On Sunday, November 20, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the president of Equatorial Guinea, made his way to a voting location in the nation’s capital Malabo to cast his ballot in the presidential and parliamentary elections.
The longest reign of any head of state currently in office, aside from monarchs, belongs to 80-year-old Obiang, who has been in office for 43 years and is almost certain to be reelected for a sixth term.
On Sunday morning, businessman Joan Saumago Nguema also used the opportunity to vote.
“We are voting for a better future,” he says. “We are electing the people who will lead us for the next seven years. We are here this morning to exercise the right to vote. As mentioned, I am from Equatorial Guinea and I came to vote.”
One of the most repressive and closed regimes in the world is thought to be Equatorial Guinea.
Andres Esono Ondo is running against Obiang from the sole opposition group allowed in the country.
First-time candidate and the lone representative of the restrained opposition is the secretary general of the Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS).
Ondo has stated that he is concerned about “fraud” while electing the president, senators, and lawmakers.
The lawmaker has faced charges from the administration, which in 2019 said he was plotting “a coup in Equatorial Guinea with foreign support.”
Buenaventura Monsuy Asumu of the Social Democratic Coalition Party (PCSD), a longtime ally of Obiang’s ruling party, is the third contender.
The former minister is running for office a fourth time, although she has never performed well. His opponents have referred to him as a “dummy candidate” with no prospect of winning.
Voters, however, assert that they value the significance of elections.
José Serafin Obiang Sima is a nurse and says: “We are voting for things to happen normally because we enjoy peace and we want to continue with the peace that we enjoy in our country.
“Because if you look at it, here in Central Africa, the only country in Central Africa where young people are benefiting is Equatorial Guinea.”
Equatorial Guinea is now the third-richest nation in Africa in terms of per-capita GDP because to the discovery of offshore oil, but the money is highly unevenly distributed.
The most recent available data from the World Bank for 2006 shows that 1.4 million people, or 45% of the total population, are living in poverty.
The nation has a lengthy history of corruption; according to Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index, it is ranked 172 out of 180 countries.
