Guinea-Bissau's transitional government says the 6 December elections cannot be held

Guinea-Bissau's transitional prime minister, Ilídio Vieira Té, said on Thursday that the country does not have the conditions to hold the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 6 December. He spoke after a meeting with transitional president General Horta N'Tam. No new date was announced.

Vieira Té said that during the preparatory phase the terms of office of the governing bodies of many political parties had expired and must be renewed. The statutory deadline for submitting candidacies expired on 6 October. He said it was therefore impossible to comply with the prescribed procedures, and that the government would await a statement from the head of state. The National Electoral Commission has also said the timetable is technically impossible. Commission spokesperson Felisberta Moura Vaz told Deutsche Welle that missed deadlines made the 6 December date unworkable. A presidential decree would be needed to cancel the existing date and set another.

The elections were meant to end a transition that began when the military seized power on 26 November 2025, days after a presidential and legislative vote had been held but before the results were declared. In January, N'Tam scheduled the new polls for 6 December and said the conditions for a return to constitutional order had been established. Thursday's statement from the prime minister withdraws that claim without replacing it with a revised calendar.

Senegal's foreign ministry called on the military authorities to open a dialogue with political parties and civil society in order to agree the conditions for a return to elected government. Regional bodies have treated the November takeover as a coup and have pressed for a short transition. The missed candidacy deadline gives the transitional authorities a procedural reason to delay. It also leaves parties that have not renewed their internal leadership unable to field candidates even if a new date is set quickly.

Guinea-Bissau has a long record of military interventions in politics. The 2025 takeover interrupted a vote whose results were never published. The transitional government has argued that the institutions needed for a credible election were not in place in November and that the December date would allow them to be built. The prime minister's statement on Thursday says that work is not finished and that the legal deadlines have already passed.

The practical consequence is that the country will enter 2027 still under military-led transitional rule unless a new decree and a compressed timetable can be agreed in the next few weeks. No such decree has been issued. The electoral commission has said the existing timetable cannot be met. Parties that needed to renew their leadership before they could nominate candidates have not all done so. The combination leaves the 6 December date without a credible path, and leaves the length of the transition open.