JUNTA-RULED Guinea is doing “everything” to ensure presidential and parliamentary elections are held in December, Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah told AFP on Tuesday.
The west African country’s junta leader General Mamady Doumbouya has promised that 2025 would be “a crucial electoral year” and has announced a constitutional referendum in September.
But no date had yet been given for parliamentary or presidential elections, while his government is regularly accused of cracking down on freedom of expression and silencing critics.
“We haven’t set a date, but everything is being done to make sure it happens at the end of the year, in December,” Bah said.
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“The referendum on September 21 and the two major elections, coupled, at the end of the year, in December,” he told AFP by telephone.
“Everyone is mobilised for (electoral) registration everywhere, both in the interior of the country and in the capital, because that is what will be decisive. It is through this means that the electoral register will be compiled,” Bah added.
Under international pressure, the military leaders who took control in 2021 initially pledged to hold a constitutional referendum and hand power to elected civilians by the end of 2024 but neither happened.
Guinea’s opposition, which has seen key figures taken from their homes, has previously lambasted the constitutional referendum’s announcement as a diversion.
After ousting civilian president Alpha Conde in 2021, General Doumbouya promised he would not stand in any future election.
But in recent months, several leading figures from Guinea’s ruling party have publicly backed a potential run for president by the junta chief.
As the charter drawn up by the military shortly after the coup blocks members of the junta from standing for office, a new constitution’s adoption could pave the way for a Doumbouya candidacy.
Guinea’s opposition has accused Doumbouya’s government of ramping up repression to silence dissident voices.
Many critics of the junta have been either arrested, dragged before the courts or forced into exile.
At the end of February, a leading junta critic, Abdoul Sacko, was hospitalised after masked gunmen broke into his home through the ceiling and abducted him, before abandoning him around 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the capital Conakry.
Sacko, whose lawyers say was tortured, had to seek medical care abroad.
The junta has banned demonstrations, dissolved a movement calling for a return of a civilian government and withdrawn broadcasting licences from independent media organisations.
Since gaining independence from France in 1958, Guinea has seen a succession of dictatorial governments, which have failed to lift many inhabitants out of poverty.