Indifference marks return to multi-party elections

While the international community kept a close eye on Sunday’s nationwide municipal elections in Guinea, seen by many as a key test of the country’s programme of democratic reforms, the voters apparently largely stayed home. Although no official numbers were released on Monday, eyewitness reports suggested that relatively few of the five million eligible voters actually cast a ballot in the first elections in five years to involve the full participation of a boycott-prone opposition. The low turnout was not unexpected, given the high level of apathy characterizing a campaign that was marked by only a few isolated incidents. “From what we’ve been able to gather so far, the election was quiet and peaceful throughout the country,” said Adamou Kombo, the main technical consultant for the elections with the UN Development Programme, which provided logistical support funded by international donors. In recent months, Guinea’s Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo has embarked on a series of reforms including media liberalisation and increased freedom for the opposition. Following these moves, major organisations such as the World Bank and European Union - donors who had cut off aid to a regime often accused of corruption and mismanagement - agreed to provide funding for elections which one international think-tank said would “largely determine the quality of Guinean democracy.” The UNDP’s Kombo said it was too early to comment on the extent to which the elections were free and fair, because he was still waiting for his network of 400 observers to return from the field. But some opposition leaders like former prime minister and current head of the Union of Republican Forces (UFR), Sidya Toure, were already making fraud allegations. Moreover, he interpreted the poor voter turnout as a sign of a population fed up with corruption and the high cost of living. “How can people vote in the condition of misery they are living in?” he asked. “How can people vote in an election they are sure has been rigged in many places?” And indeed, there were few line-ups in the capital Conakry’s more than 300 polling stations on Sunday. In Little Moscow, for example, an area of the city that was home to many Russian technicians during the socialist period that followed Guinea’s independence, a group of young men sat drinking coffee near a sleepy polling station. When asked for their thoughts on the elections, a number of them opted for a discrete exit but others were outspoken. “Nothing is going to change,” said Bangoura Seydouba. “I voted in earlier elections, but not this time. Our votes don’t count. I have no confidence in our leaders.” But Kiridi Bangoura, the Minister of Territorial Administration and the man in charge of organizing the elections, called the vote the freest and fairest in the country’s history and dismissed any talk of fraud this time out. “If anyone has proof of these claims, then let them go to the courts,” he told IRIN on Monday. “If they fail to do so and continue to spread these allegations and undermine the fair conduct of the polls, the government will not hesitate to resort to the judiciary.” The opposition stronghold suburb of Kaporo-Rails, where residents crowded around a polling station with voter cards in hand, seemed to bear out the minister’s claims. “We are very happy with this election so that’s why more people turned out than during previous polls,” an opposition party member said as he stood watching in the muddy street. Pointing to the transparent ballot box, he said the polls appeared more credible than in previous years when elections were marred by allegations of fraud and intimidation. “People think that what has happened before is not going to happen today because the international community is helping us,” the official said. A short distance away, in President Lansana Conte’s native Dubreka prefecture, voters trickled in a few times per hour. Still, the local electoral commission representative, Oumar Barry, was happy with the turnout and the general unfolding of the vote despite a few problems, such as a polling station set up in the living room of a local chief. “Of course, we have corrected that,” he said. One western diplomat, looking into his crystal ball just before the vote, predicted a flawed but acceptable process. “Because an important step was made, we’ll have to accept some imperfections, we’ll have to say everything went okay,” he said on condition of anonymity.