Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh has won a landslide victory in an election criticised by opposition parties and rights groups.<\/p>\n
Officials said Mr Guelleh won 87% of Friday’s vote, which activists complained was preceded by political repression and curbs on basic freedoms.<\/p>\n
Mr Guelleh, in power since 1999, begins a fourth five-year term in power.<\/p>\n
He faced five rivals in the election, but three opposition parties boycotted the poll.<\/p>\n
The opposition complain of police brutality and media bias under Mr Guelleh’s rule.<\/p>\n
“The people of Djibouti have again entrusted me with the state’s highest office,” Mr Guelleh, 68, said in a speech on national TV.<\/p>\n
Djibouti’s strategic position on the Gulf of Aden means that it is home to US and French military bases.<\/p>\n
The country is also seen as relatively stable in a region which includes Somalia, where the government does not control the whole country, and Yemen, where there is a civil war.<\/p>\n
Observers say this explains the muted criticism of President Guelleh from the West.<\/p>\n
Some 180,000 people were eligible to vote, around a fourth of the population.<\/p>\n
The opposition were angry that the president rescinded his earlier decision not to seek another term.<\/p>\n
His main rival, representing the opposition Union for National Salvation (USN) coalition, was Omar Elmi Kaireh, a Djibouti independence hero.<\/p>\n
He came second, with 7%, according to provisional results announced by Interior Minister Hassan Omar.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh has won a landslide victory in an election criticised by opposition parties and rights groups. Officials said Mr Guelleh won 87% of Friday’s vote, which activists complained was preceded by political repression and curbs on basic freedoms. Mr Guelleh, in power since 1999, begins a fourth five-year term in power. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=205517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=205517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=205517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=205517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}