Djibouti President Guelleh Wins Election With 98% Of Vote

Djibouti President Ismael Guelleh is set to extend his two decades in power after winning Friday’s vote, winning 98.58 percent of votes, according to provisional results.

This means Guelleh will be entering a fifth term in office although theoretically, it is Guelleh’s last term as a 2010 constitutional reform introduced an age limit of 75 and scrapped term limits.

The 73-year-old Guelleh who is the second president of Djibouti since independence from France in 1977, faced off against his only rival businessman Zakaria Farah, who won less than 5,000 votes.

Farah had sharply criticized the absence of his delegates from the polling stations, appearing to suggest that they had been barred from entering

Head of the African Union observation mission, Ahmed Tidiane Souare, told reporters on Friday that his team had not met any delegates of the opponent in the polling stations visited.

He however specified that this was not an obligation and that until then, everything was going well and calmly.

The final results will soon be given by the Constitutional Council.

Flanked by Somalia and opposite Yemen, Djibouti has remained stable in a volatile neighbourhood, drawing foreign military powers such as former colonial ruler France, the United States and China to establish bases there.