Comoros votes in landmark presidential poll

The Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros voted Sunday for a new president to replace incumbent Ahmed Abdallah Sambi whose extended stay in power has threatened the stability of the coup-prone islands.
By the time polling stations were closing on the three islands that make up the Comoros nation, several opposition figures had claimed that voting on Anjouan - the island Sambi hails from - was marred by widespread fraud.
"I am scandalised by what happened on Anjouan. It's not a poll but a farce," Mohamed Djanfaari, the opposition leader on that island, told AFP, accusing the army of having stuffed ballot boxes.
"The international community and the constitutional court should cancel this poll," he said.
"On Anjouan there was no poll but rather organised chaos and massive fraud," another opposition figure Said Larifou said at a press conference in Moroni. "The chaos was orchestrated in places where the ruling party candidate wasn't doing well in order that the results might be voided.... These were targeted actions," said Larifou, speaking for several opposition parties.
Citing "stolen ballot papers, ballot box stuffing and opposition assessors chased from polling stations" in several towns and villages on Anjouan, Larifou said the opposition is "not ruling out asking for the poll to be annuled." The electoral commission chief Madi Laguera, however, who was supervising polling on Anjouan, told AFP that overall everything had gone smoothly there and cited just one incident of ballot box stuffing and stolen ballot papers.
The vice president and opposition representative on the electoral body, Abdallah Mohammed, for his part cited several cases of "fraud" and ballot box stuffing in three locations.
"I sincerely think we might have to have a re-run of the election in Anjouan," he told AFP. Some 380,000 electors were choosing from among three candidates, all from the smallest isle of Moheli, in line with a system of rotating presidency after the other islands of Grande Comore and Anjouan produced national leaders. They were also choosing governors for each of the three islands.
The election is likely to be a close contest between the ruling party's candidate Ikiliou Dhoinine and opposition rival Mohamed Said Fazul - a former top Moheli government official. The third candidate is Abdou Djabir Msada.
In the November 7 first-round vote Dhoinine, the nation's outgoing vice-president who has the support of Sambi, emerged in the lead with more than 28 percent of the vote.