Brazzaville | Thursday
CONGO’S President Denis Sassou Nguesso has been returned to office with 89,41% of the votes, Interior Minister Pierre Oba announced on Wednesday.
General Oba said the turnout in Sunday’s vote, where General Sassou Nguesso massively trounced his rivals, was 74,7% of an electorate of about 1,7-million, but the percentage of valid ballots cast was 69,36%.
However, Sassou Nguesso’s overwhelming victory was widely expected since his main opponents had withdrawn from the race in the oil-rich former French colony in central Africa, amid allegations of widespread fraud.
Oba, who was releasing the final but provisional official figures pending a High Court ruling confirming the outcome of the poll, commended the “serenity of the Congolese” people during the election.
“Voting took place in normal conditions of regularity and transparency in the constant presence of national and international observers, with the participation of representatives of the candidates,” he declared.
The other contenders to take part Joseph Kignoumbi Kia Mboungou, Angele Bandou, Luc Daniel Adamo Mateta, Come Manckassa and Bonaventure Mizidy Bavoueza took between one percent and 2,76% of the votes apiece, according to the interior ministry.
The main opposition candidate Andre Milongo, a former prime minister, pulled out of the race on Saturday and urged his supporters to boycott the election.
Sassou Nguesso last came to power after a 1997 civil war, when he ousted President Pascal Lissouba, during a decade which saw three violent conflicts.
Sunday’s vote was the first since 1992, when Lissouba beat Sassou Nguesso, then a Marxist, in the first-ever multi-party election in Congo, which became independent in 1960 and adopted single-party rule four years later.
Milongo accused the regime of engineering an “electoral hold-up” which could trigger a violent reaction from a population “hungry for change and transparency”.
Two other opposition candidates withdrew from the presidential contest before Milongo did, complaining of irregularities in the electoral process. – AFP