Malam Bacai Sanhá

Malam Bacai Sanhá (2010)

Malam Bacai Sanhá (born May 5, 1947 in Darsalame , † January 9, 2012 in Paris , France ) was a Guinea-Bissau politician . From 1999 to 2000 and from 2009 until his death he was President of his country.

Life

Sanhá came from the Quinara region and was a long-time member of the PAIGC, which had long ruled as a unity party . He studied political science in the GDR .

After the country gained independence from Portugal in 1974, he was a member of the Politburo from 1975 to 1976 , governor of the Gabú region in the east of the country from 1986 to 1990 and trade union chairman from 1991 to 1992. He then belonged to the cabinet in several departments and became President of the People's Assembly in 1999 . When a civil war led to the overthrow of President João Bernardo Vieira , he was elected interim president on May 14, 1999 until new elections.

In the first ballot on November 28, 1999, Sanhá reached second place with 23.37% of the votes; in the second ballot on January 16, 2000, he lost 28% to the victorious Kumba Ialá . His term of office ended on February 17, 2000.

After Ialá was overthrown by a military coup on September 14, 2003 , new elections took place on June 19, 2005, in which Sanhá, as a candidate for the PAICG, was in first place in the first ballot with 35.45%. In the runoff election he was defeated by former President João Bernardo Vieira with 44%. The outcome of the election was questioned. To settle the dispute, he offered Vieira the collaboration in August 2005. Even after Vieira's inauguration on October 1, 2005, Sanhá insisted that the elections had not gone correctly, although this opinion was not shared by international election observers.

In the early March 2009 presidential elections, which were held on June 28, 2009 and in which Sanhá ran for the PAIGC, he won 39.6% of the votes cast because of the murder of Nino Vieira . He was ahead of the PRS candidate, Kumba Ialá, who achieved 29.4%. Thus on July 26th there was a runoff election between the two candidates, which Malam Bacai Sanhá won with 63.52% of the votes cast.

Malam died on January 9, 2012 in the French military hospital Val-de-Grâce near Paris. According to rumors, the 64-year-old, who was brought in before Christmas, had been in a coma for some time. Speculations suggest that Bacai-sanhá suffered from diabetes .
A Senegalese newspaper had already spread the rumor in December 2011 that the president of the neighboring country had died, but this information turned out to be false.

See also

• History of Guinea-Bissau

Web links

Commons : Malam Bacai Sanhá  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Election results in African Elections Database (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ National radio: Guinea-Bissau president dies
2. ↑ Guinea-Bissau: President Sanha is dead.