Smooth run-up to litmus-test election

Five million Guinean voters go to the polls on Sunday for municipal elections widely seen as a litmus test of the country’s democratic reform process. Opposition parties are taking part in elections for the first time in five years and have been given time on national radio and television to air their often fierce criticism of President Lansana Conte and his ruling Party of Unity and Progress (PUP). Conte has been in office for 21 years and the opposition largely boycotted 2002 parliamentary and 2003 presidential polls on the grounds the elections would be neither free nor fair. But Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo’s government has embarked on an extensive reform programme to lure back foreign donors who have been shunning the West African country in recent years due to charges of corruption and human rights abuses. Organised with the help of donor funding, including from the European Union and World Bank, Sunday’s local election is being watched as a test of just how much progress has been made on the reforms demanded by both the opposition and the international community. Sunday’s 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. vote for 4,399 councillors “will largely determine the quality of Guinean democracy,” the international think-tank International Crisis Group said earlier this year. So far, Guinea has revised electoral lists, offered broadcast time and freedom of movement to the opposition, pledged liberalisation of radio and TV and set up a new electoral commission. “All is in place and now we only await Sunday,” Sekou Mukay Yansaneh, a member of the commission, told IRIN.

Pre-election opposition rally in Conakry

Votes will be held in 303 rural communities and 38 local councils, including five in the capital Conakry whose mayors - from the ruling party - were sacked by Conte last year following food riots. Sixteen parties are taking part. The ruling PUP is fielding candidates for all seats, while the opposition Union for Progress and Renewal, long headed by Siradiou Diallo who died this year, is fielding 102 candidates. Alpha Conde’s Rally for the Guinean People has 101 candidates contesting the election and former prime minister Sidya Toure’s Union of Republican Forces has 78 candidates. At a pre-election rally in Conakry this week, Toure complained that candidates had been asked to provide registration documents that were particularly difficult to produce in rural areas that lacked electricity and amenities such as photocopiers. He also said that a sizeable proportion of opposition candidates had been rejected. Many of the supporters that turned up at Toure’s rally, and at other political events seen this week, were far too young to vote, and observers fear that turnout may be low due to an apparent lack of enthusiasm over the multiparty poll. “What we want is cheaper rice,” said one Guinean, referring to the spiralling inflation that has seen the staple food for the country’s eight million people almost double between January 2004 and November 2005. The price of a 50-kilogramme bag has increased from 50,000 francs (US $11) to about 85,000 francs. Despite isolated run-ins between opposition protesters and police in the capital Conakry this week, and a dispute over pay and conditions by magistrates due to oversee the vote, the run-up to the vote has been quiet. One magistrate Kalfa Sall said on behalf of 70 colleagues that failing a deal, “We will go to our homes and stay there and listen to neither television nor radio.” Some 400 observers are due to fan out across lush Guinea in the more than 8,000 polling stations, organised by one of the country’s new generation of politicians, Kiridi Bangoura - minister of territorial administration and decentralisation and a member of the Soussou ethnic group like President Conte. Wagging a finger of warning on the credibility of the poll, one diplomat told IRIN that “this is like a trial run and if we find that the election is not transparent then we will revert to our old guidelines.”