Djibouti’s President\u00a0Ismael Omar Guelleh\u00a0has won re-election with 97.8% of the vote, \u200cstate-owned Radio Television Djibouti said on Saturday, handing him a sixth term that extends his 27-year rule over the small but strategically located East African country.<\/p>\n
Guelleh posted an image of himself with \u200bthe French word “R\u00c9\u00c9LU” on X, which translates to “re-elected”.<\/p>\n
The country of less than \u200b1 million people sits on the Gulf of Aden at the entrance \u2060to the Red Sea and hosts U.S., Chinese, French, Italian and Japanese military \u200bbases. Since 2023, several commercial ships\u00a0damaged\u00a0in attacks by Yemen’s\u00a0Houthi militants have docked in the \u200bcountry.<\/p>\n
Victory for the 78-year-old Guelleh, who was handpicked in 1999 to succeed his uncle Hassan Gouled Aptidon and whose party dominates national institutions, was never in doubt.<\/p>\n
Last October, parliament voted to remove \u200bthe 75-year age limit for presidential candidates and also scrapped a referendum previously required \u200bto approve a new constitution.<\/p>\n
TWO MAIN OPPOSITION PARTIES BOYCOTTED ELECTION<\/strong><\/p>\n In Friday’s vote, Guelleh faced a lone \u200copposition \u2060candidate, Mohamed Farah Samatar, from a small party with no representation in parliament.<\/p>\n Two of the main opposition parties have boycotted elections since 2016, accusing election authorities of lacking impartiality.<\/p>\n Data from state-owned media showed that there was voter turnout of 80.4%. In the last \u200belection in 2021, \u200bGuelleh won with\u00a0over 97%\u00a0\u2060of the vote.<\/p>\n In contrast to several other Horn of Africa nations, Djibouti has been relatively stable in recent years, and Guelleh’s \u200bgovernment has invested heavily in port infrastructure to become the \u200bmain gateway \u2060to landlocked Ethiopia.<\/p>\n But human rights groups accuse the Djiboutian authorities of repressing political opponents, activists and journalists. The government has denied allegations of widespread abuses and rejected criticism of the \u2060electoral \u200bprocess.<\/p>\n In 2020, security forces quelled rare anti-government street protests, \u200bwhich erupted after the arrest of a former air force pilot who had denounced alleged corruption and \u200bclan-based discrimination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Djibouti’s President\u00a0Ismael Omar Guelleh\u00a0has won re-election with 97.8% of the vote, \u200cstate-owned Radio Television Djibouti said on Saturday, handing him a sixth term that extends his 27-year rule over the small but strategically located East African country. Guelleh posted an image of himself with \u200bthe French word “R\u00c9\u00c9LU” on X, which translates to “re-elected”. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20475,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":18,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33],"tags":[452,5026],"class_list":["post-20474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-djibouti","tag-ismael-omar-guelleh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20476,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20474\/revisions\/20476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}