Globalaffairs

Issue 3/ June-July 2007
By Aurora M. Alcojor

The 15th of November 2006, the Guinean dictator Teodoro Obiang visited Spain and he was received by the president of the Government, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, with whom he maintained a meeting for almost one hour and a half. During the same visit, the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miguel Angel Moratinos, assured that - as it was showed in several journals - the duty of Spain is to help, accompany and boost Equatorial Guinea in its reforms independently of the opinion of certain sectors of the Spanish society. The leader of the Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy also met the dictator and assured that the gestures - of Guinea for the democratic reforms- are in the right direction but they are clearly insufficient. Meanwhile the rest of parliamentary groups were trying to block the reception of the dictator in the Congress and his signature in the book of honour. On the other hand, the dictator committed President Zapatero to releasing all political prisoners but he did not fix a deadline for such target.

Teodoro Obiang has been governing Equatorial Guinea – the only country in Africa where the Spanish is the official language - 27 years since the 3rd of April 1979 leaded a coup against his uncle, the also dictator Francisco Macías Nguema. Since then he has won all elections held in the country with percentages close to 100%, he has eliminated all opposition or has convinced them to go over to his party and he and his family have become wealthy. But this is not enough to condemn his policy and to press for political changes.

As for economy, it is enough to take a look to the ‘Money Laundering and Foreign Corruption’ Report (15TH July 2004) prepared by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the US Senate. The mentioned report, extensively documented, available online and in Spanish, says ‘in 1995, Riggs Bank opened its first Embassy accounts for Equatorial Guinea, a small country on the west coast of Africa. Over the next eight years, the bank opened nearly 50 additional accounts and a dozen certificates of deposit for not only the government of Equatorial Guinea (E.G.), but also a host of E.G. senior government officials and their family members. By 2003, the E.G. account had become the bank’s largest single relationship, with balances and outstanding loans that together approached $700 million’. The document also assures ‘Riggs opened multiple personal accounts for the President of Equatorial Guinea, his wife and other relatives; helped establish offshore shell corporations’ and ‘on two of those occasions, Riggs accepted without due diligence $3 million in cash deposits for an account opened in the name of the E.G. President’s offshore shell corporation, Otong, S.A.’.

Just to cite some irregularities the report points out ‘a number of substantial payments that had been made by oil companies doing business in Equatorial Guinea to individual E.G. officials, their family members, or entities controlled by these officials or family members’. Sometimes these payments were over one million dollars and they were justified as ‘Embassy expenses, in-country security services, or expenses for E.G. students studying abroad’. In total, tens of bank accounts for the most unlikely projects were not closed – by the bank – until July 2004 –a month before the publication of the report due to pressure by many national and international organisms that were informed about the issue by the Committee.

The journalist Pablo Pardo explained in ‘El Mundo’ (16th of July 2004) based on CIA calculations of Guinean economy – the IMF does not publish statistics of this country because in the 90’s the country did not pay to this organism several credits – ‘the Obiang family and relatives have in Riggs deposits equivalent to 58% of the GDP of the country’. Pardo also states that according to the same data ‘these funds could pay three times the external debt of Guinea estimated at 248 million dollars by the CIA four years ago (in 2000)’

This is another proof of the rampant corruption that afflicts Equatorial Guinea and it ratifies the idea that the government of Malabo is a real familiar regime: the main State positions are held by relatives of the dictator who is from Mongomo district. According to Alicia Campos Serrano, researcher of the Carlos III University of Madrid, in an article published the 14th of January 2004 in the ‘Nova Africa’ magazine, in the first months of power ‘Nguema was replacing the nationalist elite that carried out the decolonization with members of his clan. Since then the essential condition to participate in the first power circle was belonging to the Nguema family’ that was, in the words of Campos ‘the kidnapping of the State by a small elite’.

These data are common knowledge but no measure has been taken against Obiang and his regime, this gives an idea of the situation of the country since 1995, when oilfields were discovered. In the country corruption, electoral fraud and violation of political rights are usual news.

The next elections –local, legislative and presidential – are planned in 2009 but according to some sources they could be advanced. In the last elections held in April 2004, the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) won 98% of the vote. In December 2002 the second presidential elections were held after the constitutional reform in 1991 that recognized officially the multi-party system, despite this reform Obiang won 97,7% of the vote. By the way, the Constitution states that the Chief of the State is inviolable during and after his mandate.

In order to face this situation the Government of Equatorial Guinea in Exile leaded by the controversial dissident Severo Moto was created in Spain. According to him ‘The Convergence for Social Democracy (CPDS) is the only opposition force in the country that was being reduced to the simple critiques of the rest of parties in the exterior, they were warned to renounce to old stories and to accept the poisoned offers made by Obiang Nguema (Parliamentary seats and maybe a governmental post). The opposition could not finish. It was necessary to overcome the situation. The solution was an Equatorial Guinean Government in exile where the destructive force of Obiang Nguema could not reach them so easily and an opposition that could maintain the illusions of our people. On the other hand, the situation of tyranny of Obiang was based on arrests, imprisonments, tortures, unfair trials and deaths in the rotting prisons of the country’.

Alicia Campos Serrano corroborates this opinion: ‘arbitrariness and fear present in daily trials are the main elements of power practice’. According to Campos ‘when a person decides to become part of the official opposition to the government, the personal cost of that decision – loss of work, social ostracism and physical repression – is not only suffered by him/her but by all relatives’. The pressure is huge and reaches all regions because it is a sparsely populated country, over half a million people and 95,000 people live in Malabo, the capital.

According to Campos ‘the visit of ministers and Obiang to the main prison of the country is unusual (…) sometimes they want to offer to the opposition members, who have been tortured, the possibility to become a part of the political machine of the State and Government’.

Due to this situation and to the fact that Guinea is historically linked to Spain, both political parties and mass media, and social organizations should get involved in the reality of this African country.

As it is known, Guinea became independent from Spain the 12th of October 1968 and Macias Nguema established a dictatorship. A decade after, the 3rd of August 1979, a coup, promoted by his own nephew Obiang Nguema, brought the dictatorship of Nguema to an end.

At the beginning, both the people and the international society saw a saviour in Obiang, he was seen as a man going to change the situation of his country. In 1980 who was the Spanish minister of Foreign Affairs between 1982 and 1985, Fernando Morán, wrote in the book ‘A Foreign Policy for Spain’: ‘the coup that overthrew the tyrannical regime of president Macias was the hope for the potential construction of a nationality adapted to the conditions of this African culture and that will allow the modernization and progress for people’. In fact, his people and foreign countries were hopeful about him. It seemed possible for a time but the new president denied it. As stated by Albert Sánchez Pinol, author of the book ‘Clods and monsters’ ‘one of the most remarkable skill of Obiang was to multiply the democratization gestures but democratizating nothing’.

Nguema was a soldier educated in the Academy of Saragossa who played an important role in the Macias’ dictatorship as person in charge of Bioko islands (the old Fernando Poo). Eight years after his arrival to power, he decided to establish a particular system of democracy very widespread in Africa: one party system. In Guinea, the elected party was the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) that will ‘embody the feeling of Guinean people’ –according to Nguema- and in 1989 was the only party in the presidential elections where the dictator was re-elected with 97% of the vote.

In the 90’s the situation changed due to pressure of rich countries that established conditions for aid, one of these conditions was the existence of a democratic system in the countries receiving aid. Thus, in 1991 the new constitution allows a multi-party system but Nguema still continue winning the elections with percentages close to 100%.

Just five years later, oil is found in Guinea and the country became important at international level, pressures decreased and Obiang became a protected dictator by rich countries.

Aurora M. Alcojor
Journalist

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