computers and destroyed the election paperwork.
The scale of the destruction was extensive. Djalo said the men arrested the CNE president and five Supreme Court judges who were present, and threatened 45 agents. He also said the main server was destroyed and that tally sheets from Oio and Cacheu were intercepted and confiscated while being transferred. That leaves only a partial record from the capital, which is not enough to certify a national result.
The commission’s decision follows a meeting on Monday with ECOWAS representatives, who asked whether the results could still be released. The answer, according to Djalo, was no. That means the electoral process has been broken not by a count dispute alone, but by the physical destruction of the materials needed to complete the count at all.
The coup itself came a day before provisional results were due to be announced and deposed President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, who had been seeking re-election. The timing makes the election disruption even more consequential because the vote had effectively reached its final phase before the military takeover intervened.
The report also notes that CNE president Mpabi Cabi, who was detained for five days, made his first public appearance alongside Djalo. That detail suggests the commission is trying to reassert some institutional continuity even though its ability to act has been severely constrained.
Guinea-Bissau has long been vulnerable to military intervention. Since independence from Portugal in 1974, it has experienced four coups and numerous attempted takeovers. That history makes the latest destruction of tally sheets part of a longer pattern of instability rather than an isolated breakdown.
The political motives behind the coup remain unclear. The report says there has been speculation that it was carried out with the blessing of Embalo, who has since taken refuge in the Republic of Congo. However, that remains speculation in the supplied evidence and cannot be treated as fact.
What can be verified is that the electoral commission no longer has the material basis to release a full result. Without the destroyed tally sheets, the server and the missing records, the vote cannot be certified in the normal way. The consequences are both electoral and constitutional, since the country now lacks a clear pathway from ballot to result.
The destruction of the election materials also deepens uncertainty over what the coup was meant to achieve. Was it simply to remove the president, to erase the vote, or to preserve leverage over the eventual outcome? The evidence does not answer that question. What it does show is that the commission has been stripped of the tools it needs to finish its job.
For Guinea-Bissau, that is a severe institutional failure. The body responsible for counting the vote has now publicly said it cannot do so. That alone is enough to show how completely the coup disrupted the election.
The result is a country left waiting, with no certified outcome and a shattered electoral archive.
