Waging Peace: Guinea

Monitoring Elections

2010 Elections
In May 2010, The Carter Center launched an election observation mission at the invitation of the country's electoral commission and government. The Center deployed a team of 30 observers to monitor the voting and counting for the June 27, 2010, first round election and maintained a small presence in the months that followed. For the Nov. 7 presidential runoff elections, the Center again deployed a 30-person short-term observer team across Guinea to monitor voting and counting. The Center's observers remained in their areas of responsibility in the postelection period to observe results transmission and tabulation processes, including the transfer of results protocols to reception commissions and the processing of those polling station results by centralization commissions. General Yakubu Gowon, the former head of state in Nigeria, led the Center's delegation for both the June 27 election and Nov. 7 runoff. Read full text >

Election Reports

View Carter Center election reports for Guinea >

Political History

On Oct. 2, 1958, by public referendum, The Republic of Guinea was the first French-African colony to opt out of the French colonial system.  After achieving independence, Guinea experienced 26 years of authoritarian rule by Sékou Touré, who crushed all dissent, using torture, imprisonment without charge, and extrajudicial killings.  When Touré died in office in 1984, fully one-third of the population (2 million people) was living in exile.  Colonel Lansana Conté took power in 1984 in a coup d'état, beginning 24 more years of increasingly authoritarian rule, despite the introduction of nominally democratic presidential elections in 1993, 1998, and 2003.  These elections, like the two legislative elections that took place under his rule, were widely considered to have been rigged, and all major opposition parties boycotted the 2002 legislative and 2003 presidential elections.

In December 2008, Conté, too, died in power. Captain Moussa Dadis Camara led a junta that took power in another coup several hours after the announcement of Conté's death.  Because the coup was bloodless and was led by younger officers who promised not only to usher in a new generation of leaders but also to do away with the corruption and nepotism of the prior regime, many Guineans initially welcomed it. However, the new president soon showed himself avid for power, and by April 2009, many Guineans had begun to doubt Camara's initial promises to turn power over to civilians via elections by the end of the year. Camara's increasingly erratic behavior was accompanied by a rising incidence of abuses of civilians by the armed forces, who roamed the streets of Conakry stealing cars, robbing gasoline stations and banks, and raping Guinean women and girls with total impunity. Read full text >