Government claims landslide victory for Conte

The government of Guinea has announced that President Lansana Conte won a landslide victory in last Sunday's presidential election, which was boycotted by the mainstream opposition parties and shunned by international observers. Opposition leaders immediately accused the government of massive vote-rigging, but the result was greeted with indifference by most of Guinea's eight million population. Interior Minister Moussa Solano, told state television on Wednesday night that Conte, who came to power in a 1984 coup, had received 95.6 percent of the votes cast. His token challenger, Mamadou Bhoye Barry, the virtually unknown leader of the Union for National Progress, a small pro-government party with one seat in parliament, was officially credited with 4.4 percent. Solano said provisional results showed that 82.8 percent of the five million electorate turned out to vote, refuting opposition claims that less than 15 percent bothered to cast a ballot. An official announcement that Conte had won by a large margin had been widely expected. However, there were no spontaneous demonstrations to celebrate his victory. This was in marked contrast to the street parties which followed the previous presidential elections. Conte's supporters turned out in force after the authoritarian leader was said to have won with 51.7 percent of the vote in 1993 and 56.1 percent in 1998. The main opposition parties, grouped in the Republic Front for Democratic Change (FRAD), accused the government of massive vote rigging and said they would refuse to recognise Conte's re-election as head of state. FRAD chairman Ba Mamadou told IRIN: "We will not recognise the result and, as far as we are concerned we still do not have a president after the election." "This is a farce...It is not an election," Sidya Toure, who once served as prime minister under Conte, but is now a leading member of FRAD, told the BBC FRAD estimated that less than 15 percent of the population had bothered to vote. The government's claim that more than 82 percent had done so was greeted with widespread disbelief. "This is a black lie," Abdoulraman Diallo, a university student told IRIN. "If anything, the opposite is true. What I mean is that 18 percent voted while 82 percent boycotted the poll." The sudden appearance of two million extra voters on the electoral roll also caused puzzlement. The government announced a few days before the election that five million people had been registered to vote, compared with just over three million people at the time of the June 2002 parliamentary elections. Even Bhoye Barry, Conte's lone challenger who was widely labelled as a presidential stooge, questioned where the two million new voters had suddenly come from. Although the election technically gives Conte a new seven-year term, the crisis of succession in Guinea remains unsolved. The 69-year-old former army colonel, who has ruled Guinea with an iron hand for nearly 20 years is ill with diabetes and heart trouble and can barely walk. He made only one public appearance during the election campaign and cast his vote while sitting in the front seat of his official car. Conte has not designated a successor and warned the army in October against staging a coup, but few diplomats believe that the president will see out his new seven year term which officially begins in January. Dozens of junior officers were secretly arrested at the end of November. Most, if not all, were released under a continuing blanket of official silence a few days before the 21 December election.