election with 101%
Matthew Engel
The Equatorial Guinea Gazette
Edited by Matthew Engel
Incorporating the Malabo Mail, the Fernando Po Flyer and Rio Muni Reporter
Today we bring you the first English-language newspaper devoted entirely to the affairs of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea. It fulfils a long-felt need because Equatorial Guinea apparently does not have a newspaper. And it is launched at a crucial moment.
The Office of Diplomatic Information has announced that on March 7 there will be legislative elections which the government wishes to conduct in “a just, open, free and transparent manner”.
This follows the just, open, free and transparent presidential election of 1996 when Brigadier General Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo was re-elected president with between 97%and 99% of the vote. And the just, open, free and transparent local elections of 1994, after which half the opposition got locked up.
According to the Office of Diplomatic Information, President Obiang has met the leaders of the opposition to agree on arrangements for the election.
According to Amnesty International, the president’s representatives have met the opposition on other occasions during the campaign. For instance, the leader, secretary general and other officials of the Convergencia para la Democracia Social (CPDS), were arrested last week and forced to hit a wall violently with their hands for half-an-hour. Another CPDS member was beaten with electric cables on the soles of his feet. Others have been routinely detained and maltreated.
If this is even the half of it then, by local standards, the elections would be very just, open, free and transparent indeed.
As regular readers may recall, Equatorial Guinea is listed by Freedom House as being right down there with North Korea and Iraq as one of the 13 worst dictatorships in the world (along with our friends in Turkmenistan).
Until the foundation of the Equatorial Guinea Gazette, events in the country have not attracted great attention from outside, even when President Obiang’s predecessor, president Macias Nguema (“The Unique Miracle”), managed to set an example to the world by reducing the population by almost a third.
The country has been isolated from the rest of West Africa because there are few people (and were even before Nguema murdered or drove into exile about 200 000 of them), because the capital is offshore (on the island of Fernando Po) and because, uniquely in sub-Saharan Africa, it was colonised by Spain.
The place used to be sustained by cocoa, but the industry collapsed in the 1970s when the Nigerian government evacuated all its migrant workers because they were being underpaid and mistreated. Overseas aid dried up because it was all milked by the regime. And no one cared.
And then came oil. In 1996 the American firm Mobil began drilling off the coast: it is now bringing ashore 80 000 barrels a day. That is only as big as a medium-sized North Sea field, but given that the population of Equatorial Guinea is just 400 000, that is more than a barrel each a week. It is being talked about as Africa’s Kuwait.
Of course, Mobil would be making sure that the oil revenues were being used fairly and were not being siphoned off by the president, his clique and the ruling tribe, wouldn’t it?
Um, perhaps not. “It is not our job to get involved in the politics of a country,” said a company representative.
“We have to develop a revenue stream for the government. We don’t believe we can dictate how that revenue stream is actually used.”
Mobil has involved itself in public works and recent visitors to Malabo report that the city (a handsome old place, by the sound of it, with a hint of Havana) is looking less run-down – even if the major change is that the elite now have 4x4s. Perhaps soon the telephone book will need more than four pages and stop listing subscribers by their first name.
London journalist Antony Goldman interviewed President Obiang (“El Jefe”) last year. He asked the president about human rights abuses. His translator phrased it rather differently: “What does Your Excellency think about the lies peddled about our country by your enemies?”
His Excellency did say that those guilty of abuses would be punished. This may or may not include the prison governors who (according to the United Nations) raped women inmates. Or the Malabo chief of police who was sentenced to two years for murdering a peasant, but somehow managed to continue as chief of police.
The gazette awaits the election results with bated breath. Our computers are being adjusted to allow for the possibility of 101% of the electorate supporting the government.