After a hotly contested election process, a former Malagasy president, Andry Rajoelina has been declared winner in the presidential elections, beating his rival and predecessor, Marc Ravalomanana.
The first round of elections saw Rajoelina edging out Ravalomanana with 39 percent of the total votes calculated, while Ravalomanana had 35 percent. This result was then contested by Ravalomanana and his supporters, with allegations of fraud and illegal vote buying from both ends of the campaign. This led to a run-off between the two major players on the 19th of December, just before the holidays.
The turn-out for the December polls was disappointing with just over 48 percent of the 10 million registered voters in the country showing up at the polls to vote between the former leaders.
After taking 7 days to properly tally and assess the votes, the country’s official electoral agency, CENI, declared Rajoelina the winner of the elections with 55.66 percent of the votes against Ravalomanana’s 44.34 percent.
The announcement was made on Thursday by the president of the electoral commission, Hery Rakotomanana, in an event that had only Rajoelina in attendance.
The nation’s constitutional court has nine days to officially declare the final election results and, according to reports, former president Marc Ravalomanana has come forward to appeal the elections result at the nation’s top court
Accusing the electoral body of colluding with Rajoelina to commit acts of “massive fraud,” Ravalomanana made it known that he was unsatisfied with the final results, in a statement released by his campaign director, Anisoa Tseheno Rabenja.
In an extract gotten from News24, Rabenja noted that serial numbers were missing on some ballots, amongst other irregularities in the run-offs.
“The electoral commission facilitated the fraud committed by candidate 13, Andry Rajoelina.”
Rabenja also announced that his candidate has filed papers with the Constitutional Court, hours after the election results were announced saying: “We have filed several petitions today which concern anomalies and flaws at the level of the CENI during this election.”
It is important to note that both parties had previously said they would accept the run-off election results before it was announced.
Rajoelina and Ravalomanana have struggled for power with a bitter history between them.
Rajoelina was an incredibly dissenting voice against Ravalomanana back when he was still in power and, with the help of the military, facilitated a coup with resulted in Ravalomanana’s removal from power in 2009.
Taking over after the coup, the former mayor of the country’s capital of Antananarivo, struggled to navigate the murky waters of the country’s economy and seemed to fail woefully at addressing major issues.
Both parties (Rajoelina and Ravalomanana) however, decided not to run in 2013 mostly due to pressure from the international community.
While Ravalomanana’s campaign ran on the crux of his years of experience, the more outspoken Rajoelina focused on his youth and had a campaign trail filled with fireworks and popular faces.
