Senegalese yesterday anxiously awaited the results of a presidential election, following months of uncertainty and unrest that tested the nation’s reputation as a stable democracy in a region rife with coups.
The vote on Sunday was largely peaceful with a high turnout, observers said. Results from polling stations that had completed counting were posted overnight on social media, with official announcements expected later this week.
More than 7 million people were registered to vote in a nation of about 17 million. To win in the first round, a candidate must gain more than 50 percent or it goes to a runoff.
Photo: Reuters
Analysts say a second round is likely, between opposition candidate Bassirou Diomaye Faye and former Senegalese prime minister Amadou Ba, the ruling party’s candidate.
Some opposition supporters on Sunday night were adamant their candidate had already won. In the capital, Dakar, some people sat on car rooftops chanting, while others carried flags, banners and set off fireworks, saying Faye would win outright.
“The news is circulating ... there will be no second round,” said Dime Jueye, a local vendor.
It is Senegal’s fourth democratic transfer of power since gaining independence from France more than six decades ago.
After the polls closed, voters praised the peaceful outcome amid concerns after months of deadly protests ignited last summer by the jailing of the popular opposition leader Ousmane Sonko. Rights groups said dozens were killed.
In a move that defused tensions just ahead of the election, Sonko was released after months in prison along with Faye, to celebrations on the streets of Dakar.
Sonko was barred from the race in January due to a prior conviction and Faye ran in his place.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
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