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CONAKRY, June 27 (AFP) - After several postponements over the past two years, Guinea's general election will finally take place on Sunday against a backdrop of opposition calls for a boycott and the competing pull on voter's loyalties of football's World Cup final.

Both look set to have an adverse effect on turnout, with animosity to the ruling elite running high and the traditional African passion for football likely to keep many more at home, glued to their television sets to discover the outcome of Brazil's clash with Germany rather than making their voices heard over their own political future.

President Lansana Conte, 68, in power since 1984, seems assured of another victory for his Progress and Unity Party (PUP), with electoral pundits considering it a mere "formality" that the PUP will secure another five-year term following its victory in the last elections in 1995.

Eelections should have been held in 2000, but have been repeatedly put back for a variety of reasons, beginning with violent incursions into Guinea by forces from Liberia and Sierra Leone at the end of 2000.

There followed demands from donor nations that the vote be transparent, and calls from several opposition parties that it be boycotted because it was little more than a farce.

Now that the poll is to go ahead, it will do so "in an improved political climate", according to Interior Minister Moussa Solano, who warned potential 'trouble-makers' to steer clear of the west African country's long-delayed legislative vote.

He told reporters two weeks ago that he had information that "people with bad intentions" planned to spark unrest at the elections by attacking polling stations or preventing people from voting.

But he insisted the elections would take place in "an improved political climate", despite the boycott call by some political parties, adding that some 4.6 million Guineans are eligible to elect 114 lawmakers in 8,200 polling stations.

The main absentees will be the radical Guinean People's Rally (GPR), the second biggest political force in the country after it won 19 seats in 1995.

Its leader Alpha Conde, who was released from prison in May 2001 after spending two-and-a-half years in jail on charges of endangering state security and trying to kill Conte, is spearheading the boycott call.

He has joined forces with former prime minister Sidya Toure, an astute economist sacked by President Conte in 1999 over differences of political opinion and now head of the Union of Republican Forces (UFR), and the Union of Guinea Democratic Forces (UFDG) of Amadou Oury Bah in calling for voters to stay at home on Sunday.

All believe that the national electoral commission will be unable to prevent fraud on a massive scale and believe that the result is a foregone conclusion.

But moderate oppostion parties -- among them the Union for Progress and Renewal (UPR), led by Siradiou Diallo -- are against a boycott, which they say would hand power to Conte "on a plate".

Conte has presided over 18 years of economic austerity, implementing often painful social reforms demanded by international financial institutions in return for aid, but it is generally agreed that poor management, embezzlement, other fiscal fraud and corruption in general have left the country's economy in a poor state.

One economist, who like most of his compatriots was reluctant to disclose his identity, explained: "Guinea has everything you could want: its people, its nature, its climate, its land, its earth which is very rich in bauxite, iron, diamonds and gold, its interesting geographical sitation .... and yet 40 per cent of the seven million people live below the poverty line."

The international community, led by the European Union, have made it clear that future co-operation with Guinea was entirely dependent on "the democratic and open nature of the elections", but the EU has refused to either finance the vote or send official observers to monitor the poll.

Indeed, so far not a single regional or international body has agreed to get involved in observing the elections.

The rival attraction of the World Cup is another stumbling block, with one poll scrutineer telling Nampa-AFP he would not be at his post while the final was being played.

"If they want to hold elections from 2 pm to midngiht, all well and good, but before that, I won't be there," he said. - Nampa-AFP

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