Equatorial Guinea: President Obiang runs again for office, seeking to extend record 43-year rule

President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, the world’s longest-standing leader, is running for office again in Sunday elections, as he wants to extend his 43-year authoritarian rule in the oil-rich Central African nation.

His party confirmed that Obiang would run in the elections to be held on Sunday (20 November). The world’s longest-standing president is likely to extend his 43-year tenure that began when he snatched power in a 1979 coup. The rule of the 80-year-old Obiang has been marked by torture of political opponents, sham elections, and corruption, rights groups and foreign powers say, charges that Obiang denies.

The West African oil-producing nation of about 1.5 million people has had only two presidents since independence from Spain in 1968; Obiang and his uncle Francisco Macias Nguema who he removed in a coup in 1979.

Always elected with more than 90% of votes, in polls international observers have questioned, Obiang is vying for a sixth term against two other candidates: Andres Esono Ondo and Buenaventura Monsuy Asumu. Parliamentary and local elections will be held at the same time.

Oil and gas production accounts for about three-quarters of revenues in the OPEC member state. Although the tiny Gulf of Guinea nation has seen major investments in infrastructure, critics say under Obiang, oil wealth has lined the pockets of his entourage, who flash luxury lifestyles while most of the population live in poverty. His son, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who observers see as a potential successor, was convicted for embezzlement by a French court in 2020.