Guinea on knife-edge as presidential poll looms
CONAKRY: Tensions were rising in Guinea on the eve of a presidential election, after clashes between supporters of incumbent leader Alpha Conde and his main rival left seven people dead, security sources and local authorities say.
“We have seen since yesterday a deterioration in the security situation,” UN special representative for West Africa Mohamed Ibn Chambas told a news conference on Friday, issuing a call for calm a day after deadly clashes in the capital Conakry and in the east.
In Conakry, two people were killed in confrontations between Mr Conde’s supporters and backers of opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo after Mr Conde rejected opposition calls for today’s vote — the second since Guinea’s first democratic election in 2010 — to be delayed over alleged irregularities in the voter registration process.
A further five people were killed on Thursday evening in the southeastern Banankoro district after their house was torched and dozens of people were injured by gunshots, Banankoro’s mayor said.
After a largely peaceful campaign, tensions rose sharply last week after Mr Diallo called for the poll to be delayed on the grounds that the electoral roll has been stacked in favour of Mr Conde, who is favoured to win a second term.
“We won’t take part in an electoral sham,” Mr Diallo said at his last campaign rally.
“Otherwise we shan’t accept the results and I shall mobilise the population with all the other [opposition] candidates to reject them,” he warned, accusing the Independent National Electoral Commission of being “incompetent and biased”.
Six of Mr Conde’s seven opponents, who include three former prime ministers, have called for the vote to be postponed, citing the unreliability of the electoral lists and problems with distributing electoral cards.
But Mr Conde told journalists that the commission was “perfectly entitled to organise the election on October 11”.
In Conakry on Friday, traffic was disrupted on the motorway leading to the airport as Mr Conde’s supporters stopped cars and pedestrians suspected of backing the opposition.