Voting slow, calm in Madagascar's presidential election

ANTANANARIVO (AFP) - Voting has got under way slowly but calmly in Madagascar's presidential election in which incumbent Marc Ravalomanana was tipped as strong favourite out of 14 candidates.

Around seven million voters are due to cast their ballots in the first election since the poverty-stricken Indian Ocean island nation teetered on the brink of civil war after disputed polls five years ago.

Voting in the 17,500 polling stations spread over the vast island of 18 million people began peacefully, despite a campaign punctuated by unease and opposition complaints.

"The vote is very calm, like the end of the campaign," election observer and former Mauritian prime minister Paul Beranger told journalists on Sunday.

The run-up to this year's election has also been relatively tranquil compared to 2001 when Ravalomanana waged a bitter battle against ex-president Didier Ratsiraka.

But memories of post-electoral violence in 2002 still haunt Madagascans, and 100 foreign election observers, of which 52 are EU envoys, are to make sure that all goes fairly.

There are also 11,000 independent local observers and 3,200 observers of the national election committee.

Beranger said voting this time was slow and pointed out that in most polling stations he had visited there had been few opposition representatives, while presidential party officials "are everywhere".

In many polling stations, voting slips for four of the opposition candidates were missing because they could not afford to distribute them.

Voting was generally calm, although police broke up several minor incidents by trouble makers at voting stations in Tulear, in the southwest of the country.

Turnout was expected to swell around midday after the end of Sunday mass.

One of the few to turn out early to vote, 50-year-old shopkeeper Guy Rasoloarison, said he was disappointed by Ravalomanana's record so far, which "has not had the expected repercussions on daily life".

Another voter, 44-year-old restaurant manager Kolisoa Andrianahefalison, praised the outgoing president for building a road between the capital and her town some 300 kilometres (190 miles) away.

"It used to take three days to get to Ambatondrazaka, now it takes one day," she said.

None of Ravalomanana's rivals are credited with a real chance of ousting the president, who was once a milk delivery boy and today is Madagascar's richest man.

His 13 opponents include Herizo Razafimahaleo, a businessman who has already stood twice, Jean Lahiniriko, former president of the national assembly, and Roland Ratsiraka, nephew of the former president.

Voting stations opened at 7:00 am (0400 GMT) and were to close at 6:00 pm (1500 GMT), although these hours could be extended.

It will take at least three weeks for official results to be known.

If any one candidate fails to win an absolute majority in the first round, there will be a run-off pitting the two best-placed contenders against each other within 30 days of the first round result being published.

After the December 2001 vote, fighting erupted between Ravalomanana supporters and those of Ratsiraka, who lost the vote after 30 years in power, plunging this former French colony into violence which left dozens dead and dealt a serious blow to the economy.



by Lucie Peytermann

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IMF Executive Board Discusses the First Assessment of Eligible Countries under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

On December 21, 2005 the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) established the list of countries that qualify for debt relief from the Fund under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). Debt relief delivery, which could start as soon as January 3, 2005, is now conditional on getting the consents of all the contributors to the Subsidy Account of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) Trust, whose contributions help finance the Initiative. The MDRI will deliver debt relief from the Fund to qualifying members countries with an annual per capita income at or below US$380, and to countries above the threshold that have reached the completion point under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The implementation of the MDRI will reduce the external debt burden of a number of the world's poorest countries and will provide additional resources to help them reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Background The Executive Board appro...
Read more

Oil’s chaotic collapse deepens; stocks drop worldwide

Image
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices crumpled even further Tuesday, and U.S. stocks sank to their worst loss in weeks as worries swept markets worldwide about the economic carnage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The market’s spotlight was again on oil, where prices have plummeted because very few people are flying or driving, and factories have shut amid widespread stay-at-home orders. Global demand is set to drop to levels last seen in the mid 1990s. At the same time, oil producers can’t slow their production fast enough, and all the extra crude means storage tanks are quickly running out of room. The cost for a barrel of U.S. oil to be delivered in June plunged 43% to $11.57. That’s the part of the market that oil traders are focused on and trading most actively. For oil to be delivered next month, which is when storage tanks could top out, the cost of a barrel stood at $10.01. A day earlier, it fell below zero for the first time, meaning traders paid others to take oil off their hand...
Read more

Mapping Extreme Poverty Around the World A new report from the

Image
A new report from the  World Bank  just landed, finding that a record low of 10% of humanity now live in extreme poverty, down from 11% in 2013. But poverty rates aren’t anywhere close to equal between continents or even countries, as our new series of maps clearly demonstrates. The World Bank provides an in-depth explanation for its methodology, which you can find in Appendix A of the full report  here . We focused on the percentage of people in each country living below what the World Bank defines as extreme poverty, or $1.90/day. We’ll let the researchers defend this definition on their own, but there is one caveat to keep in mind. It can be extraordinarily difficult to collect reliable data from so many countries on a regular basis, and in fact we used the latest year in which numbers were available whenever possible. For example, in some of these maps we compare 2011 figures against 2015. In short, our maps provide the clearest possible apples-to-apples compa...
Read more