Madagascar high constitutional court begins verifying election

Madagascar High Constitutional Court (HCC) began its process on Monday to verify the validity of the presidential election on December 3 as vote counting was completed by Sunday evening.

The process began in all of 116 counties across the country immediately after the completion of the account, a senior HCC official told Xinhua on Monday.

It would last for 20 days and final result would be announced officially by HCC as soon as verification was over, said the chief of HCC secretariat, who gave his name only as Rauson.

The Interior Ministry announced Sunday evening that Marc Ravalomanana was re-elected as Madagascar's president for the next five years as vote counting was completed.

Ravalomanana had beaten 13 other challengers and won 54.8 percent of the votes in the election, according to a release by the Interior Ministry, which oversaw the vote counting.

A total of 4,521,267 voters, or 61.45 percent out of legitimate voters of 7,457,204, cast their votes across the Indian Ocean island country in the eighth election since its independence of France in 1960, the release showed.

Ravalomanana left his nearest rival Lahiniriko Jean, the former head of the National Assembly far behind, with only 11.68 percent of the votes.

All the results should be delivered to HCC, which has the right to confirm and announce the final results of the election, according to Madagascar's constitution.

During his election campaign, Ravalomanana, a charismatic dairy tycoon known as "the Milkman" in Madagascar, had promised a five- year development plan to reduce poverty, the dominant issue in a country where 70 percent of its 17 million people live on less than one dollar a day.

This is the eighth presidential elections since Madagascar's independence of France in 1960 and it would be the first that a sitting president was re-elected.

Source: Xinhua

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