Opposition disputes presidential election results

A group of local election observers in Madagascar claimed on Wednesday that opposition candidate Marc Ravalomanana won last month's presidential poll by securing 50.5 percent of the vote, news reports said.

AFP quoted Andre Rasolo, head of the "observers consortium" involved in the vote count, as saying that on the basis of results from 75 percent of polling stations, Ravalomanana had won 50.5 percent of the vote, compared with 37.7 percent won by incumbent president Didier Ratsiraka.

He said results from the other 25 percent of polling stations had been either lost or destroyed, but that his group considered the 75 percent it had counted to be representative of the national average. "We are stopping there, and we conclude that victory lies with Marc Ravalomanana with 50.5 percent of the vote against (Ratsiraka), credited with 37.7 percent," Rasolo told AFP in Nairobi in a telephonic interview.

The official results of the vote which took place on 16 December had not been announced, AFP reported, amid increasing tension on the Indian Ocean island. It said that according to unconfirmed reports, about 120,000 people, backed by poll observers, gathered in the capital Antananarivo on Wednesday to press their claim that Ravalomana won the election.

"Now it is up to the High Constitutional Court to do its work and to publish official results," Rasolo was quoted as saying. He also spoke of "numerous anomalies" in the organisation of the election, especially with the drafting of the electoral roll. "This list has shed some 300,000 names since the last presidential election in 1996, going from 6,666,000 to just over 6.3 million, which is not normal, he said.