World's longest-serving ruler set for sixth term in Equatorial Guinea

Equatorial Guinea voted on Sunday, with President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo all-but certain of winning a record sixth term in a country with next to no opposition.

Obiang, 80, has been in power for more than 43 years -- the longest of any head of state alive today, monarchs excepted.

Voting is obligatory in the small West African country. 

"Voting is going well. Everything is normal," fridge repair man Norberto Ondo, 53, told AFP at a polling station in the Semu district of the capital, Malabo. 

"I expect this election to bring us prosperity," he said before polls closed early evening and counting began of the votes cast by a 427.661-strong electorate. 

First results are not expected until Monday at the earliest.

"We have peace," Jose Serafin Obiang Sima, a nurse in his 30s, told AFP. He said Equatorial Guinea was the only country in the region "where young people prosper".

The re-election of Obiang, who seized power in a coup in 1979, seems virtually assured in one of the most authoritarian and closed states in the world.

Running against him was Andres Esono Ondo -- from the only tolerated opposition party, the Convergence for Social Democracy -- and Buenaventura Monsuy...