CAR Party Calls for Manual Recount of First-round Votes

On Monday, the Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People (MLPC) party disclosed that a top candidate in presidential elections, Martin Ziguele, wants a manual recount of the first-round votes because of alleged irregularities.

According to the party, Ziguele, a former prime minister who came fourth out of thirty hopefuls in the 30 December vote, plans to go to the Constitutional Court in a bid to “demand a manual recount of the voting slips.” The party has accused the National Authority for Elections (ANE) of breaching the electoral code as it released figures “each day muddling up different (administrative districts) with varying rates of vote counting, rendering any checks and follow-up impossible.” Provisional first-round results have shown that former government heads Georges Dologuele and Faustin Archange Touadera are posed to face off for presidential office in the sound round on 31 January after leading the field. However Ziguele has argued that the jumbled release of results made it “impossible for each candidate to verify that all votes in their favor, constituency by constituency, polling station by polling station, have been fully taken into account.” A statement released by the MLPC further indicated that the party questioned “a sharp and unjustified fall in the number of votes” between partial results that were issued on 6 January and the full provisional figure, which was released the following day. According to the MLPC, around 230,000 votes went “uncounted and thus were not attributed to candidates.” The latest tensions surrounding the presidential elections come after a score of presidential candidates last week denounced alleged fraud in the election and called for a halt to the process. Eighteen of those candidates went on to jointly back Touadera, an outsider which they called “the only real political alternative.”