If you believe in the importance of open and independent journalism:
At his inauguration as president of Gabon in May, General Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema symbolically handed a torch to General Mamadi Doumbouya, Guinea’s transitional leader, as if to show him the way forward. A year and a half after toppling Ali Bongo, Oligui Nguema had just been elected with 94 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential race, following a constitutional referendum passed with 91 percent support. A seamless “transition”, in short. By normalizing his rule domestically and abroad, had Nguema become a model for his Guinean counterpart? Doumbouya seems intent on following the same path.
On April 1, Guinea’s strongman abruptly announced that the transition initiated after the overthrow of Alpha Condé (2010–21) on September 5, 2021, would come to an end at last. That day, he declared that the constitutional referendum would be held on September 21, with presidential elections likely to follow rapidly, maybe in December. Perhaps tired of repeating in every New Year’s speech that “this year will be an electoral year,” he now seems eager to turn the page on the transition and become head of state in his own right.
Though he has not officially announced elections or declared his candidacy, few imagine otherwise. The transitional charter – the text that served as the country’s constitution after the coup and barred him from running – has not been carried over into the draft constitution. Doumbouya’s closest allies repeatedly affirm that he will be their candidate. Yet in the days following his coup, Doumbouya had sworn to respect the charter’s provisions, declaring that “neither [he] nor any member of the CNRD [National Committee for Reconciliation and Development, the junta’s official name] … will run for office in the upcoming elections.”
A Campaign Without Opposition
The referendum’s outcome is expected to mirror that of Gabon. The CNRD has left nothing to chance, using its four years in power to flatten Guinea’s political landscape and lock down the system: opposition leaders have been exiled, jailed, or forcibly disappeared; presidential contenders sidelined; private broadcasters shut down; protests banned; and election management – once the task of an independent commission – brought directly under government control.
To go further still, the junta has suspended the country’s two main political parties – Cellou Dalein Diallo’s Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG) and Alpha Condé’s Rally of the Guinean People (RPG) – forbidding them from campaigning in the referendum.
The referendum campaign is therefore entirely one-sided. In Kaloum, central Conakry, posters proclaim “I vote Yes for the new constitution,” flanked by Guinean flags. Ministers and senior civil servants are personally tasked with leading the campaign in their strongholds, parading around in brand-new SUVs – a stark contrast with the country’s potholed, near-untraversable rural roads. Ironically, Doumbouya had once justified his coup by railing against the “politicization of the public administration” and “financial mismanagement”, words that disillusioned citizens now gleefully throw back at him on social media.
“Do as You Did in 1958.”
Despite these resources, the junta is struggling to mobilize crowds or generate enthusiasm. The launch of the campaign in Kankan, Doumbouya’s hometown, drew only a thin audience. Poor organization, power outages in Guinea’s second city, and the sense of a foregone conclusion left many unmoved.
The lone critical voice on the ground is Faya Millimono, a marginal presidential candidate in 2015 who won just 1 percent of the vote. He urges Guineans to reject the referendum: “In 1958, a general proposed a constitution. In 2025, another general is proposing another constitution. Do in 2025 what you did in 1958.” On September 28, 1958, Guineans had secured independence by rejecting General Charles de Gaulle’s French Community project – a foundational moment in Guinea’s national memory.
The country’s most representative parties – which together have won over 90 percent of votes in successive elections since 2010 – are instead calling for a boycott. United in a wide coalition bringing together opposition and civil society groups called the Forces Vives de Guinée, they had even at one point considered calling on their supporters to prevent the vote, but they have since dropped the idea. In March 2020, the opposition launched a similar boycott against Condé’s constitutional reform, which allowed him a third term. Though partially effective, it was met with harsh repression. This time, the Forces Vives lack the capacity on the ground to mount such an operation.
Fifty-nine protesters killed since 2022
This time, success seems even less likely. The Forces Vives’ call for protests on September 5, the fourth anniversary of the coup, ended in failure. Heavy security deployments, preventive arrests, and intimidation by security forces played a role, but so too did the fatigue of ordinary militants. According to Guinean human rights groups, 59 people have been killed in opposition protests since 2022.
The Forces Vives have been weakened by co-optation and by what can only be called the junta’s calculated reign of terror. The RPG has hollowed out since Condé’s exile and the detention of his lieutenants, many of whom have now joined Doumbouya. Diallo, the leader of the UFDG, remains in exile and confined to international media appearances, unable to mobilize his supporters at home. Sidya Touré, head of the Union of Republican Forces (UFR), has withdrawn almost entirely from public life.
The once-vibrant National Front for the Defense of the Constitution (FNDC), the civic movement that led the fight against Condé’s third term, has been decimated. Its leaders Foniké Menguè and Billo Bah remain missing more than a year after their abduction by men in uniform; others have fled into exile. Abdoul Sacko, another prominent civil society activist, was kidnapped, tortured, and dumped in the countryside. He has since taken refuge abroad. Aliou Bah, the outspoken leader of the Liberal Democratic Movement (MoDeL), a minor political party, has been sentenced to two years in prison for denouncing enforced disappearances and criticizing the opaque management of the Simandou mining project, a pillar of the junta’s propaganda.
Kidnappings and Torture of Dissenting Voices
This climate of fear has spread beyond opposition ranks. In October 2024, Saadou Nimaga, a senior mining official, was abducted while preparing a book on the Simandou project. In December, journalist Habib Marouane Camara was kidnapped. In June, Mohamed Traoré, the eloquent former president of the bar association, was also abducted, tortured, and abandoned in a village. Several other disappearances have been reported, while many activists, lawyers, and journalists describe living under constant threat.
Intimidated, stripped of its tools, and bereft of strategy, the opposition will struggle to prevent Doumbouya’s election. The new constitution itself bars both Condé and Touré from running, imposing an age limit of 80 for presidential candidates. Diallo cannot run either: living in exile in Abidjan, he says Guinea’s embassy there was instructed not to register him on the electoral roll.
Regionally, the junta has played its cards well. By exploiting tensions between the Alliance of Sahelian States (AES) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), it has shielded itself from sanctions. ECOWAS, anxious not to lose another member, has deprioritized Guinea, abandoning its earlier missions to monitor the transition.
A Paranoid Strongman
Internationally, Guinea is a low concern amid wars and global crises. France, meanwhile, has seen in Doumbouya – a former French Foreign Legionnaire – an opportunity to restore ties with Conakry after the chill of the Condé era and France’s ejection from several neighboring states.
Even as he has justified his coup by claiming to want to break with Condé’s system, Doumbouya has actually largely replicated its methods, with greater brutality. He has even reappointed several officials from the former regime. Conakry residents now say the country is no longer “governed” but “commanded” by the CNRD.
Despite his apparent dominance, Doumbouya shows signs of unease, and even paranoia. Secluded between the Loos Islands and his presidential palace, he rarely appears in public, and never without overwhelming security. In April, to inaugurate a common bridge, he arrived by combat helicopter, flanked by a convoy of a dozen armored vehicles. On state media, he is always surrounded by masked guards, even in his own office. Journalists from national television no longer interview him directly; a special presidential unit records and distributes his appearances.
Cracks Within the Junta?
This reclusiveness may reflect tensions within the junta itself or, more generally, within the military. The army has undergone successive purges: first against Condé loyalists; then after the spectacular November 2023 escape of Claude Pivi, a powerful former figure of Moussa Dadis Camara’s junta (2008-09), allegedly with the complicity of some military; and again following the suspicious death in custody of General Sadiba Koulibaly in June 2024. Koulibaly, once chief of staff and briefly considered Doumbouya’s number two, had fallen into disgrace.
Meanwhile, Doumbouya’s Special Forces have grown from 500 men at the time of the coup to over 2,000 today, according to Jeune Afrique. They have become an army within the army, the only unit Doumbouya trusts. At the October 2, 2024, military parade, they showcased brand-new armored vehicles supplied by the United Arab Emirates, while other soldiers marched unarmed or without magazines.
In the medium term, the greatest threat to Doumbouya might not come from the ballot box but from within his own security apparatus. It was, after all, rumors of his imminent arrest that pushed him to depose Condé in 2021. Faced with danger, he struck first.
