Comoran Vice President Mohamed Ali Soilihi, the ruling party’s presidential candidate on Saturday contested the vote results that gave victory to former coup leader Azali Assoumani.
“I do not recognize these results, which, according to me, are only partial,” said Soilihi, who is known as Mamadou.
The Comoros archipelago, situated between Madagascar and Mozambique, has been plagued with coups and political instability.
Colonel Assoumani, 57, won 40.98 percent of the April 10 vote, narrowly ahead of Mamadou with 39.87 percent, according to provisional results announced on Friday.
The outcome from the second-round vote was announced two days after the expected date.
The team of third-placed presidential candidate Grande Comore Governor Mouigni Baraka, who won 19 percent of the votes cast, also rejected the elections results, demanding “the annulment, pure and simple, of the presidential election.”
Polling day was peppered with incidents, notably on Anjouan, including broken ballot boxes, interruptions in voting, accusations of ballot stuffing and acts of violence.
Mamadou said that 23 of the 400 polling station on Anjouan, one of the three Comoros islands, were yet to announce their results, adding that the ballots cast there were likely to favor him.
Mamadou called for fresh elections in the affected areas.
The pre-election campaigning was marked by personal attacks and allegations of corruption between Mamadou and Assoumani, who was boosted by the support of the opposition Juwa Party, which had no candidate in the second round.
Mohamed El-Has Abbas, the minister in charge of elections, saidthat there had been “many incidents at Anjouan that had marred the voting,” but added that it was the job of the constitutional court to deal with any complaints and pronounce on the legality of the election.
However, Assoumani campaign director Said Ali Chayhane said the second round vote had gone well, “despite some irregularities in some [polling] stations, which did not put the election results in doubt.”
Assoumani first came to power in 1999 after ousting then-Comoran acting president Tadjidine Ben Said Massounde in a coup.
He then won the presidential election three years later, stepping down when his term ended in 2006.
The first-round vote took place only on Grand Comore island, in line with electoral rules to choose the president on a rotating basis from the three main islands.
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