Equatorial Guinea
Upcoming Equatoguinean poll alienates opposition

afrol News, 11 November - Equatorial Guinea is preparing for anticipated general elections on 15 December and the Ministry of the Interior has named a National Electoral Council. Preparations go ahead amidst opposition protests that even the poll date is unconstitutional. Nobody expects a democratic organisation of the poll.

According to information made public on Saturday from official sources in Malabo, the Equatoguinean Ministry of the Interior has established, by decree, a National Electoral Council to oversee the upcoming elections. The Council is to be presided over by the proper Interior Minister, Clemente Engonga Nguema and will have a total of 13 members. These are to be named by the Presidency and the Supreme Court. The opposition will not be included in the establishment.

The establishment of the Council confirms earlier speculations that government unilaterally may decide to advance the poll. The 15 December is now confirmed as the date of presidential elections. The promulgation of the candidates, in the same way, will be due by 19 November, the same date set to mark the official beginning of the electoral campaigns.

The political opposition in the small Central African dictatorship that has never experienced free and fair elections since independence in 1968 is already protesting the organisation of the elections. According to opposition statements, even the date of the poll is unconstitutional. By the country's electoral laws, the presidential elections could not be arranged before 15 February 2003. Announcing the poll date just a little more than a month before the elections was part a strategy to thwart opposition preparations, they hold.

Also the government's first steps in preparing the poll were not promising. According to opposition spokesman Balthasar Abaga, the government was "exerting pressure to make leaders of the neighbourhood councils sign a petition calling for the voting to be made in public," and not by secret poll. Mr Ababa claims the President later plans to tell the "international community that a public vote was a popular demand, when in fact everything is not true."

Nonetheless, several candidates for the Equatoguinean presidency are emerging. Incumbent President Teodoro Obiang Nguema - who came to power in a 1979 coup d'état toppling and killing his uncle - will almost surely be the candidate of the ruling PDGE party although he has not announced his candidacy yet. 

A number of smaller, legal parties have already announced they will support the candidacy of President Obiang. This includes the former main opposition parties CLD, UDENA and PL, which during the 1990s were infiltrated by ruling party activists and made to support the government. 

The Convergence for a Social Democracy (CPDS), the only legal opposition party in Equatorial Guinea that has resisted government party infiltration, has named Celestino B. Bacale as its candidate to the presidency. CPDS Secretary-General, Plácido Micó, remains in prison, being accused of and convicted for participating in the alleged planning of a coup d'état along with 67 other opposition leaders in a disputed June trial. 

Also legal but split in two parts over cooperating with the ruling PDGE, the oppositional part of the Popular Union (UP) has presented its interim leader Jeremías Ndo Ngomo as candidate. Its historical leader, Andrés Moisés Mbá Adá, remains in prison. Some member of the UP, claiming to represent the party, fully cooperate with the PDGE government - although they have been excluded from the party remnant that remains oppositional. 

Further, the illegalised Progress Party (PP), based in Equatorial Guinea, has also named its leader, Severo Moto, as candidate to the presidency. The latter's participation in the electoral campaigns however remains doubtful.

First intimidation attacks on the opposition candidates have already been reported from Equatorial Guinea. According to reports, the 64-year-old aunt of the CPDS candidate Bacale recently was arrested accused of "acting politically in favour of her nephew." The wave of political detentions that was initiated earlier this year - in preparation for the elections, according to observers - seems to continue unabated. 

Meanwhile, the large group of marginalized exiled opposition parties are loudly protesting the organisation of the 15 December poll, claiming there was no possible way of safeguarding a democratic exercise. These increasingly united parties today announced they were preparing a congress in Madrid - the capital of the ex-colonial power Spain - to coordinate their opposition to these elections.

Elections in Equatorial Guinea have a short and fraudulent history. The first post-independence elections - in 1996 - were won by President Obiang with 98 percent of the votes. While the government called this multi-party elections, they were generally denounced as fraudulent. Systematic obstruction of the electoral campaigns of the other candidates, including arrests and torture, had left Mr Obiang the only candidate. 

Equally, in the legislative elections held in March 1999, electoral observers concluded on systematic irregularities. The electorate was not allowed to vote unmonitored and opposition observers were expelled from the poll stations. The ruling PDGE won the elections, obtaining 75 of the 83 seats in parliament, while CPDS and the UP obtained eight seats - which they have refused to take up. 

Sources: Based on ASODEGUE, RENAGE, CPDS, US govt, press reports and afrol archives 

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