Following a foiled coup attempt, Guinea-Bissau President dissolves parliament.

In a Monday presidential proclamation, President Umaro Sissoco Embalo of Guinea-Bissau disbanded the country’s parliament, citing the gunfight last week, which the authorities said was an unsuccessful coup attempt.

The next parliamentary election date will be determined in due course in compliance with the Constitution’s requirements. “This Presidential Decree is effective immediately,” it said.

According to the Associated Press, the order alluded to the “seriousness” of the gunfight that broke out in Bissau’s capital between the Presidential Palace Battalion and the National Guard when the former attempted to detain two ministers who had been freed from detention while they were being looked into for possible corruption.

The dominant party in the parliament appoints members of the Cabinet, constraining the president’s authority under Guinea-Bissau’s semi-presidential government. The National Guard, which reports to the Ministry of Interior, is therefore primarily under the authority of the opposition-dominated parliament.

More than a year after the president dissolved the legislature, tensions have persisted between Embalo and a coalition of opposition parties that took the majority in June in Guinea-Bissau’s parliament.