CONAKRY, June 5 (Reuters) – Political parties backing Guinea’s coup-leader-turned-President Mamady Doumbouya have won a majority in the bauxite-rich West African country’s legislative elections, the electoral authority said on Friday, tightening his grip on power.
The final distribution of Guinea’s 147 legislative seats was still being determined, but the pro-Doumbouya Generation for Modernity and Development (GMD) coalition was strongly outperforming rivals, according to provisional data. GMD and its allies had won at least 100 seats, the results showed.
The outcome is set to further consolidate the position of Doumbouya, a former special forces commander who seized power in 2021 and won a seven-year term as president in December in a result contested by his opponents.
Nationwide voter turnout was 52.87% for the legislative contests and 58.51% for communal elections, a vote for local government bodies, which were held simultaneously on Sunday.
Aminata Toure, the country’s top election official, said on Thursday that political parties had eight days to challenge individual results and that the relevant judicial bodies would adjudicate any disputes.
Final results will be announced after those disputes are resolved.
No major opposition parties were allowed to participate in Sunday’s vote. The parties of former President Alpha Conde and opposition leaders Cellou Dalein Diallo and Sidya Toure have been dissolved.
Diallo, who is in exile, in March called for “direct resistance” to Doumbouya after the government consolidated its position by dissolving those parties and 37 others.
A government decree at the time said the parties had failed to meet legal obligations such as filing financial statements.
(Reporting by Guinea newsroom; Writing by Amindeh Blaise Atabong; Editing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Sanjeev Miglani)
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