Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea

The Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (Spanish: Partido Democrático de Guinea Ecuatorial, French: Parti démocratique de Guinée équatoriale, Portuguese: Partido Democrático da Guiné Equatorial, abbreviated PDGE) is the ruling political party in Equatorial Guinea. It was established by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo as the country's sole legal political organization on 11 October 1987.

Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea

Partido Democrático de Guinea Ecuatorial
Parti démocratique de Guinée équatoriale
Partido Democrático da Guiné Equatorial
PresidentTeodoro Obiang Nguema
Secretary-GeneralJerónimo Osa Osa Ecoro
Founded11 October 1987
HeadquartersMalabo, Equatorial Guinea
IdeologyAfrican nationalism
Authoritarianism
Militarism
Chamber of Deputies
99 / 100
Senate
70 / 70
Website
www.pdge-guineaecuatorial.com
Equatorial Guinea
This article is part of a series on the
politics and government of
Equatorial Guinea
Administrative divisions (provinces)

Despite the legalization of opposition parties in 1991, the PDGE has been the dominant party since its inception. In the 2004 parliamentary election, 98 of 100 seats were won by either PDGE members or "opposition" parties that support Obiang; in the 2008 parliamentary election, the PDGE and its allies won a total of 99 out of 100 seats.[1] In presidential elections, Obiang typically wins 95-99% of the vote, with the opposition regularly calling for boycotts.

The party has an extremely narrow base, which is the Esangui clan of the Fang tribe, located in the Mongomo region of Río Muni. Since independence in 1968, Equatorial Guinea has been ruled by a single family; the first president, Francisco Macías Nguema, was overthrown by his nephew, Obiang, in the 1979 coup d'état. The party has been criticized for acting in a very authoritarian manner and teaming up with the government to inform on political dissidents. The party is considered by the vast majority of international observers to be corrupt.

Stances

The PDGE has little in the way of a platform or guiding ideology other than support for Obiang. One of its few concrete policy stances is support of foreign investment in the oil sector. Some of the few other tenets of the PDGE are militarism and anti-separatism (which often amounts to Fang chauvinism).

The community leaders in all of rural Equatorial Guinea are strongly pressured to be members of the party, and also pressure citizens throughout their communities into joining.

Although almost all the highest placed political appointments are held by former soldiers, the core military force, the Army, remains somewhat underfunded in favour of naval and air-force maintenance. Government expenditures are equal to less than 10% of GDP, with military expenditures accounting for roughly 25-35% of that figure. The amount of the budget spent on schooling, healthcare and other such investments is in proximity to the military budget. The constitution guarantees that the government will have a monopoly in certain industries, although much has been done to privatise these industries, in similar fashion to the way oil drilling was privatised. The party also has a minister for women, and has in recent years pursued a female empowerment agenda.

Electoral history

Presidential elections
Election Party candidate Votes % Result
1989 Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo 99% Elected Y
1996 179,592 97.8% Elected Y
2002 204,367 97.1% Elected Y
2009 260,462 95.36% Elected Y
2016 271,177 92.70% Elected Y

Chamber of Deputies elections
Election Party leader Votes % Seats +/– Position Government
1988 Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo 99.2%
60 / 60
 60 1st Sole legal party
1993 54,589 69.8%
68 / 80
 8 1st Supermajority government
1999 156,949 85.5%
75 / 80
 7 1st Supermajority government
2004 99,892 49.4%
68 / 100
 7 1st Supermajority government
2008
99 / 100
 31 1st Supermajority government
2013
99 / 100
 1st Supermajority government
2017 92.00%
99 / 100
 1st Supermajority government

Senate elections
Election Party leader Votes % Seats +/– Position Government
2013 Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
54 / 70
 54 1st Supermajority
2017 92.00%
55 / 70
 1 1st Supermajority

Notes

15 members are appointed by the President

gollark: i.e. you can click "something.4" and go to the page for it.
gollark: For the monolith web docs, you should consider making it so that the links work.
gollark: The ones for drones are just blatantly wrong.
gollark: OC's docs *are* quite poor.
gollark: I'm using `warp`, which has nice HTTP combinatory things which are also glacially slow to compile, `sqlx`, which type-checks SQL queries at compile time but is also probably quite slow, and `horrorshow`, a compile-time HTML templating library.

References
  1. "Guinée équatoriale: le parti présidentiel grand vainqueur des législatives" Archived May 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, AFP, May 9, 2008 (in French).
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