Makalé Camara did not have a valid voter card in the eyes of the authorities.

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SIPA

Being a presidential candidate in Guinea and not being able to vote: this is the disappointment experienced Sunday, October 18 by Makalé Camara.

This 64-year-old former foreign minister recounted going to the polling station in her Conakry neighborhood to elect the next president, as more than five million Guineans were called to do.

She showed up with an old voter card because, “for the past few days, [the administration] has not found my new card anywhere.

I was told: "It's impossible, to vote you need the new card".

Makalé Camara says he called Kabinet Cissé, the president of the National Electoral Commission (Céni), in charge of the vote.

"He told me that I may be among those removed" from the lists.

Under international pressure, the authorities "cleared" in 2020 the electoral lists which, said in February the International Organization of the Francophonie (OIF), accompanying the electoral process, included two and a half million names of "problematic" voters. out of a total of some eight million.

The OIF spoke of duplicates and presence on the lists of deceased persons, fueling the fear of fraud.

The roster has since shrunk to around five and a half million voters.

A quack in the procedure

Makalé Camara said that after the clearance of the lists she had gone to register in recent months.

"The president of the Ceni told me that my data had probably not been recorded, that I must have come across an agent who was not up to the task," she continues.

The candidate appealed to the Constitutional Court with the hope of still being able to vote before the close of offices.

But, she indicated in the evening, after closing, that she had not been able to vote.

More than indignant, she said she was "sad because many fellow citizens, like me, could not vote."

You imagine: presidential candidate and not being able to vote ”.

The sixty-year-old has held many senior positions in the public service and in governments since the early 1990s. She is in opposition to outgoing President Alpha Condé, candidate for a third term.

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