MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, January 20 (IPS) – In December, the mud settled on Guinea’s first presidential election because the navy took management in a 2021 coup. Common Mamady Doumbouya stayed in energy after receiving 87 per cent of the vote. However the final result was by no means doubtful: this was no a democratic milestone; it was the fruits of Guinea’s denied transition to civilian rule.
Doumbouya has efficiently carried out an act of political alchemy, turning a navy autocracy into an electoral one. By systematically dismantling the opposition, silencing the press and rewriting legal guidelines to swimsuit his ambitions, he has made positive to protect his grip on energy with a skinny veil of electoral legitimacy.
The structure of autocracy
The trail to this second was paved with precision. In April 2025, Doumbouya introduced a constitutional referendum, a transfer which will have regarded like it might herald the start of the top of navy rule. However it was one thing else completely. By June, Doumbouya had additional centralised management by creating a brand new Common Directorate of Elections. This physique, positioned firmly underneath the thumb of the Ministry of Territorial Administration, reversed earlier efforts to ascertain an unbiased electoral establishment.
The structure was drafted within the shadows by the Nationwide Council of the Transition, the junta-appointed legislative physique. Whereas early drafts reportedly contained safeguards towards lifetime presidencies, these had been stripped away earlier than the ultimate textual content reached the general public. The outcome was a doc that eliminated a ban on junta members operating for workplace, prolonged presidential phrases from 5 to seven years and granted the president the ability to nominate a 3rd of the newly created Senate.
When the referendum was held on 21 September, it rubber-stamped de facto rule. Official figures claimed 89 per cent help with an 86 per cent turnout, numbers that defied the truth of a widespread opposition boycott and a palpable lack of public enthusiasm.
A local weather of concern
With a blanket ban on protests in impact since Could 2022, those that’ve dared problem the junta’s managed transition have been met with safety power violence. On 6 January 2025, safety forces killed a minimum of three folks, together with two youngsters, throughout demonstrations referred to as by the opposition coalition Forces Vives de Guinée.
The political panorama was additional cleared by means of administrative and judicial means. In October 2024, the federal government dissolved over 50 political events. By August 2025, main opposition teams such because the Rally of the Folks of Guinea had been suspended. Key challengers, together with former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo, stay in exile, whereas others, amongst them Aliou Bah, have been sentenced to jail – in Bah’s case, for allegedly insulting Doumbouya.
The environment of concern has been bolstered by a brutal crackdown on the media. Guinea plummeted 25 locations within the 2025 World Press Freedom Index, the yr’s largest fall. Impartial shops have had their licences revoked and journalists have been detained. These nonetheless working have discovered to practise strict self-censorship to keep away from turning into the subsequent goal. This meant that as voters went to the polls, there was no one to offer various views, scrutinise the method, examine irregularities or maintain authorities accountable.
Coup contagion
Guinea is not any outlier. Since 2020, a coup contagion has swept by means of Africa, with navy takeovers in Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Mali, Niger and Sudan. In every occasion, the script has been comparable: navy leaders seize energy promising to ‘appropriate’ the failures of the earlier regime, solely to interrupt their guarantees of a return to civilian rule.
Guinea is now the third nation amongst this latest wave to maneuver from a navy dictatorship to an electoral autocracy. It follows within the footsteps of Chad, the place Mahamat Idriss Déby secured victory in Could 2024 after the suspicious killing of his most important opponent, and Gabon, the place Common Brice Oligui Nguema gained a 2025 election with a reported 90 per cent of the vote.
The worldwide neighborhood does little. Doumbouya routinely ignored deadlines and sanctions from the Financial Neighborhood of West African States, which as soon as prided itself on a ‘zero-tolerance’ coverage for coups, and no penalties ensued. The African Union and the United Nations supplied rhetorical concern, however their warnings weren’t accompanied by tangible diplomatic or financial repercussions.
The world’s willingness to take care of enterprise as typical whereas Doumbouya steered by means of a pretend transition sends a harmful message to different aspiring autocrats, within the area and past.
Democracy denied
When Doumbouya seized energy in 2021, he was greeted with a level of cautious optimism. His predecessor, Alpha Condé, had controversially amended the structure to safe a 3rd time period amid violent protests and corruption and fraud allegations. Doumbouya promised to sort things, however as a substitute turned a mirror picture of the person he ousted, utilizing the identical ways of constitutional revision and repression to safe his energy.
The statistics of the December election – an 87 per cent victory on a claimed 80 per cent turnout – don’t replicate a real mandate however reasonably a vacuum: with no unbiased media to scrutinise the method and no viable opposition allowed to run, the election was a technicality.
The prospects for actual democracy in Guinea seem distant. Doumbouya has secured a seven-year mandate by means of an election that eradicated the important infrastructure wanted for democracy. Within the absence of stronger worldwide strain and tangible help for Guinean civil society, Guinea faces extended authoritarian rule behind a democratic facade, with dismal human rights prospects.
Inés M. Pousadela is CIVICUS Head of Analysis and Evaluation, co-director and author for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report. She can also be a Professor of Comparative Politics at Universidad ORT Uruguay.
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