Presidential, legislative elections launched in Central Africa

SANAA, Dec. 27 (YPA) – Voters in the Central African Republic will go to the polls on Sunday for presidential and legislative elections.
Militias opposed to President Faustin Arcang Tuadera, who is seeking to win a second term, have stepped up their attacks since the Constitutional Court rejected many of the candidates, including former President Francois Bozize this month, according to Reuters.

The crisis has decimated many citizens of the diamond and gold-rich country of 4.7 million and raised fears of a return to the worst acts of violence in its modern past, which included five coups and many incidents of rebellion since the country’s independence from France in 1960.
Touadera was elected president for the first time in 2016 after a revolt three years earlier that toppled Bozize, and he struggled to wrest control of large areas of the country from the hands of armed militias.
Successive waves of violence since 2013 have claimed thousands of lives and forced more than a million people to flee their homes.