Incumbent Umaro Sissoco Embalo faces surprisingly strong competition in Guinea-Bissau’s presidential election on Sunday, a contest unfolding against the backdrop of a booming cocaine trade and a deeply polarised political climate.

His main challenger is Fernando Dias, 47, of the Party for Social Renewal (PRS), who has drawn large crowds while promising to promote security and reconciliation and prevent soldiers in the coup-prone West African nation from interfering in politics.

Though there are 12 candidates in the running, the race comes down to ex-army general Embalo, 53, and Dias, and Dias has a strong chance of succeeding, said Tamilton Teixeira, a sociologist at the Catholic University of Bissau.

Whoever wins, Teixeira said, will have a huge task trying to turn the page on Guinea-Bissau's long history of political instability and failed efforts to improve basic services and diversify an economy hugely dependent on cashew production.

“A future president of Guinea-Bissau, if he wants to do things differently, he has to do the opposite of everything that has already been done," Teixeira said.

Provisional results are expected to be announced within 48 hours.

Dias has drawn support from former prime minister Domingos Simoes Pereira, who lost to Embalo in a close and contested runoff in 2019. Pereira was widely seen as Embalo's top challenger this year before being disqualified after authorities said he filed his papers late.

Pereira's absence makes this election the first without a candidate from the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which led the nationalist movement for independence from Portugal.

If neither Embalo nor Dias earns more than 50% of the vote, the other candidates could prove "important and decisive" in a runoff, Teixeira added.

In 2019, former President Jose Mario Vaz, who is also running this year, backed Embalo after losing in the first round, giving Embalo a boost in the runoff against Pereira.

PRESIDENT'S LEGITIMACY QUESTIONED

Embalo has faced challenges to his legitimacy all year. The opposition says his term officially expired in February, while the Supreme Court of Justice had previously said it would end in September.

In March a mission sent by the regional bloc ECOWAS to help reach a consensus on how to conduct elections left early after Embalo threatened to expel it.

To Embalo's critics, his dismissive response to questions about the end of his mandate is consistent with a broader disrespect for national institutions.

Guinea-Bissau has not had a sitting legislature since Embalo dissolved it in late 2023 after what his government described as a coup attempt - one of three it says has taken place during his tenure.

"If Umaro Sissoco Embalo is re-elected, the agenda of democratic regression initiated in 2020 with his rise to power as President of the Republic will be consolidated," political analyst Rui Jorge Semedo said.

Meanwhile, Guinea-Bissau's status as a crucial transit point for cocaine travelling from South America to Europe has, if anything, deepened on Embalo's watch.

"There is plenty of evidence that Guinea-Bissau is a drug hub, with a lot of Bissau-Guineans being arrested with cocaine in the subregion and abroad," said Vincent Foucher, senior research fellow at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France.

Nearly half of Guinea-Bissau's roughly two million people are registered to vote in Sunday's presidential and legislative elections.