DJIBOUTI, 9 April 2005— Police in Djibouti fired tear gas at hundreds of demonstrators protesting against the presidential election yesterday, in which incumbent Ismail Omar Guelleh is the sole candidate.
Gathering outside the headquarters of the main opposition coalition, the Union of Democratic Alliance, protesters accused the government of suppressing democracy in the tiny but strategically important Horn of Africa country.
“We would rather die standing than follow on our knees”, one banner said. Police quickly moved to disperse the rally, which also called for a boycott of the poll, residents said. Police said no one was hurt in the skirmish.
Closely related to founding President Hassan Gouled Aptidon through the Somali Issa clan, Guelleh became Djibouti’s second president since independence from France in 1977, after winning a 1999 election.
His sweeping victory was widely regarded as fair by international observers. But a parliamentary election in 2003, in which Guelleh’s Union for Presidential Majority took every seat, was marred by criticism that voting was rigged. “I regret having no opponent,” Guelleh told Le Figaro newspaper in an interview published yesterday.
“I accuse the opposition of not having the courage to give voters the right to choose between several candidates,” he was quoted as saying.
About 197,000 of Djibouti’s 700,000 people were registered to vote in the desert country, sandwiched between Eritrea and Somalia at the mouth of the Red Sea.
Guelleh has campaigned hard for a second six-year term, focusing his electoral issues on development in a country that relies heavily on imports, transparency in local administration and women’s rights.
Since 2002, the former French colony has hosted US troops using Djibouti as a base to hunt down the kind of militants who, in 1998, blew up US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people.
A US State Department report this year criticized Djibouti for “serious” human rights abuses, noting that the government had limited their citizens’ rights to change their government.
Opposition was suppressed by control of the state media and unlawful arrests of critics, the report said.
Months after the election which catapulted Guelleh to power in 1999, his opponent Moussa Ahmed Idris in the presidential race was arrested and jailed on charges of rebellion and acts of violence. Idris had accused the government of rigging the poll.
