Djibouti Holds Parliamentary Vote Amid Opposition Boycott

DJIBOUTI (AFP)--The poor but strategically important Red Sea state of Djibouti held a parliamentary election Friday with opposition parties boycotting the poll assailing it as undemocratic.

 

Only 65 candidates from a coalition loyal to President Ismael Omar Guelleh are running for the 65 seats in the legislature, and many voters haven't bothered to register.

 

By the time polling stations closed, officials said voting was smooth and described the turnout as modest. Counting started immediately but it wasn't immediately known when official results would be announced.

 

The boycott by the three main opposition parties follows a similar protest in the 2005 presidential vote in which Guelleh, in power since 1999, ran unchallenged.

 

Opposition parties won 38% of the vote in the last parliamentary polls in 2003 but this didn't translate into any seats under Djibouti's first-past-the-post electoral system.

 

"In practice, this is a one-party system," said Ismael Guedi Hared, one of the leaders of the opposition coalition, the Union for A Democratic Alternative.

 

Hared accused the government of rejecting demands for proportional representation "because it feels threatened" by growing social discontent in the country. "None of the democratic rules are respected," he said.

 

In an interview with AFP, Prime Minister Dileita Mohamed Dileita, who heads the list of the Union for the Presidential Majority, said proportional representation risked "upsetting the tribal balance" in Djibouti.

 

"We have the example of our neighbor Somalia and we don't want that," he said, referring to the strife and anarchy that has plagued Somalia since 1991.

 

But he said change will probably have to be envisaged in the future.

 

The largely desert Red Sea state, with a population of some 700,000, provides a key strategic base for French and U.S. troops in the Horn of Africa.

 

Suleiman Farah Lodon, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Renewal said turnout would be a key indicator of discontent with the government.

 

"If these elections today were free and transparent, the opposition would win. The abstention shows this," he says, adding in regional elections in 2006, only 20% turned up at the polls.

 
SOURCE: AFP, February 08, 2008