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Central African Republic President Faustin Archange Touadera is on track to win last weekend’s election, his party said Thursday, a day after the opposition called for the vote to be canceled.
“The trends … point to a first-round victory for Professor Touadera, reflecting the renewed legitimacy that people have conferred on our candidate,” his campaign manager, Simplice Mathieu Sarandji, said at a press conference.
A powerful coalition of opposition groups said on Wednesday that the vote in the violence-ravaged country had been highly flawed and called for its “cancellation, pure and simple.”
Sarandji said that the electoral and judicial bodies can be trusted.
“No candidate has the right to go through unofficial channels to request that the elections be canceled and held again,” he said at the headquarters of the United Hearts Movement (MCU) party in Touadera.
The elections, held last Sunday for the presidency and the legislature, are seen as a key test of stability for the Central African Republic.
The landlocked country is one of the poorest in the world and one of the most volatile, and has suffered a series of coups and wars since gaining independence from France in 1960.
In 2013, it turned into bloodshed once again when then-president Francois Bozize, who had taken power a decade earlier, was toppled by a mostly Muslim coalition called Seleka.
Touadera, who was elected in 2016 after a turbulent transition after the coup, is the favorite in the packed field of 16 candidates.
But his government controls only about a third of the country, and militia groups that emerged from the conflict in 2013 control the other two-thirds.
Map of the Central African Republic. By (AFP) On Wednesday, the Coalition of Democratic Opposition (COD-2020), an alliance of political and other groups, said the elections “were not fair and inclusive and are in no way the expression of the will of the people.”
Condemning an “electoral farce,” he claimed a large number of voters and complained about the lack of observers.
According to official figures, voting did not take place in 29 of the 71 sub-prefectures of the country (subdivisions of large administrative districts), and only partially in another six.
In many areas, militia groups hampered the organization of elections and intimidated voters, according to local leaders and UN workers who asked not to be identified.
Additionally, thousands of people were unable to vote or never received their voting cards due to lack of security.
Interim results are expected from January 4, but final results are not expected before January 18. A second round will be held on February 14 if there is no outright winner in the first round.
