Despite a turbulent recent past, Madagascar’s elections this past week were peaceful. Observer missions such as the one by the Southern African Development Community remarked on this, adding that campaigns were well-attended and mostly incident-free.

It is, however, the long wait for the final results in a large country with remote polling stations, that could cause tempers to flare.

According to a live tally of the provisional results as they are counted, candidates number 13, Andry Rajoelina, and number 25, Marc Ravalomanana, were way ahead in the lead with over 42% and just under 40% by late on Friday, respectively. It is likely that there will be run-off between the two on December 19, as neither, at this stage, seems able to get more than 50% of the vote, as is required for an all-out win.

Most recent president Hery Rajaonarimampianina – who is unlikely to make even this run-off with not even 5% of the vote – has claimed electoral rigging. “Everything suggests that the vote of the Malagasy people has been a victim of rigging,” he said in a statement, adding a condemnation of the “invalid electoral roll, pre-checked ballot papers and intimidation.”

If anyone was in a good position to cheat, it would have been Rajaonarimampianina himself as the most recent president, but his complaint perhaps points to the fierceness of the contest – at least amongst the elite circles.

Ravalomanana himself has already claimed victory, with Rajoelina saying in a statement “a victory in the first round is quite possible”. These declarations could go pear-shaped for either of these candidates should the vote count not go in their favour, which isn’t very kosher for keeping the peace either.

It’s generally expected that the final provisional results will only be out in about two weeks’ time (results from almost 25 000 polling stations, some in remote areas, have to be cross-checked), after which the Constitutional Court has another nine days to announce the final results – which nerve-rackingly takes us up to the end of November. Vote-counting takes place in each polling station and it is a spectator sport, with members of the community observing, and cheering or booing depending on whether their candidate of choice does well.

The SADC elections observer mission issued its statement on Friday, and as usual there were no major surprises in this one (the arrival of the mission a mere three days before the elections raised some questions about how thorough they would be). The elections were conducted “orderly, professionally and within the requirements of the legal framework of the Republic of Madagascar”, the mission noted in its preliminary statement on Friday.

There were a number of complaints. The observer mission said “several stakeholders” claimed the electoral body was not impartial, there were complaints about the electoral list (it was “unreliable and full of errors”), despite good practices, as well as the financing of the electoral campaign, which ran into millions of dollars and which has not been transparent (NGOs like Transparency International have claimed campaigns were funded by illegally traded rosewood).

Voters’ education in a changed system was not adequate, many polling stations were not ready on the eve of elections, while in one region the mission “observed election materials being transported by people on foot” – obviously no good for security against fraud. The electoral code of conduct is voluntary (and was signed by only a few candidates) while there’s no electoral court to deal adequately with disputes.

The mission also “noted that the culture of sustainable political parties is not apparent in Madagascar. Instead, there is a culture of political movements that are personalised around specific individuals. There is therefore a deficit of political institutions and processes with strong and transparent internal democracy.”

On the up side, the military, which was involved in the unconstitutional change of power (the international community condemned it as a coup d’etat and cut foreign aid) between Ravalomanana and Rajoelina in 2009, was behaving. It was “no longer involved in political activities”, the mission noted.

The new requirement for the incumbent president to step down 60 days before an election was also well-received, and a number of good practices around the compilation of the voters’ roll were noted.

Civil society was also optimistic, with Father Germain Rajoelison from the Catholic NGO Justice and Peace said its 5150 observers found the election to have gone well, but anomalies included duplicates of voter lists, dead people on the lists, names that disappeared from these lists and delays in the opening of some polling stations. He said he was still waiting to hear from volunteers deployed in remote areas without reception.

The Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie called on candidates – side-eyeing Ravalomanana – not to declare early victory, because this could cause trouble when the final results came out.

South Africa, too, has played its role in the elections having printed the full-colour A3-sized ballot papers (12 million all in all for a voting population of almost 10 million) displaying the names, numbers and pictures of the 36 presidential wannabes. It also played a leading role as SADC chairperson in helping the country negotiate its way to a peaceful election in the months running up to it, and from 2009 to 2014 as a taxpayer-funded host of an exiled Ravalomanana.

South African ambassador to Madagascar, Maud Dlomo, who also observed the election, congratulated the electoral commission, CENI, “for being very accessible [and] professional, although they have limited resources. We congratulate the Malagasy population for choosing peace and democracy,” she added. “It’s now up to the leaders not to let their people down. Whatever complaints are there regarding alleged irregularities, they must all follow the law in resolving them.” She urged the Malagasy people to choose the route of reconciliation over conflict.

“So far the leaders here decided and demonstrated ot all of us who were assisting to resolve the conflict, that they are able to solve their won problems and should continue like that. The opposite of this will be another conflict after having stopped the cycle of the historical conflict which started in 1972. The Malagasy population deserve better.” DM