Conde wins Guinea poll

GUINEA: Alpha Conde's lifelong battle against a series of despotic and military regimes has landed him in exile and in prison, and now a final push for power has led to the 72-year-old winning the nation's top job.

The veteran opposition politician was Monday announced the winner in Guinea's first democratic election since gaining independence from France in 1958 after garnering 52.52 percent of votes in a tight race against former Premier Cellou Dalein Diallo.

A slender man who walks with a slight limp, Alpha Conde defends the values of the left, but while he remains closed-mouthed with the press he is a skilled public speaker who knows how to work an audience.

Both his allies and critics acknowledge his charisma and intelligence, but he is also described as authoritarian and impulsive, someone who rarely listens to others and often acts alone.

Those who support him consider him untainted, a "new man" who has never had the opportunity to "participate in the looting of the country." Born on March 4, 1938, in Boke in Lower Guinea, Conde comes from the Malinke tribe which is mostly found in the Upper Guinea.

After a first round of voting Conde was in the run-off with ex-prime minister Diallo, from the Fulani tribe, pitting the country's two ethnic majorities against each other.

However the change in the race, and new alliances, appeared to have gone in Conde's favour, after his rival was initially declared the poll favourite having won 43 percent to his 18 percent in the first round. In Conakry, one of Diallo's supporters accuses Conde of having "played with fire" on the issue of ethnicity during the campaign, when he lambasted the "Fulani Mafia."

Conde left to France at age 15 to study, later graduating with degrees in economics, law and sociology. He went on to teach at the prestigious Sorbonne University in Paris.

In the 1960s he ran the Federation of Black African students in France and led a movement opposing the dictatorial regime of Ahmed Sekou Toure, Guinea's first president after independence from France in 1958.

Sekou Toure condemned Conde to death in absentia in 1970.

During an exile of some 30 years, Conde nourished ties with several personalities including then French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner.

Conde returned to Guinea seven years after Sekou Toure's death in 1991.

President Lansana Conte, who seized power in a coup, legalised political parties, allowing Conde to take part in elections in 1993 and 1998, both widely criticised as being rigged. Conakry, Tuesday, AFP