Presidential elections – Second round results: the way to a decisive recount again

Any reenactment of the national crisis which followed the year 2002’s electoral controversy might well be unwanted, remains however a possibility. In the run of this presidential election, the finalist candidates admitted to compete in the second round have deployed a wide network deemed to collect vote counting results from namely all of the island’s polling stations. And both networks seem to prove much faster than the Electoral Commission’s machinery.

Hery Rajaonarimampianina and his headquarters were the first ones to rejoice, for clearly leading the way by 60 to 70% in more than ten regions of the island. Andry Rajoelina’s champion is ahead in 17 regions in all. Still, Jean Louis Robinson and the Ravalomanana political sphere remain more than ecstatic for claiming hands down 5 regions, but 5 of the most populated ones on the island.

Early psy ops in progress about the release of electoral results
Each candidate keeps claiming outright victory with a 20 points lead, namely by 60% to 40%. For the sake of fairness, it feels necessary to outline that neither of their respective staffs have yet completed the muster of all results delivered from the vote cast on December 20th 2013, let alone the Electoral Commission. Spirits however have to be kept up at any rate, for victory is said to belong to the one who wants it the most, is it not?
Still, the scene of two competing parties claiming victory at a time looks like a terrible mess, does it not? Candidate Jean Louis Robinson repeatedly emphasizes his victory to be confirmed by his staff’s assessment, and blamed public channels for arguably exclusively reporting the ruling power’s candidate’s successes.

The Electoral Commission promises an incoming recount
The CENIT, the local Electoral Commission, was compelled to get a move on to referee the developing psychological warfare. Beatrice Atallah, the commission’s president, called upon both candidates to refrain from early victory claims and from releasing alternative results as long as the Electoral Commission is not done with its results tabulation process. The temporary score board displays results from 12 452 polling stations out of 20 001 by now. Hery Rajaonarimampianina is awarded the lead with 51.48% of the votes against 48.52% for Jean Louis Robinson. 80 000 votes make the temporary gap as we speak. The national voter turnout amounts to 50.40%

Candidate Jean Louis Robinson already raised strong concerns about widespread electoral frauds ranging from alleged misrecordings of votes, result manipulations and vote hardware tampering. He consequently carried on with calling upon the Electoral Commission to immediately call the on going tabulation of results off. Such an interruption is not allowed by the Electoral Regulations, declared Beatrice Atallah. Still, she invited any complaining candidate to feel free to put evidences forth.

The Electoral Commission finally declared itself willing to proceed to a comparison of official results polling precinct after polling precinct with those computed by the finalist candidates’ staffs. The Commission is keen on preventing any rejection of results likely to be resulting in outbreak of violence, as it did back in 2002. The Commission did its homework well, did it not? Yet, considering that the Electoral Commission remains just as so keen on releasing final results before January 7th 2014, any pending comparison of results is likely to be little more than incomplete