Central Africa Goes to Polls amid Fresh Violence

Voters in the Central African Republic (CAR) were called at pollibg centers, on Sunday, for presidential and legislative elections, amid erupted violence as the government tries to hold off a rebel advance.

UN peacekeepers and local and Rwandan soldiers were patrolling the streets throughout the capital, with armored vehicles posted outside voting places armed with machine guns, according to what AFP journalists have seen.

There was a delay of around 50 minutes before some polls stations in Bangui opened as voting materials had not been delivered on time.

“It's very important for me to be here, as a citizen. I think this vote will change our country, whoever the president will be,” teacher Hortense Reine said outside a voting place in Boganda secondary school in the city's east, where around 30 people were queueing.

The election came after a week of turbulence, as Militias hostile to President Faustin-Archange Touadera, who is seeking a second term, have stepped up attacks across CAR since the constitutional court rejected several candidates, including former President Francois Bozize earlier this month.

During the campaign trail, Touadera has been touting advances rebuilding state institutions, rejecting opposition calls to delay the polls for the election.

“There is no institutional crisis,” he said last week. “We must simply go on with the election.”

Touadera has struggled to control large areas of the resource-rich country since he was first elected in 2016, three years after a rebellion that ousted Bozize.

He has accused Bozize of stirring the violence which happened in CAR.

“He's the one who's organizing this,” he told DW. “They 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,” he added.

On his part, Secretary-General António Guterres urged all actors “to refrain from any action, including violence, hate speech and incitement to violence, that could threaten human lives and undermine the electoral process and national stability,” according to a statement issued by his spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

Guterres also called on all political stakeholders and their supporters “to resolve their differences peacefully, through dialogue and appropriate institutional mechanisms, in accordance with national laws.”

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