The 80-year-old president seized power in August 1979, toppling his uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema, who was then executed by a firing squad.
Firmly suppressing dissent and surviving a string of attempted coups, he has remained at the helm of the oil-rich central African state ever since – a record for any leader alive today, excluding monarchs.
His extraordinary spell means that he is the second president in Equatorial Guinea’s history since it gained independence in 1968 from Spain – its colonial power for nearly two centuries.
The upcoming vote will see Obiang in a race with two rivals, although few doubt the outcome. In 2016, he was re-elected with 93.7% of the vote.
We need political, democratic change here
Sunday’s presidential ballot was originally scheduled for April next year but was brought forward to November 20. Officially, this was due to cost reasons, so that it could be held at the same time as legislative, senatorial and local elections.
Pictures of Obiang and his Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE), the country’s single legal political movement until 1991, are splashed along every main street in the capital Malabo.
Opposition posters are frequently torn down or pasted over with a portrait of the president.
The PDGE’s slogan – ‘continuity’ – dominates the state television TVGE, which gives live coverage of the president’s rallies and then replays them constantly.
‘Dictatorship’
The two other competitors are Andres Esono Ondo of the Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS), the sole authorised opposition party, and Buenaventura Monsuy Asumu of the Social Democratic Coalition Party (PCSD), a historic ally of the PDGE.
Esono Ondo, who is running for the first time, has branded the regime a “dictatorship” and contended that if the elections were “free and transparent, [he] could win”.
“We need political, democratic change here,” he says. “There is much injustice here, the regime discriminates and the government governs only for the Obiang family.”
The CPDS suggested holding an election debate with Obiang. However, Vice President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mangue (widely known as Teodorin), who is also the president’s son and his campaign manager, swept it aside.
4 days to go to elections in Equatorial Guinea in which President Teodoro Obiang Nguema will be seeking to extend his 43yrs in office, A lot of his campaigning is being led by his son/VP Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue.
— Just Event Online Publication (@justeventsonlin) November 16, 2022
But- the main man has been spotted on the campaign trail pic.twitter.com/0sFLeve5W9
He said he will not accept “debating with a party, which isn’t even sure of being able to get 1% of the vote”.
“Let him enjoy himself and debate with the goats,” he said.
Many people believe Teodorin is being groomed to succeed his father, and some have wondered whether the upcoming elections would be that moment.
However, his image has been dented by a reputation for a jet-set lifestyle and scandals in Western countries.
France, Britain and the US have ordered him to forfeit millions of dollars in assets, from mansions to luxury cars, suspected to have been acquired illegally. In France, he was also handed a three-year suspended sentence and a fine of €30m ($31m).
Pre-election crackdown
The run-up to the elections has coincided with the closure of borders “to prevent the infiltration of groups who may try to destabilise the campaign”, and roundups of dissidents, accused of plotting attacks against western embassies and the homes of government ministers.
In the outgoing legislature, the PDGE controlled 99 out of the 100 seats in the National Assembly, and all the seats in the Senate.
Oil wealth is very unequally distributed: Four-fifths of the population of 1.4 million live below the poverty threshold, according to World Bank figures for 2006, the latest available.
The country has an entrenched reputation internationally for graft, ranking 172 out of 180 nations on Transparency International’s 2021 Corruption Perceptions Index.
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