Technical problems stop Madagascar vote count

Madagascar on Friday halted the release of partial results from weekend elections, which are expected to have been won by incumbent President Marc Ravalomanana, citing technical and computer problems.

The interior ministry said it had been forced to "temporarily suspend" the announcement of results from Sunday's polls so that engineers could fix equipment damaged by what it suspected was faulty electricity supplies.

"The release of partial provisional returns had been temporarily suspended to allow technicians to repair damaged computer equipment," said a notice posted by interior ministry officials.

It said repeated power surges may be to blame for the problems, which forced a stop to the announcements around 6am (03h00 GMT) and shut down the ministry's official website.

"We don't know yet when we will be able to start again," ministry official Lalao Rasamoely told AFP. "We have six technicians trying to fix it now."

The last results released late on Thursday had Ravalomanana with a still comfortable but declining lead of 56,4 percent of the vote with about 82 percent of the country's 17 000 polling stations reporting, the ministry said.

He needs more than 50 percent to avoid a run-off with next best-scoring candidate. Hopefuls for second place are Roland Ratsiraka, nephew of ex-president Didier Ratsiraka whom Ravalomanana ousted in the last election, and Jean Lahiniriko, a former speaker of parliament.

Ratsiraka had 10,4 percent of the vote and Lahiniriko 10,1 percent, according to the interior ministry.

Opposition candidates have complained about alleged fraud and irregularities in the election but international monitors have praised the exercise, the first since a turbulent post-vote period five years ago.

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