Comoros votes in presidential poll

Comoros voted in a presidential election yesterday, with incumbent Azali Assoumani saying he was confident of victory and the opposition claiming electoral fraud.
Several opposition figures on the Indian Ocean archipelago had urged voters to boycott the poll, in which five candidates are standing against 65-year-old Assoumani for the top job.
“There is confidence that I will win the first round. It is God who will decide and the Comoran people,” the president said after voting in his hometown of Mitsoudje, just outside the capital Moroni.
“If I win the first round, it will save time and money,” he added.
But the opposition candidates denounced “fraud” and “ballot box stuffing” in several localities, after voting got off to a delayed start. “As in 2019, we are witnessing an electoral fraud by Azali Assoumani with the army’s complicity,” Mouigni Baraka Said Soilihi told a news conference, alongside the other four opposition candidates.
Assoumani — who has jailed some critics and sent others into exile — dismissed reports of irregularities from the opening of the polls, saying he had “not heard about it”. “You need proof,” he said, adding that the low turnout was due to bad weather.