Initial results in Guinea’s presidential election were due Monday, officials said, a day after the vote in which junta chief Mamady Doumbouya is seeking to legitimise his rule.
The main opposition leaders were barred from standing and had urged a boycott of the ballot, which comes four years after Doumbouya led a coup to topple Guinea’s first freely elected president.
In standing, Doumbouya, 41, went back on his initial pledge not to run for office and to hand the mineral-rich but poor country back to civilian rule by the end of 2024.
Djenabou Toure, head of the General Directorate of Elections, announced on Guinean radio and television overnight that vote counting was under way.
“This process (of centralising the results), both manual and computerised, already allows us to collect the first data,” she said.
“The first partial results should be released as early as this Monday,” she added.
Toure had already told AFP late Sunday that turnout — a key issue in a vote without prominent opposition figures — was 85 percent.
No major incidents were reported during voting.
Nearly 6.8 million voters including 125,000 living abroad were eligible to choose between nine candidates, including Doumbouya, in Sunday’s election.
Since seizing power in September 2021, Doumbouya has cracked down on civil liberties, and protests have been banned, while opponents have been arrested, put on trial or driven into exile.
In late September, Guineans approved a new constitution in a referendum which permitted junta members to run for office, paving the way for Doumbouya’s candidacy.
It also lengthened presidential terms from five to seven years, renewable once.
– ‘Electoral charade’ –
Opposition leader and former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo had condemned the presidential vote as “an electoral charade” aimed at giving legitimacy to “the planned confiscation of power”.
He was one of three opposition leaders barred from standing by the new constitution.
Diallo was excluded because he lives in exile and his primary residence is outside of Guinea.
Former president Alpha Conde — whom Doumbouya overthrew in 2021 — and ex-prime minister Sidya Toure, who also live in exile, are over the maximum age limit of 80.
Guinea’s natural resources include bauxite, the chief mineral used in aluminium production, as well as iron, gold and diamonds.
But just over half of the population lives in poverty, according to World Bank figures.
Since independence in 1958, Guinea has had a complex history of military and authoritarian rule, including multiple military interventions.
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