Delegates of the ruling party in Guinea, during a congress on Thursday invited incumbent president, Alpha Condé, to be their candidate in the presidential election next October and thus to run for a third term at the head of the country.
The wave of protests led for months by the National Front for the Defence of the Constitution (FNDC) were not enough to dissuade supporters of the current regime to plebiscite 82 year-old Alpha Condé for the presidential election which first round is scheduled for October 18.
At the end of their congress, held on August 5 and 6, the party’s 350 or so delegates gathered at the People’s Palace, the seat of the National Assembly, invited their mentor to stand as a candidate for his own succession.
“The speeches were a plea to President Alpha Condé to accept the will of the people to be the RPG’s sole candidate in the presidential election,” Diakagbé Kaba, the deputy in charge of the convention’s proceedings, told the delegates of the Rally of the Guinean People (RPG).
Guinea’s first democratically elected president, Alpha Condé was re-elected in 2015 for a second and final term, according to the country’s old fundamental law, which was amended last March in a controversial referendum.
It is this modification that allows Alpha Condé to reset the counters to zero, according to his supporters. Condé, for his part, has always expressed his opposition to the principle of term limitation, describing it as unfair.
He has also repeatedly raised doubts about his likely candidacy for the presidential election. “It is my party that will decide,” he replied each time the question was put to him.
ARD/te/lb/abj/APA