Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo formed a new government on Wednesday evening and assigned the fight against corruption to the head of this new team, against a backdrop of crisis marked by the dissolution of the Assembly and clashes which he described as an attempted putsch.
“The relentless fight against corruption must be the backdrop (of your team’s tasks). No one has the right to take the public good for himself”, declared Mr. Embalo at the investiture of the new head of government, Rui Duarte Barros, on Wednesday.
“If tomorrow we discover suspicions of corruption about you, you too will go (answer) to justice. All institutions must be audited, starting with the accounts of the presidency (of the Republic). No one should be above the law”, he added in Guinea-Bissau’s Portuguese Creole, one of the most widely spoken languages in this former Portuguese colony.
Mr Embalo then named a new 33-member government comprising 24 ministers and nine secretaries of state, drawn from his own camp and the opposition PAI-Terra Ranka coalition, which remains the majority in the new government team.
The new ministers and secretaries of state were sworn in on Thursday, according to an official programme. The new Prime Minister, Rui Duarte Barros, was head of a transitional government in the early 2000s, after serving as Finance Minister in the late 90s.