In what was seen as the last step in returning stability to the Comoros, voters on Sunday elected opposition MP Abdou Soule Elbak as president of Grande Comore. Results showed Elbak received 63 percent of Sunday's vote to become the island's leader. His opponent Bakari Boina, the former governor of the island, got 37 percent. Boina was the official candidate put forward by the president of the Union of the Comoros, Azali Assoumani. In Grande Comore's first round, held last Sunday, Elbak won 17 percent of the vote and Boina 14 percent. Elbak alleged his rival only won a place in the runoff through fraud. One diplomatic source in the capital Moroni told IRIN that Elbak's election was a setback for Assoumani and his supporters. "Some of Assoumani's followers are now saying that it wasn't a good political strategy to openly back Boina," the source said. UN Resident Representaive in Moroni, Andre Carvalho said: "People are going to have to put their differences aside if these institutions are going to work." Carvalho added that the mood in the capital was "calm and festive". Assoumani, who first came to power in a 1999 coup, was declared the first president of the newly-formed Union of Comoros earlier this month following disputed elections. His rivals had effectively boycotted the poll and complained of voting irregularities. Since March, the three-island Union of the Comoros, which lies off the southeastern coast of Africa, has held a series of ballots to approve a constitution for each island and to elect individual island presidents, as well as to choose a federal president. Anjouan and Moheli have already elected local presidents. The island presidents will each appoint eight ministers to deal with local affairs. The Union will oversee foreign affairs, currency, defence and religion in the archipelago of around 500,000 people. The reforms on the coup-prone islands, the result of a deal reached in Madagascar in February 2001, are aimed at ending a crisis that began with the unilateral secession of Anjouan island in 1997. Assoumani came to power in the last of over 20 coups the islands have known since independence from France in 1975.
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