|
|||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
Presidential elections were held in Guinea-Bissau on 28 June 2009 following the assassination of President João Bernardo Vieira on 2 March 2009. As no candidate won a majority in the first round, a second round was held on 26 July 2009 between the two leading candidates, Malam Bacai Sanhá of the governing African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and opposition leader Kumba Ialá. Sanhá won with a substantial majority in the second round, according to official results.
At Vieira's funeral on 10 March 2009, interim President Raimundo Pereira said that meeting the 60-day deadline for holding a new election was "one of our greatest challenges." Cape Verde's Prime Minister, Jose Maria Neves, stated on 27 March 2009 that it was logistically and economically impossible for Guinea-Bissau to hold the election on time, and that it should aim to hold them in June or November (before or after the rain season). Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior announced on 31 March that the election would be held on 28 June, with the agreement of "all the parties, the government, the interim president and political classes".
Foreign donors paid the entire cost of the election, about 5.1 million euros.
In April 2009, the Social Renewal Party (PRS), Guinea-Bissau's main opposition party, designated its President, Kumba Ialá (who was previously President of Guinea-Bissau from 2000 to 2003), as its candidate for the presidential election. Some in the party who opposed Ialá's "system of monopoly" instead proposed the candidacy of Baltizar Lopes Fernandes, but they were unsuccessful.