Guinea Presidential Election Results Show Alpha Condé Likely To Win Second Term: Report

With around 80 percent of the vote counted after Sunday’s presidential election, poll results show Guinea’s President Alpha Condé is likely to win another term in office after one round of voting. Results from the West African country’s electoral commission showed the incumbent had more than 55 percent of the vote, Reuters reported.

Preliminary results on Wednesday from around a quarter of the ballots cast showed Condé ahead of his main rival Cellou Dalein Diallo, while six other candidates trailed behind. Condé, who is seeking a second term, had almost 480,000 votes, some 40,000 more than Diallo.

The opposition has already dismissed Sunday’s vote and demanded a revote. Diallo’s spokesman Aboubacar Sylla said Thursday the former prime minister would “put an end to his participation in the current electoral process,” which he described as “an election farce.” Earlier, Diallo himself called Sunday’s vote “a masquerade, a massive fraud throughout the day,” according to AFP news agency.

Guinea’s president is elected by absolute majority through a two-round system to serve a five-year term. The first round of voting took place Sunday, and a second round will be scheduled, should it be necessary.

Condé and Diallo are longtime political rivals. In the 2010 presidential election, Diallo fell short of a majority in the first round, collecting about 40 percent of the vote against Condé, who won 21 percent. In a second-round runoff, Condé was declared the winner and the country’s first democratically elected president, with more than 52.2 percent of the almost 2.9 million votes counted versus Diallo’s 47.5 percent. However, there was speculation that Conde cooked the books with respect to the second round of voting.

Condé has been accused of rigging the 2015 electoral process to ensure his reelection. Still, the incumbent is widely seen as the favorite to win a second term in the election, drawing support from his political network and ethnic group.