Presidential election peaceful, no organisational problems

Presidential elections to complete Guinea-Bissau's return to democracy took place peacefully and in good order on Sunday. Early returns showed Malam Bacai Sanha, the candidate of the ruling PAIGC party, and former president Joao Bernardo Vieira leading the field in the country's main towns. Voters flocked to the polling stations in record numbers in this small West African country and voting started on time everywhere. There was none of the organisational chaos seen at parliamentary elections in March last year when ballot boxes and voting slips failed to reach many of the polling stations in the capital Bissau, forcing them to reopen two days later. About 240 international observers monitored the presidential election, which sets the seal on a two-year transition back to democracy. Johan Van Hecke, the leader of the 90-strong delegation from the European Union, said he was fully satisfied with the way the election and the campaign leading up to it had been conducted. "I must say that the Guinean people have been the big winner in this process. During the campaign and right up to the end of today there have been no serious incidents. We are sincerely satisfied and I congratulate the National Electoral Commission," he told reporters on Sunday night after the polls closed. Malam Mane, the president of the National Electoral Commission, told the Portuguese news agency Lusa that about 80 percent of Guinea-Bissau's 538,000 registered voters had turned out to cast their ballot. He predicted that the full results would be known in four or five days time.

Former Guinea-Bissau president Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira

If none of the 13 candidates achieves more than 50 percent of the vote, a second-round run-off between the two leading contenders will be held in July. Unofficial returns from vote counts at polling stations in the capital Bissau showed Bacai Sanha with a strong early lead over Vieira, with Kumba Yala, Guinea-Bissau's last elected president, trailing badly in third place. Bacai Sanha, the official candidate of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which won last year's parliamentary elections, was also well ahead of Vieira in Bafata, Guinea-Bissau's second largest town, 140 km east of the capital. However, Vieira, who ruled this former Portuguese colony for 19 years from 1980 to 1999, had a slight edge over Bacai Sanha in the town of Gabu, 50 km west of Bafata. In all three towns - Guinea-Bissau's largest urban centres - Yala trailed far behind in third place.

Former Guinea-Bissau president Kumba Yala

Elected with a landslide majority in 2000 with a mandate to heal the wounds of a bitter civil war, Yala presided over a government that became increasingly chaotic and left civil servants, teachers and health workers unpaid for months. He was overthrown by a bloodless coup in September 2003. Although Yala's support in Guinea-Bissau's urban areas appears to have fallen away sharply, he was expected to do much better in the rural heartland of his Balanta ethnic group, which accounts for 30 percent of the country's 1.3 million population. However, polling results from the countryside have been slower to come in. A correspondent for IRIN in Guinea-Bissau travelled by helicopter on Sunday to observe voting in the Bijagos Islands and the southern town of Catio. There, as in the capital there was a high turnout of voters and polling went smoothly. Bacai Sanha, who appeared on Monday to be emerging as the front-runner, is a former speaker of parliament. He served briefly as interim president between the overthrow of Vieira in May 1999 and Yala's inauguration in February 2002. Bacai Sanha also ran as a candidate in the 1999/2000 presidential elections, but he lost heavily to Yala in the second-round run-off. Vieira was a guerrilla commander in the PAIGC's bush war against Portuguese colonial rule who later became a general in the army. He came to power in a 1980 coup, but was overthrown in the latter stages of the 1998/1999 civil war. He has spent the past six years in exile in Portugal and enjoys close links with President Lansana Conte of neighbouring Guinea-Conakry.