Equatorial Guinea has had the same president for 43 years

Over 43 years old. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 80, is the living head of state who holds the world record for longevity in power, except for monarchies. In the November 20 elections he ran for a sixth term as president of Equatorial Guinea, a small oil state in central Africa with one of the most closed and authoritarian regimes in the world.

In 2016 he won with 93.7 percent of the votes and in recent years he seemed to be preparing to hand over power to his son Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, known as Teodorín, a well-known name in the international jet set, famous for his luxurious life and already sentenced in France for a case of embezzlement.

While his father has limited his public appearances for two years, Teodorín has gained more and more visibility: omnipotent and feared vice president, as well as defense minister, he has not given up showing himself on social networks surrounded by beautiful girls or at the wheel of luxurious sports cars , both rare and expensive. In mid-December 2021, everyone expected the ruling party in the country, the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDG), to designate Teodorín as a candidate in place of his father. But probably the leading figures of the regime and Teodoro Obiang’s inner circle thought it too early and provocative to present him as a successor, at a time when the country is more dependent on external aid due to declining profits from the sale of hydrocarbons in course since 2014 and the covid-19 pandemic.

Obsession with coups
At that congress, the Pdge had decided, against all odds, not to make any appointments official. Just two months ago, the eighty-year-old leader unveiled his candidacy. In 2016, shortly before his re-election, he told the weekly Jeune Afrique: “I’ve been in power for a long time now, but the people still want him to be president. It’s the last time I introduce myself”. Then, pressed on the succession prepared for Teodorín, he had said: “Equatorial Guinea is not a monarchy, (…) but I can’t help it if it has talent”.

On August 3, 1979, together with a group of officers, Teodoro Obiang seized power by ousting his uncle, the brutal dictator Francisco Macías Nguema, who was shot two months later. He has remained obsessed with coups ever since. His personal guard is made up of soldiers of his clan considered loyal to him, but – caution is never too much – his bodyguards are Israeli and the security of the building is in part entrusted to Zimbabwean and Ugandan agents. Since his rise to power, he says he has averted at least ten attempted coups or assassinations and has responded to each with an intensification of repression, haphazardly accusing exiled opponents and “foreign powers.”

At first Teodoro Obiang was the head of a country without great resources and the other African presidents treated him condescendingly, but since the 1990s he has benefited from the discovery of oil in territorial waters. The cards are reshuffled, Equatorial Guinea is enriched. In 2021 the country, sparsely populated, according to the World Bank has the third highest GDP per capita in Africa, but wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few families, while the vast majority of the 1.4 million inhabitants live below the threshold of poverty.

Equatorial Guinea is regularly cited by NGOs as one of the most corrupt countries. In July, in France, Teodorín Obiang was sentenced definitively to three years of suspended prison, to a fine of 30 million euros and to have all his assets confiscated in an embezzlement trial. Since 2021 he has been barred from staying in the UK over allegations of “corruption” and “misappropriation of public funds” in his country. Also last year, in the United States, he had to give up 26 million dollars of assets to end some corruption trials.

Only facade opposition is allowed in the country. Until 1991, the Pdge was the single party, before the government began to tolerate small “opposition” movements, which Obiang represses when they become too threatening.

In this small country nicknamed by Obiang’s critics “African North Korea”, arrests and disappearances of opponents are frequent, and many of them have found refuge abroad, especially in Spain, the former colonial power.

(Translation by Thomas Lemaire)