The Head of State brigs a sixth term, after more than 43 years at the head of the country which he directs with an iron fist.
Le Monde With AFP
Two candidates will face President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, a sixth mandate after more than 43 years at the head of this small country in central African country on November 20 in Equatorial Guinea at the head of this small. announced state television on Saturday October 15.
re -elected in 2016 with more than 93.7 % of the vote, Mr. Obiang holds at 80 years the world record for longevity in power for a living head of state, excluding monarchies, and equatorial Guinea, rich in his hydrocarbons , is one of the most closed and authoritarian states in the world.
The National Electoral Commission (CEN) closed on Friday the period of applications for the presidential, legislative, senatorial and municipal elections, planned on the same day, and officially proclaimed the candidates selected, according to state television, TVGE.
In addition to Mr. Obiang for his all-powerful Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE), a single party until 1991 in this former Spanish colony, Andrès Esono Ondo will be the candidate for convergence for social democracy (CPDS), The only opposition party who is not prohibited, and Buenaventura Monsuy Asumu that of the Party of the Democratic Social Coalition (PCSD), hitherto allied with the PDGE in legislative and municipal elections. The PDGE holds 99 of the 100 seats in the outgoing National Assembly and all of the 55 Senate seats.
For several weeks, the police have been carrying out a ruthless campaign of arrests and imprisonment of opponents on the grounds, according to the regime, that they have foiled a “plot” of the opposition (including the Managers live mainly in exile) which provided “attacks” against “petrol stations, Western embassies and homes of ministers”.
m. Esono Ondo presents himself for the first time, Mr. Monsuy Asumu for the third. He had been a candidate- a “storage” of the Head of State according to the opposition- in 2002, 2009 and 2016, raising only crumbs.
After the violent arrest of more than 150 activists of the party prohibited citizens for innovation (CI), including his leader Gabriel nse Obiang Obono, human rights activists like Anacleto Micha Nlang Nlang, and a rapper Criticism of power and very popular, Leoncio Prisco Eko Mba, alias adjoguening, the network of human rights defenders in Central Africa (Redhac), based in Cameroon, denounced in a press release “a wave of repression intended to silence the population ( …) As the elections approach “.