by Joseph Ngwawi – SANF 06 No 107
Counting of votes has started in the 3 December Madagascar presidential elections and final results are expected within 20 days of receipt of the tally from the last polling station.
Voting at the more than 17,000 polling stations across this Indian Ocean island closed at 6 p.m. (1500GMT) after a slow start, with voter turnout being affected by heavy rains that pounded parts of the country in the afternoon.
First results from Madagascar’s election, in the capital Antananarivo, show incumbent President Marc Ravalomanana well in front of all his rivals.
The provisional results from all 412 voting centres in the capital area gave Ravalomanana 70.1 percent of votes against 10.69 percent for his nearest challenger, former Prime Minister Norbert Lala Ratsirahonana.
The next strongest challenger after Ratsirahonana was Western-educated economist and businessman Herizo Razafimahaleo with 7.4 percent.
Fourteen candidates representing five of Madagascar’s six provinces are contesting the elections.
Ravalomanana will be elected outright if he takes more than 50 percent of votes across the world’s fourth biggest island. Otherwise a second round will be held 30 days after full results are published.
According to Madagascar’s constitution, the High Constitutional Court (HCC) is required to announce final results within 20 years of the counting of votes at the last polling station.
The responsibilities for election administration in Madagascar are divided among the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform (MIRA), the National Electoral Council (NEC) and the HCC.
MIRA is responsible for organising elections while the NEC is charged with the supervision and oversight of the electoral process. The HCC is responsible for the final verification and announcement of the results.
These are the third presidential elections since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1992 and it would be the first that a sitting president has won re-election if Ravalomanana emerges winner.
The previous two presidential polls have produced a new leader. In the 1992 polls, Albert Zafy defeated the incumbent, Didier Ratsiraka, a retired army officer who had ruled Madagascar since 1975.
Ratsiraka was voted back into power in 1996 after narrowly beating Zafy.
The last presidential election, contested in 2001, resulted in a dispute over whether the challenger, Ravalomanana, secured more than 50 percent of the vote and whether a runoff against incumbent, Ratsiraka, was necessary.
The impasse led to months of public strikes and protests in the capital and around the country. As the country drifted toward civil conflict, Ravalomanana declared himself the victor and held an inauguration on 22 February 2002.
He was inaugurated for a second time in May after a newly reconstituted HCC, announced that he had won just over 51 percent of the vote.
