Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera has won a second term in office.
The electoral commission announced the provisional results on Monday.
Touadera secured the win with 53.9% of the votes in the first round of voting, the National Election Authority said. Anicet-Georges Dologuele came second with 21.1% of the vote, and Martin Ziguele came in third with 7.4%, according to the results announced.
Last month’s election was marred by reports that rebel forces had attacked the city Bangassou a day before a disputed presidential election was announced.
The United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) released a statement on Twitter following the attack:
“#MINUSCA condemns in the strongest terms the attacks launched by armed groups against the towns of Damara (Ombella-M’Poko Prefecture) and Bangassou (Mbomou) on Saturday and Sunday, respectively,” the tweet read.
Since the beginning of his first term, Touadera has fought to keep control of areas of the country following Bozize’s ousting. Touadera strongly believes that Bozize is behind the slew of violent attacks.
“He’s the one who’s organizing this,” Touadera told DW. “They [the opposition] are the ones who provoked this violence. They mobilized the armed groups. They brought back violence … and now they want to burst in to [the capital] Bangui to destabilize.”
Bozize ruled the country from 2003 to 2013 before rebel forces seized the presidential palace, angered that he failed to keep his pledge to honor peace treaties.
In 2019, he returned to CAR to announce his presidential candidacy for the 2020 election, but the Constitutional Court of CAR ruled that Bozize did not satisfy the “good morality” requirement for candidates because of an international warrant and United Nations sanctions against him for alleged assassinations, torture and other crimes.
