Comoros: African Union Cracks Down on Illegal Election

21 June 2007
allAfrica.com
By Helen Kilbey

Cape Town — The African Union has strongly condemned authorities on the island of Anjouan in the Comoros for holding an election in defiance of both the archipelago's federal government and the AU.

An AU ministerial committee which met in Cape Town on Tuesday said "effective measures" should be taken to bring the crisis on the island to a "definite end," and threatened further unspecified action if the Anjouanese authorities did not "unambiguously acknowledge that the 'election'… is null and void."

Ministers from South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, the Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar met a delegation from the Comorian federal government in the wake of Anjouan's defiance of a decree postponing local presidential elections. The elections were due to have been held on June 10 but were rescheduled due to security concerns.

Colonel Mohamed Bacar, Anjouan's former president, went ahead with the poll. A local electoral panel declared him victorious and installed him as president of the island. The Comoros' Constitutional Court subsequently declared the election a "non event".

In a statement issued yesterday, the AU ministerial committee reiterated the rejection of the election by both the Constitutional Court and the AU Peace and Security Council, and called on the international community to follow suit.

The committee also demanded that Anjouan authorities facilitate a legitimate election, and create the conditions that would enable it to be free, fair and transparent. This, the committee stated, would involve allowing the African Union Electoral and Security Assistance Mission to the Comoros (MAES) to deploy on the island to provide security.

The AU said once its mission had been deployed, the Anjouanese gendarmerie would be disarmed, immobilized, and parts of it integrated into the Comorian army. It demanded that the Anjouanese authorities cooperate with these endeavours, and also help with the establishment of an internal security force under African Union supervision.

The committee stressed that if these demands were not met, the AU Peace and Security Council would "take all necessary measures", including "revising the mandate of MAES and increasing its strength", to achieve the above goals and "ensure that the institutional framework provided for in the Constitution of the Union of the Comoros is upheld".

South African foreign minister Nkosasana Dlamini-Zuma will head an African Union ministerial mission to the island this weekend.

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