NGUEMA WINS SIXTH-TERM
…World's longest-serving president to continue 43-year-rule
MALABO - The world’s longest- serving president has won re-election in Equatorial Guinea to continue presiding over his authoritarian regime.
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 80, secured almost 95 percent of votes, officials announced six days after the vote.
Obiang has always been elected with more than 90 percent of the vote in polls that international observers have questioned.
“The results prove us right again,” Vice-President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the president’s son, said. “We continue to be a great party.”
President Obiang has a strong grip on the oil-rich central African nation, with family members in key
government roles.
The country of around 1.5 million people has had only two presidents since independence from Spain in 1968. Obiang ousted his uncle Francisco Macias Nguema in a coup in 1979.
Political opposition is barely tolerated and severely hampered by the lack of a free press, as all broadcast media is either owned outright by the government or controlled by its allies.
Meanwhile, the Democratic
Republic of Congo said it will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on December 20, 2023, kicking off a year of complex preparations in the vast Central African country, large parts of which are overrun by militia violence.
Announcing the date at a ceremony in Kinshasa on Saturday, the electoral body, CENI, outlined several challenges, including the logistics of transporting ballot materials thousands of kilometres, health concerns about Ebola and Covid-19, and unrest that has forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
But the government has pledged to stick to the timetable in the country of 80 million people.
Government spokesman Patrick Muyaya.
He said that the election will cost about $600 million, more than $450 million of which has already been budgeted.
Election struggles are common in Congo. The last presidential poll, Congo’s first democratic transition, was delayed by two years until it was finally held in December 2018. In that vote, President Felix Tshisekedi took over from his long-standing predecessor Joseph Kabila.
Candidates are expected to be announced in October next year, with a final list due in November. Tshisekedi is expected to run again and one likely challenger is Martin Fayulu, who claimed victory in the 2018 poll.
Presidents are limited to two terms under Congolese