President secures re- election

PRESIDENT Roch Kabore has won re- election by a comfortable margin, preliminary results showed yesterday, after an election marred by insecurity that prevented swathes of the West African country from voting.

Some analysts had expected a closer contest on Sunday between Kabore, who was elected in 2015, and his main rivals, who argued he had failed to contain Islamist and ethnic violence that forced 1 million people to flee their homes during his first term.

The results read out by the election commission showed Kabore won 57.87% of the vote. He needed over 50% to avoid a second round.

His two closest rivals, Zephirin Diabre and Eddie Komboigo, got 12.46% and 15.48%, respectively.

Kabore’s opponents had raised concerns about the validity of the vote count. But the electoral commission has dismissed those and an international observer mission gave the election a mostly clean bill of health.

The commission began announcing results from additional voting districts late on Wednesday afternoon.

Opposition objections to the count complicate an election already troubled by threats from Islamist militants.

Hundreds of thousands of citizens were unable to cast ballots on Sunday because their polling stations were closed for fear of violence.

The election commission had paused announcing results on Monday when five opposition representatives from the 15- member commission voiced concern that some districts had not produced manual vote tallies to accompany electronic ones, as required by law.

The five commissioners did not show up for work on Tuesday but returned on Wednesday, even as they questioned the validation of results in their absence.

"Public opinion and political actors will judge the scope and validity of such validations and proclamations," they said in a statement.

An observer mission from the Economic Community of West Africa States announced on Wednesday that the election was peaceful and largely free of incident.