Comoros will vote in an election on Sunday that is expected to deliver a fourth term to President Azali Assoumani, a former military officer whose opponents accuse him of muzzling dissent in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation.
Nearly 340,000 people are eligible to vote in the country of fewer than one million people.
Assoumani, 65, who held the rotating chairperson role of the African Union for the past year, will face five competitors. Other opposition leaders have called for a boycott, accusing the electoral commission of favouring the ruling party.
The electoral commission has denied this and said the election will be transparent.
Regional observer missions, including from the African Union, said the last election in 2019 was riddled with irregularities and lacked credibility.
The earlier vote followed constitutional reforms that removed a requirement that the presidency rotate among the country’s three main islands every five years, and thus allowed Assoumani to seek re-election. The changes sparked months of sometimes violent protests.
Assoumani, who first took power in a 1999 coup before stepping down in 2002 and then winning election 14 years later, would be required to step down in 2029.
Credit: aljazeera.com
