Counting is underway in Guinea after Sunday’s legislative and municipal elections.
The vote marks a new step towards the return of democratic rule after the 2021 coup that brought President Mamadi Doumbouya to power.
Seven million voters were eligible to elect 147 members of parliament.
But turnout was reportedly low in the capital Conakry and the central city of Labe. Most candidates were drawn from the presidential camp after the government dissolved the main opposition parties in March.
“I don’t even know who to vote for,” Mariatou Diallo, 18, told AFP as she cast her first-ever vote in a Conakry suburb. Alassane Barry, a 23-year-old student, said he did not know any of the candidates, calling them “unknown figures”.
One opposition party, the Democratic Front of Guinea (Frondeg), which placed second in the presidential election in December with a 6.6 percent vote share, denounced an assault on one of its candidates in the central town of Mamou. The party said that Abdoulaye Bademba Diallo was “attacked” in a restaurant on Saturday evening “by two hooded individuals” on a motorcycle.
The campaign unfolded peacefully but turnout is key in polls taking place just days after the major religious holiday of Eid al-Adha, when Guineans gather with their families
Critics urged people to boycott what they called “an electoral farce” that they said would only help establish “a new dictatorship.”
