Central African Republic awaits final presidential vote results
February 19, 2016, 6:42 pm

There was no clear majority win for a candidate in the December ballot, sparking a runoff election held on February 14 [Xinhua]

While it is unclear when the electoral commission will release a final vote tally, preliminary indications appear to show former Prime Minister Faustin-Archange Touadera, who led the country from 2008 to 2013, may be gaining an early lead over his runoff rival Anicet-Georges Dologuele.

Dologuele is also a former prime minister, serving from 1999 to 2001

The runoff comes after no one gained a majority vote in December elections.

Initially, elections were scheduled for October 18, but interim President Catherine Samba-Panza postponed the ballot to December after an uptick in Christian-Muslim violence, which had been reduced when UN and African Union troops increased their presence in the country last year.

The elections were also held amid logistical hurdles – how to ensure that nearly a million displaced peoples fleeing the violence are given the opportunity to vote.

The United Nations estimates that there are over 450,000 mostly Muslim refugees who have since 2013 fled the civil war – which often took religious dimensions – to neighboring countries.

In July, the highest court in the Central African Republic labeled as unconstitutional a transitional parliament decision to bar thousands of refugees outside the country from voting in upcoming elections, and overturned it.

The court ruling came just over a week after the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) condemned the parliament’s decision.

The current crisis in CAR – a mineral rich nation of 4.6 million people – began when Seleka – a rebel amalgamation of several different factions – started moving toward the capital Bangui in March 2012, hoping to remove Francois Bozize, a military officer who seized power in 2003 and had been elected president twice since then.

The largely Muslim rebel group Seleka seized control of the Christian-majority country in the aftermath, and in some instances attacked and killed Christian civilians.

Early in January 2014, the country’s National Assembly selected Catherine Samba-Panza to be the next president replacing Michel Djotodia – a Muslim, and former Seleka comander – who fled the capital Bangui to Benin in early 2014.

His departure was marked by the increase of Christian militia attacks against Muslim citizens, claiming to be avenging crimes committed by the Seleka rebel militias in 2013.

In October 2014, the UN said that the capital Bangui had been almost entirely purged of its Muslim population.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies