A fifth term for Ismaïl Omar Guelleh.
The strongman of Djibouti was reelected Friday, April 9 to 98.58% of the vote according to provisional official figures, at the head of this small strategic country in the Horn of Africa.
He has led it for 22 years and his only opponent had hardly campaigned.
"IOG", 73, was running for a fifth and, theoretically, last term against Zakaria Ismail Farah, a 56-year-old businessman who had recently entered politics and whose chances of victory seemed slim.
"President Ismail Omar Guelleh obtains 167,535 votes, or 98.58% (...) These are the provisional results of the presidential election on April 9, 2021", announced around 3:15 am on the night of Friday April 9 to Saturday April 10 Moumin Ahmed Cheick, the Minister of the Interior, on public television RTD.
He added that Zakaria Ismail Farah got less than 5,000 votes.
The final results will soon be "given by the Constitutional Council".
In 2016, during the previous presidential election, Ismaïl Omar Guelleh was credited with around 87% of the vote, again in the first round.
Strong participation
?
On Friday, earlier in the evening, Prime Minister Abdoulkader Kamil Mohamed announced on Facebook that "the participation would exceed 77%", against 68% in 2016.
The some 215,000 registered voters (out of a total population of 990,000) were invited to go to one of the country's 529 polling stations, mostly located in the capital Djibouti-ville.
Friday noon, the outgoing president, wearing immaculate traditional clothes, had voted accompanied by a swarm of officials, security officers and journalists, saying he was "very, very confident".
This re-election is nevertheless emerging as a last lap for the leader, who will have, in the next election in 2026, exceeded the age limit of 75 years imposed by the Constitution.
This limit was introduced in 2010, during a revision of the Constitution mainly intended to remove the limit of two mandates fixed until then.
This reform enabled Mr. Guelleh, the second president of Djibouti since independence from France in 1977, to run for a third term the following year.
He then promised, in 2011, that this would be his last candidacy.
"It's no use, my vote or the votes of 80% of the people"
Zakaria Ismail Farah held only a few timid campaign rallies, before canceling all those planned for the last 10 days of the campaign.
He complains in particular of not benefiting from a law enforcement service and denounced "the unequal treatment of which he is the victim".
At the end of the day on Friday, Mr. Farah, who had not responded for several hours to AFP's requests, had not been seen in any polling station.
"It is useless my vote, nor the votes of 80% of the Djiboutian people," he wrote earlier in a message, without giving further explanation.
In a second message, Mr Farah sharply criticized the absence of his delegates from the polling stations, appearing to suggest that they had been barred from entering.
But the head of the African Union (AU) observation mission, Ahmed Tidiane Souare, told reporters at midday that his team had "not met any delegates" of the opponent in the polling stations visited, specifying that this was not an "obligation".
"Until then, everything is going according to the rules and in peace," added the former Guinean prime minister.
Uniform speech
The first four terms of Mr. Guelleh were marked by an exercise of authoritarian power leaving little room for protest and freedom of the press, but also by a development of the economy, based on the development of ports and logistics structures.
This desert territory, located opposite one of the busiest sea routes in the world, on the borders of Africa and Arabia, has become a commercial crossroads.
It also hosts important foreign military bases (United States, France, China, Japan).
In the polling stations visited by AFP in different areas of Djibouti-ville, voters displayed a uniform, almost mechanical speech in favor of the outgoing president.
"The President of the future is Ismaïl Omar Guelleh (...) We hope that he will emerge victorious from the election. Secondly, the development of the country is underway thanks to him", affirms in Somali Nimo Osman Elmi, a 42-year-old secretary, who voted in the popular district of Balbala.
Djiboutian growth, which should reach + 7% in 2021 after a recession in 2020 linked to Covid-19, does little to benefit the population, affected 21.1% by extreme poverty, according to 2017 data from the World Bank.
With AFP
The summary of the week
France 24 invites you to come back to the news that marked the week
I subscribe
Take international news everywhere with you!
Download the France 24 application
google-play-badge_FR