# Guinea dissolves 40 parties in sweeping crackdown
Event date: 2026-03-07
Guinea has dissolved 40 political parties by decree, including the country’s three main opposition groups, in a sweeping move that further narrows political space under President Mamady Doumbouya.
The order came late on Friday and was made public over the weekend, according to AFP via France 24. Guinea’s minister of territorial administration and decentralisation said the parties had failed to fulfil their obligations. The decree also stripped them of control of their assets and placed those assets under sequestration.
Among the parties dissolved were the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea, led by exiled opposition figure Cellou Dalein Diallo; the Rally of the People of Guinea, associated with former president Alpha Condé; and the Union of Republican Forces. The decree said the parties immediately lost their legal personality and status, including the right to carry out political activity or use their acronyms, logos, emblems and other symbols.
The decision is part of a broader pattern. AFP said Doumbouya has ruled with an iron fist since taking power in a 2021 coup, banning protests and cracking down on civil liberties. Political opponents have been arrested, prosecuted, driven into exile or disappeared. Civil society groups described the latest decree as an autocratic power grab.
The move is also politically significant because Guinea has only recently returned to an electoral framework that still excludes many challengers. AFP said Doumbouya was elected in late December in a vote in which all major opposition leaders were barred. Guinea’s new constitution, approved in a referendum last September, allowed junta members including Doumbouya to stand for election and extended presidential terms.
The crackdown has not been limited to party structures. AFP reported that several relatives of an ex-minister and other opposition or exile-linked figures had been abducted in recent months, while two prominent pro-democracy activists have been missing since July 2024. That context makes the dissolution more than a bureaucratic enforcement action; it is part of a wider campaign that has pushed dissent into a narrower and riskier space.
For Guinea’s opposition, the immediate effect is practical as well as symbolic. Party offices, symbols and assets are now under state control, leaving the country’s most established opposition formations with fewer tools to organise publicly. For Doumbouya’s government, the decision sends the opposite message: the legal system will be used to redefine who gets to compete at all.
By IO Digest Desk
