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Guinea junta chief General Mamady Doumbouya looks set to consolidate his grip on power in Sunday’s presidential polls, with all the prominent opposition leaders barred, four years after seizing control and setting about silencing dissent in the west African country.
By running, the strongman is reneging on his initial pledge not to stand for office and to hand the country back to civilian rule, a promise he had made by the end of 2024.
Guinea’s opposition is calling for a boycott of the vote, which follows a tenure marked by repression, imprisonment, disappearances and kidnappings of vocal opponents.
Under Doumbouya, Guinea effectively “reverted to what it has essentially known since independence in 1958: authoritarian regimes, whether civilian or military”, Gilles Yabi, founder of the West African think tank Wathi, told AFP.
Coups and violence have long blighted the nation. However, it experienced a period of democratic transition with the November 2010 election of longtime opposition mainstay Alpha Conde, the country’s first freely elected president, whom Doumbouya overthrew in September 2021.
A total of 6.8 million people are eligible to vote on Sunday between 7:00 am and 6:00 pm (local and GMT), choosing between nine candidates, including 41-year-old Doumbouya, who is running as an independent.
His election rivals are relative unknowns since all the leading opposition figures were excluded.
“The electoral context does not allow for a free choice among voters,” given the lack of the most important political figures, Yabi said. The point of the election, he added, is to consolidate Doumbouya’s power.
In September, Guinean voters approved a new constitution, replacing the junta’s governing “transitional charter”, which had prohibited its members from running for office.
The new document not only allows Doumbouya to run but also lengthens presidential terms from five to seven years, renewable once.
Unlike its Sahelian neighbours, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which are also under military rule following coups, Guinea has maintained good relations with its former colonial master, France, and other international partners.
Omar Alieu Touray, commission president of West African regional bloc ECOWAS, recently said Guinea’s polls mark “significant progress” in its “transition process”.
However, opposition leader and former Guinean prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo has condemned the vote as “an electoral charade whose sole objective is to give a semblance of legitimacy and legality”.
The new constitution requires candidates to have a primary residence in Guinea, effectively excluding Diallo, who lives in exile in Dakar and Abidjan.
By setting a maximum age limit of 80, it also excludes two other opposition figures, former president Conde and ex-prime minister Sidya Toure, both of whom live in exile.
Meanwhile, the junta suspended several opposition parties at the end of August for three months and extended the ban against Diallo’s party again this month. Numerous media outlets have also been suspended, and demonstrations have been repressed after being banned since 2022.
The election marks the first time since 2006 that the vote is being organised by the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation (MATD), whose head is appointed by Doumbouya, rather than an independent electoral body, Fofana said.
In Conakry, posters of Doumbouya are everywhere. The campaign, which began on November 28 and concludes at the end of Friday, has so far proceeded without any major incident.
In a video posted on social media, Doumbouya touted his infrastructure achievements, promised to fight corruption and expressed his ambition to “make Guinea an emerging country”. Among his successes is the start of operations at Simandou in November. This iron ore mining project is one of the largest in the world and is expected to generate significant revenue for the country.
