Votes are being counted in Burkina Faso after Sunday’s presidential and legislative elections, where threats of extremist violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State prevented parts of the country from casting ballots.
Election workers began the counting after polls closed by holding up the ballots up for observers and marking the votes on a chalkboard beside the candidate’s name. Preliminary results are expected within the next two days.
While there were no reported incidents of major attacks, threats of violence prevented people from casting ballots in hard-hit parts of the country, in the North, Sahel and East regions. Nearly 3,000 polling stations expected to open yesterday didn’t, preventing up to 350,000 people from voting, said Newton Ahmed Barry, president for the National Independent Electoral Commission, on local television.
In Tapoa province in the east, 224 polling stations out of 335 didn’t open, according to a report from CODEL, a local organization monitoring the elections. CODEL said it was “concerned about the situation in areas weakened by insecurity”. Local officials in the Sahel and Center North, the epi-centers of the violence, told the AP people were angry about not being able to vote.