Share & more
Opposition parties in Guinea have said they will boycott legislative elections in November.
“We need an independent and autonomous electoral commission,” Sekou Coumbassa of the Rassemblement du peuple de Guinee (RPG - Guinean People’s Rally) told IRIN on Monday.
The RPG and the Union pour le progres et le renouveau (UPR - Union for Progress and Renewal) make up the Coordination des partis democratiques (CODEM - Coordination of Democratic Parties). According to Coumbassa, another opposition party, l’Union des forces republicaines, also said it would boycott the vote, scheduled for 26 November.
Some reports attributed the boycott to security concerns linked to recent cross-border attacks by fighters based in Liberia and Sierra Leone, but Coumbassa denied this. “It has nothing to do with the security situation,” he said. “The government is trying to connect the two situations.”
Officials in Conakry have accused Guinean dissidents of being among the attackers. Up to 200 people have died in the past month.
The RPG is led by Alpha Conde, who was sentenced in September to five years in prison for endangering state security. He was arrested on the border with Cote d’Ivoire after presidential elections in December 1998, in which he finished third. He has denied the charges against him.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions