Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea asks for election observers

afrol News, 17 September - The President of the Equatoguinean parliament, Salomón Nguema Owono, has sent an official notice to Brussels and Geneva, expressing the desire of Equatorial Guinea to receive international election observers before the general elections that are to be carried out in the country next year. 

The communiqué was mad public just one day before Mr Owono is set to travel to Europe. According to the official statement, "the President of the Equatoguinean Parliament has left Malabo Monday on his way to Brussels and Geneva, carrying two messages from President Teodoro Obiang Nguema directed at the European Union (EU) and to the Commission of Human rights of the United Nations."

- In Brussels, Salomón Nguema Owono will give a message from President Obiang applying for the sending of observers from the EU for the Guinean presidential elections of 2003 to the president of the European Parliament, the statement says.

In his capacity as President of the National Human rights Commission, the President of the Equatoguinean Parliament later was to head on to Geneva to meat with the President of the United Nations High Commission of Human Rights. There, Mr Owono was to give a message from President Obiang concerning "the progresses made in the scope of the human rights" in the Spanish ex-colony in the Gulf of Guinea.

The French news agency AFP further confirms the nomination of two more candidates to the Equatoguinean presidency by their respective political groupings. In both cases, however, according to the Spanish Association of Solidarity with Equatorial Guinea (ASODEGUE), these were persons close to the existing regime. 

One nominee is Jeremías Ondo, Deputy Minister of Transports and Communication and leader of the parliamentary organisation UP-fraction. The other is Tomas Mecheba Fernández, leader of the Equatoguinean Socialist Party, who during the last years has held key posts within the Ministry of Health.

Equatorial Guinea has yet to experience free and fair elections since its independence in 1968. The small dictatorship is rather known to have one of the most repressive regimes on the continent. Basic human rights and a political opposition are unheard of.

Sources: Based on La ASODEGUE, press reports and afrol archives 

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