Equatorial Guinea headed to the polls on Sunday with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo all but certain he would win a record-breaking sixth term in a West African country with almost no opposition.
Obiang, 80, has been in power for more than 43 years – the longest tenure of any living leader except for monarchs.
A few dozen voters were already lining up when the doors of a polling station set up at a school in Malabo’s Semu district swung open early this morning.
“The voting is going well. everything is normal All citizens must vote,” Norberto Ondo, a refrigerator repairman, told AFP.
“I expect this election to bring us prosperity,” added the 53-year-old after throwing his ballot in a box at Nuestra Senora de Bisila school.
Obiang’s re-election seems all but certain in one of the most authoritarian and closed countries in the world.
Andres Esono Ondo, 61, from the only tolerated opposition party in the country, is running against him.
The general secretary of the Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS) is running for the first time and is the only representative of the silenced opposition.
Ondo said he feared “fraud” in the election of president, senators and lawmakers.
The government has made its own allegations against the politician, accusing him in 2019 of plotting “a foreign-funded coup in Equatorial Guinea”.
The third candidate is Buenaventura Monsuy Asumu of the Social Democratic Coalition Party (PCSD), a historic ally of Obiang’s ruling party.
The ex-minister is running for the fourth time but has never done well in previous elections. The opposition described him as a “bogus candidate” with no chance.
– ‘Foiled Plot’ –
As in every election year, the security forces have stepped up arrests. State media justified the move as countering a “frustrated plot” by the opposition to launch attacks on embassies, petrol stations and ministerial apartments.
In September, after a week-long siege, security forces stormed the home of one of Obiang’s main opponents, Gabriel Nse Obiang Obono.
His home had also served as the offices of his banned Citizens for Innovation (CI) party.
The attack left five dead – four activists and a police officer, the government said.
Dozens were injured and more than 150 people arrested, including Obono.
Leading rights activist Joaquin Elo Ayeto told AFP the incident “discredited” the electoral process.
“The ruling party needs an ‘opposition’ to hold sham elections,” he said.
Allegations of fraud have plagued past polls.
In 2016, Obiang was re-elected with 93.7 percent of the vote.
His PDGE won 99 of the 100 seats in the lower house and all 70 seats in the senate.
In 2009, the President received more than 95 percent of the vote.
During this year’s election campaign, images of Obiang and his Equatorial Guinea Democratic Party (PDGE), the country’s only legal political movement until 1991, were scattered across Malabo.
The opposition members, most of whom live in exile, are not hoping for a breakthrough at the ballot box.
“Obiang’s elections were never free or democratic, but were marked by widespread and systematic… fraud,” they said in a joint statement.
Although everyone was required to vote, they “requested all citizens of Equatorial Guinea not to take part in any phase of the electoral process.”
The discovery of offshore oil made Equatorial Guinea the third richest country in Africa in terms of per capita income, but wealth is very unequally distributed.
According to the latest World Bank figures for 2006, four fifths of the 1.4 million inhabitants live below the poverty line.
The country has a long-standing international reputation for bribery, ranking 172nd out of 180 nations in Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index.
