The people of the tiny West African oil producer Equatorial Guinea went to the polls Sunday in a vote expected to hand President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo another seven years in office.
Obiang, already Africa's longest serving leader who has ruled the country for 37 years since he ousted his uncle in a military coup, says he will get more than 90 percent of the vote, reported Reuters. Opponents say elections in this former Spanish colony have been consistently rigged with some calling for a boycott.
Voting went ahead without incident and was generally peaceful although observers noticed low turn out in some regions. As the 73-year old Obiang cast his ballot he said those voting for him "were voting for the continued develoment of Equatorial Guinea."
Critics accuse Obiang of presiding over the world's most corrupt and repressive governments and for failing to equitably distribute the country's oil wealth among its inhabitants of about 700,000. The poor in the slums say that money seems to go to only a few people, mostly, Obiang's family and his inner circle in government, said Al Jazeera.
The country boasts the highest GDP per capita in all of Africa about $37,000, thanks to an oil and gas drilling boom. But it ranks 144 out of 187 nations on the United Nations' 2014 Human Development Index that measures social and economic development.
Obiang came to power in a 1979 coup against his uncle Macias Nguema, a fervent nationalist who continued the ruthless methods of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco after the country secured independence from Spain in 1968, according to Daily Nation.
Macias was a self-proclaimed sorcerer who collected skulls and had Nazi-style notions of ethnic purity. He ruled by fear and spared only a few families in waves of killings and atrocities that led to mass exodus to neighboring countries. Obiang had his uncle tried and strung up in a cage in a cinema. Macias was then shot by hired Moroccan soldiers who later became the backbone of Obiang's security.
The former putschist then consolidated his power and controlled almost all aspects of life in a country with few resources, unable at first to even afford a private jet. The discovery of off-shore oil in the early 1990s changed all that as investments by mostly American firms turned the country from being the backwater of the Gulf of Guinea to the third biggest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa next to Nigeria and Angola.
