The Central African Republic Holds Elections Despite Insurgency

Rebels in the Central African Republic have wreaked havoc on the country’s 2020-2021 election cycle. (Flickr)

The Central African Republic (CAR) conducted elections on March 14 after a series of violent attacks led to incomplete results in prior rounds of voting. The outcome of the vote will partially decide the makeup of the CAR’s parliament, the National Assembly. 

First-round voting was initially scheduled for December 27, 2020, with run-off elections to follow for those races in which no candidate received at least 50 percent of the vote. However, many of the first-round elections went unresolved due to severe interruptions from rebel groups. Approximately only one in three registered voters were able to cast a ballot in the first round. The March 14 elections, therefore, included first-round votes in 69 electoral districts as well as run-off votes in 49 electoral districts.

The unrest surrounding the elections in December was caused by insurgents suspected by the United Nations (UN) to be linked to Francois Bozizé, a former president of the CAR. Еаrlier that month, Bozizé was barred from running for president by the country’s constitutional court for his alleged commitment of war crimes while president, an accusation he denies. A week before the elections, many of his supporters allied themselves with other rebel groups and announced their intention to march on the capital, Bangui, and overthrow current CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra. The rebels reached the outskirts of Bangui before being turned back by government forces. Touadéra went on to win around 54 percent of the first-round vote in December—enough for him to claim victory, despite the low turnout.  

Observers for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that the March elections were “generally calm,” with most of the remaining violence concentrated in the southwestern Lobaye region. Touadéra’s party, the United Hearts Movement, is expected to keep its majority in the National Assembly once the second-round votes have been tallied. However, the central government is likely to remain in an extremely fragile position. Various rebel militias, comprised of rival Muslim and Christian armed groups, control two-thirds of the CAR, minimizing the central government’s actualized jurisdiction outside of the capital, Bangui. Moreover, Bozizé has urged his supporters to ignore the vote, rendering the official results irrelevant to large swathes of the population. 

Political instability has deep roots in the CAR. In 2013, civil war broke out between the Seleka, a mostly Muslim coalition, and the predominantly Christian Anti-balaka, leading to the overthrow of then-president Bozizé, who himself came to power through a coup in 2003. Since then, thousands of combatants and civilians have been killed in fighting between splinter groups. In 2019, the major armed groups agreed to a peace deal backed by the UN and the African Union, which remains extremely tenuous.

According to the UNHCR, the violence associated with the current national election cycle has prompted 32,000 Central African refugees to flee to neighboring countries. A further 185,000 people have been internally displaced. 

A final round of elections is set to take place at an unspecified date later this year.