People started casting their valuable votes Wednesday in Central African Republic (CAR) in the long-delayed elections representing best hope of unity in the world’s one of the poorest countries.
The country has seen worse sectarian violence for past three years and as an aftermath hundreds of thousands of people are now displaced.
About 40 percent of the total population are registered votes accounting to 1.8 million. People since 6 in the morning were seen lined up outside schools and other polling stations to cast their votes.
United Nations peacekeepers from Egypt, France, Burundi, Mauritania, Pakistan and other countries kept a watch along with forty election monitors from African Union.
The polling was scheduled to close at 4 p.m. and few minutes before the stations were seen lined up including older men with walking sticks and women too carrying babies on backs.
The election for president and Parliament has been delayed several times due to technical and organization issues in the country. Thirty candidates are in the race of becoming president of CAR.
In November Argentine Pope Francis visited the country’s capital city Bangui and expressed hope the upcoming elections would open up new chapter in the history of CAR.
The Pope also visited Muslim neighborhood PK5. It was shocking to everyone in the country.
Lately, the archbishop of Bangui, Dieudonne Nzapalainga, and also a Muslim leader Omar Kobine Layama appealed to the people for peaceful elections.
The elections were largely without violence but some logistical problems did persist as bureaucratic delays blocked the arrival of materials required for polls.
