Biya confident of victory

29-year-old rule and quashing the opposition’s dream of a Tunisian-style regime change.
The west African country’s 78-year-old leader is seeking a sixth term against 22 other candidates, with the main opposition groups arguing the ballot was rigged from the start.

His opponents’ main grievance is the level of control he exercises over the electoral commission but Biya defended the poll body when he cast his ballot.
“The panel is young and it has done a lot. It cannot say that there is such a thing as perfection but its performance has been positive. I am simply asking for the people’s indulgence over possible irregularities,” he said.

“But there was never any intent to cheat,” Biya added.
His most high-profile rival in yesterday’s election is John Fru Ndi, the leader of the Social Democratic Front. Observers argue however that the charismatic perennial runner-up has lost some of his aura in recent years.

Recent elections in Zambia brought about a rare peaceful transition of power on the continent and Tuesday’s polls in Liberia could return Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, freshly crowned by the Nobel Peace Prize.
Polling got off to a slow start across the vast nation, with delays reported in many of the 24 000 polling stations.
Rap star General Valsero, an outspoken critic of Biya, even called on people to return blank voting slips, saying none of the 23 candidates deserved their support.

“The opposition can’t get itself together,” he said, accusing the leading figures of selfishness for having failed to unite their forces.
More than 6 000 election observers have been accredited to monitor voting, which was held under a tight security set-up.
Meanwhile, Liberia which goes to the polls tomorrow buzzed with election fever yesterday as Nobel laureates, president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and women’s activist Leymah Gbowee, took to the streets in a boost for the incumbent’s re-election bid.

Throbbing music, chanting and dancing supporters leaning out of car windows and dressed in party colours weaved their way through the trafficclogged streets of the small seaside capital, while UN and riot police kept close watch.

The joint Nobel Peace Prize winner received a rousing airport welcome from her fellow women’s rights activists who greeted her in their white Tshirts when she arrived in her home country yesterday morning.
They later gathered on a dusty soccer field where they would pray for peace during the civil war, where Sirleaf came to greet the women and thank them after addressing supporters holding a rally at a stadium in the capital.

Turnout was a lot lower than the final opposition Congress for Democratic Change rally on Friday where some 200 000 people brought the capital to a standstill for Winston Tubman and his crowdpulling running mate, the football star George Weah. – AFP.