The incumbent president of Equatorial Guinea, His Excellency Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, has clinched the 6th term in office after winning the election on Sunday. President Nguema’s re-election extends his 43-year rule with another 7 years, becoming the world’s longest-serving president.
“The results prove us right again. We continue to be a great party,” said the appointed Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, also President Mangue’s son.
The Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea secured 100 out of the 100 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 55 out of 55 seats in the Senate. The 80-year-old leader will be deputized by his son. The incoming Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue is famed as an international playboy due to profligate spending and an embezzlement conviction by a court in France two years ago.
Equatorial Guinea is widely regarded as an authoritarian regime and kleptocracy. Last month, US-based Human Rights activists claimed more than 100 individuals, including lawyers, judges, and civil society and political opposition activists, had been arbitrarily detained, amid reports of torture and killings.
President Mangue established PDGE in 1987, a year before he seized power in a 1979 coup, and has been the ruling political party in Equatorial Guinea since, with the leader being reelected not less than 93% of the vote. The leader of the gas-rich Central-African country, though wealthy and powerful, has survived several coup attempts, including an infamous but ill-fated putsch in 2004 involving the likes of former mercenary Simon Mann.
