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Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
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Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (born June 5, 1942) has been the President of Equatorial Guinea since 1979.
Born into the Esangui clan in Acoacán, Obiang joined the military during the colonial period, and attended the Military Academy in Zaragoza, Spain. He achieved the rank of lieutenant upon the election of Francisco Macías Nguema.
Presidency
He deposed Francisco Macías on August 3, 1979 in a bloody coup d'état.
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Encyclopedia
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (born June 5, 1942) has been the President of Equatorial Guinea since 1979.
Born into the Esangui clan in Acoacán, Obiang joined the military during the colonial period, and attended the Military Academy in Zaragoza, Spain. He achieved the rank of lieutenant upon the election of Francisco Macías Nguema.
Under Macías
Obiang held various jobs, including governor of Bioko, head of the Black Beach Prison, and leader of the National Guard.
Presidency
He deposed Francisco Macías on August 3, 1979 in a bloody coup d'état. Macías was executed a few weeks later on 29 September. Obiang declared that the new government would make a fresh start from the repressive measures taken by Macías' administration. He inherited a country with an empty treasury and a population that had dropped to a third of its 1968 level, when about 50% of the former 1.2 million inhabitants moved either to Spain or to neighboring African countries. He formally assumed presidency in October 1979.
A new constitution was adopted in 1982; at the same time, Obiang was elected to a seven-year term as president. He was reelected in 1989 as the only candidate. After other parties were permitted to organize, he was reelected in 1996 and 2002 in elections condemned as fraudulent by international observers.
Obiang's regime retained clear authoritarian characteristics even after other parties were legalized in 1991. Most domestic and international observers consider his regime to be one of the most corrupt, ethnocentric, oppressive and undemocratic states in the world. Equatorial Guinea is now essentially a single-party state, dominated by Obiang's Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE). In 2008 American journalist Peter Maass called Obiang Africa's worst dictator, worse than Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. The constitution grants Obiang wide powers, including the power to rule by decree. Nonetheless, Obiang has far less power than Macías, and for the most part his rule has been considerably milder. Notably, there have been none of the atrocities that characterized the Macías era.
All but one member of the 100-seat national parliament belong to the PDGE or are aligned with it. The opposition is severely hampered by the lack of a free press as a vehicle for their views. Around 90% of all opposition politicians live in exile, 550 anti-Obiang activists have been jailed unfairly, and several killed since 1979.
In July 2003, state-operated radio declared Obiang to be a god who is "in permanent contact with the Almighty" and "can decide to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to hell." He personally made similar comments in 1993. Despite these comments, he still states that he is a devout Catholic and was invited to the Vatican by John Paul II and again by Benedict XVI. Macías had also proclaimed himself a god.
Obiang has encouraged his cult of personality by ensuring that public speeches end in well-wishing for himself rather than for well-wishing for the republic. Many important buildings have a presidential lodge, many towns and cities have streets commemorating Obiang's coup against Macías as well as there being a penchant among the population to wear clothes with his face printed on them.
Like his predecessor and other African dictators such as Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Seko, Obiang has assigned to himself several creative titles. Among them are "gentleman of the great island of Bioko, Annobón and Río Muni." He also refers to himself as El Jefe (the boss).
In similar fashion to Idi Amin, Obiang has purportedly allowed rumors that he is a cannibal to circulate. Cannibalism had been practiced for centuries among the Fang people of Central and West Africa, of which Obiang is a descendant. Many testimonies of former residents of Equatorial Guinea, before and during the civil unrest, indicate that cannibalism had been applied as a tool of warfare.
President Obiang is the Vice President of the International Parliament for Safety and Peace (see ).
Forbes magazine has said that he is one of the wealthiest heads of state, with a net worth of 600 million dollars. Official sources have complained that Forbes is wrongly counting state property as personal property.
In 2003, Obiang told his citizenry that he felt compelled to take full control of the national treasury in order to prevent civil servants from being tempted to engage in corrupt practices. To avoid this corruption, Obiang deposited more than half a billion dollars into accounts controlled by Obiang and his family at a bank in Washington, D.C., leading a U.S. federal court to fine the bank $16 million.
2004 coup attempt
In March 2004, Obiang announced that there was a complex plot to overthrow him that allegedly involved the intelligence services of the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain, and Mark Thatcher and Simon Mann.
Shortly after 15 people were arrested in Equatorial Guinea in connection with a possible coup attempt, an airplane landed in Harare, Zimbabwe, and was promptly detained by authorities. This story was used for the 2006 UK film Coup!.
The Zimbabwean government claimed that the aircraft was carrying armed white mercenaries who were heading to Equatorial Guinea with the aim of toppling Obiang's government.
However, the American-based operator of the plane maintained that the men were en route to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to guard commercial mining interests for JFPI Corporation.
President Obiang charges that various Western governments wanted to install the head of Equatorial Guinea's government-in-exile, Severo Moto Nsá, as president.
A man that Equatoguinean media identified as the leader of the mercenaries, Nick du Toit, said he had not intended to kill Obiang, but had hoped to force him into exile.
Relations with Washington
Equatorial Guinea's relations with the United States entered a cooling phase in 1993, when then-ambassador John E. Bennett was accused of practicing witchcraft at the graves of 10 British airmen who were killed when their plane crashed there during World War II. Bennett departed after receiving a death threat at the U.S. Embassy in Malabo in 1994; in his farewell address, he publicly named the government's most notorious torturers – including Equatorial Guinea's current Minister of National Security, Manuel Nguema Mba. No new envoy was appointed, and the embassy was closed in 1996, leaving its affairs to be handled by the embassy in neighboring Cameroon.
Things started to turn around after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, in the aftermath of which the United States sought a radical reprioritization in its dealings with key African states. On January 25, 2002, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, a Jerusalem-based think tank, sponsored a forum on “African Oil: A Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development” at the University Club in Washington, DC. According to the Institute, "West African oil is what can help stabilize the Middle East, end Muslim terror, and secure a measure of energy security. First, the Africa Initiative is Africa's Turn. And, turning Africa can help turn the kaleidoscope that will reset misalliances and unseat misrule driven by oil and murder. It's a policy". Speaking at the IASPS forum, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter H. Kansteiner said, "African oil is of national strategic interest to us, and it will increase and become more important as we move forward. It will be people like you who are going to develop that resource, bring that oil home, and try to develop the African countries as you do it."
In a lengthy state visit from March to April 2006, President Obiang sought to reopen the closed embassy, claiming that "the lack of a U.S. diplomatic presence is definitely holding back economic growth." President Obiang was warmly greeted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called him a "good friend", and Obiang himself was "extremely pleased and hopeful that this relationship will continue to grow in friendship and cooperation." The PR company of Cassidy & Associates may be partially responsible for this change in the relations between Obiang and the United States government. Since 2004, Cassidy has been employed by the dictator's government at a rate of at least $120,000 a month.
By October 2006, however, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had raised concerns about the proposal to build the new embassy on land owned by Mba himself, whom the United Nations Commission on Human Rights has accused of directly overseeing the torture of opponents of Obiang's regime.
Finances
Obiang had a close relationship with Washington DC-based Riggs Bank. He is said to have been welcomed by top Riggs officials, who held a luncheon in his honor. (Publicity regarding this relationship would later contribute to the downfall of Riggs.)
Succession
It is a common myth that Obiang is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, amongst other illnesses, he is reported to weigh as little as 50kg (110 lbs), and is said to be existing in agony. Robert Young Pelton interviewed Obiang in person in Bata during 2007 for his book research and confirmed these rumors as false and that according to Obiang he has a mild and controllable case of diabetes. His worsening medical condition demands he travel abroad twice a month. He also held a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in December 2005.
The issue of succession is dominating the country, with a political struggle within the Equato-Guinean elite. Obiang favors his son Teodorín Nguema Obiang. Another contender is Armengol Ondo Nguema.
External links
- , September 25, 2008
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- Slate.com
- , Alexander Smoltczyk, Der Spiegel, August 28, 2006.
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