The president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has cast his vote in the general elections being held this Sunday in the African country over which he has held total hegemony for more than 40 years.
The president voted at around 10:00 a.m. with his wife, Constancia Mangue Nsue Nsue Okomo de Obiang, at the Equatoguinean Academy of the Spanish Language in the capital, Malabo.
After voting, the leader of the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) has indicated that the victory of his party, with five mandates in power, is assured.
«What one sows is what one reaps, I am sure that the victory is of the PDGE. We have presented the program to develop the country. The party has sown a lot and the people must continue to believe and vote for the PDGE,» he said in comments reported by the portal AhoraEG.
Obiang, 80 years old and the longest serving president in the world, leads the country since the uprising against his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, who became in 1968 the first president of Equatorial Guinea after the country’s independence from Spain.
The Equatoguinean president announced that the presidential elections would be brought forward by five months to coincide with the legislative and municipal elections, amidst opposition complaints of repression and exclusion from the Equatoguinean political system.
Despite the fact that there are 18 legalized parties in the country, in practice there are no opponents with real options to remove Obiang from power, amid speculation about the possibility of a ‘dynastic’ succession resulting in the rise of his son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, known as ‘Teodorin’, who has held the Vice-Presidency since 2016.
