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Ouattara far ahead in early results from Ivory Coast election
Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara of the Rally of the Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace (RHDP) party and his wife Dominique prepare to cast their votes at a polling station during a presidential election in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, October 25, 2015. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Luc Gnago
27/10/2015
ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast's incumbent president, Alassane Ouattara, had a commanding lead in early results of last weekend's election, released on Tuesday.
Ouattara, the clear favorite to win a second five-year term, won between 85.07 and 99.26 percent of votes in results for the first six of 31 regions, announced by the electoral commission on state television.
Peaceful, transparent elections could help the West African country to turn the page on a 2011 civil war and a decade-long political crisis.
Since Ouattara took power in 2011, the world's top cocoa grower has become a regional economic powerhouse, luring in investors where other African economies have struggled under a global slump in commodities prices.
Several opposition candidates had alleged fraud in the run-up to Sunday's vote, but observers have given the election a clean bill of health.
(Reporting by Joe Bavier and Loucoumane Coulibaly; Editing by Emma Farge and Kevin Liffey)
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