This is due to internal party wrangling among other factors.

The five constituencies that have been suspended from holding the elections are Shama, Kwesiminstim, Ellembelle, Evalue Ajomoro Dwira and the Sekondi Constituencies all in the southern part of the Western Region.

Some candidates in these constituencies had expressed worry over alleged attempts by some party executives to sideline others.

Even though the Western Regional Minister, Dr. Kweku Afriyie, was ordered by a Sekondi high court to intervene and restore confidence in the process, others went ahead to secure new court injunctions.

The Western Regional Secretary of the party, Charles Nanabayin Onuawonto Cromwell Bissue, in a Citi News interview explained that “the crux of what happened in three constituencies all gets down to suspicion, and that has generated into other things. The matter with [Shama, Kwesimintsim and Ellembelle] went to court, and the court mandated the Regional Minister to deal with them. Two of them have been resolved, but Ellembelle is yet to be resolved”.

Mr. Cromwell Bissue, who is also a presidential staffer continued that “in Sekondi this morning [Saturday February 24] we heard that there has been an injunction on the elections that stopped us from going ahead with the elections. We are yet to ascertain the veracity of that issue, but I can confirm that is not coming up. Evalue Ajomoro Gwira had a special case, so they wrote to the General Secretary which has been accepted. They will now hold their election on the 5^th March.”

Mr. Bissue emphasized the problem of suspicion among potential candidates and some executives.

He explained that “what we have had to deal with is the suspicion that somebody is manipulating things in the constituency to get his or her cronies into the race”.

–

By: Obrempong Yaw Anmpofo/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Speaking after his inauguration in the capital Nairobi, he said he would try to incorporate some of the opposition’s ideas “in the spirit of inclusivity”.

But elsewhere in the city, police clashed with opposition supporters.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga, who boycotted an election re-run last month, mocked Tuesday’s “coronation”.

Mr Kenyatta was officially re-elected with 98% of the vote on 26 October but just under 39% of voters turned out.

The original election on 8 August was held again after being annulled by the Supreme Court on grounds of irregularities

What did Kenyatta say exactly?

Embarking on his second and last term in office, he promised to act as “the custodian of the dreams of all” Kenyans.

Without specifying whether he would reach out to Mr Odinga, he said: “We may have chosen different candidates and different visions, but each one of us voted for a better life.

“To my competitors, and in the spirit of inclusivity, I will endeavour to incorporate some of their ideas. The election was not a contest between a good dream and a bad dream. It was a contest between two competing visions.

“I will devote my time and energy to build bridges, to unite and bring prosperity to all Kenyans.”

How did the inauguration unfold?

Spectators inside Nairobi’s Kasarani sports stadium were entertained by music and dance performances, while the military paraded.

The luckier Kenyatta supporters had seats inside the stadium

However, there were scenes of chaos outside when people without seats tried to rush in and were driven back by police with tear gas and batons, with some officers on horseback.

Big screens had been promised so that tens of thousands of people could watch the ceremony from outside the stadium but no screens were provided, AFP news agency reports.

Image copyrightREUTERS

Which foreign leaders attended?

Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and Rwandan President Paul Kagame were among a number of African leaders at the inauguration.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also expected in Nairobi but for a later event in the presidential palace, the Jerusalem Post reports.

Why was the election re-run?

Chief Justice David Maraga said the August election had not been “conducted in accordance with the constitution” and declared it “invalid, null and void”.

The Supreme Court ruled that the result had been “neither transparent nor verifiable”.

But Mr Odinga urged his supporters to boycott the second vote because he said no reforms had been made to the electoral commission since the original poll.

Correspondents say the election dispute has left Kenya deeply divided.

About 50 people are reported to have been killed in violence since the August ballot.

Burning tyres

By Anne Soy, BBC News, Nairobi

There were confrontations between police and opposition supporters in the suburb of Doonholm.

Angry protesters lit tyres, barricaded roads and threw stones at the police and some ruling party supporters. “No Raila, no peace,” they shouted as police lobbed tear gas canisters to disperse them.

“We do not recognise Uhuru Kenyatta,” one protester holding a sling loaded with a stone told me. Another protester said he was angry that the police had blocked access to the venue where the opposition had planned to hold a rally.

Mr Odinga told the BBC that they wanted to mourn the death of their supporters who were allegedly killed by police over the past week-and-a-half. The police have denied shooting and killing any opposition supporters.

How are the opposition responding?

According to Mr Odinga, Mr Kenyatta was elected by “just a small section of the country”.

Image copyrightEPA

In the opposition stronghold of Kisumu, in the west of the country, local people told BBC News they were not happy with the inauguration.

“I am going to peacefully accept and move on but I won’t recognise this presidency,” said one man.

A woman said Mr Kenyatta had not won fairly. “So we feel that it’s not time to move on,” she said. “It will not be an easy thing to do.”

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Macron, 39, a former economy minister who ran as a “neither left nor right” independent promising to shake up the French political system, took 65.1% to Le Pen’s 34.9%, according to initial projections from early counts.

But Le Pen’s score nonetheless marked a historic high for the French far right. Despite a lacklustre campaign that ended with a calamitous performance in the final TV debate, she was projected to have taken more than 10 million votes, roughly double that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he reached the presidential run-off in 2002. The anti-immigration, anti-EU Front National’s supporters asserted that the party has a central place as an opposition force in France.

Macron, who has never held elected office and was unknown until three years ago, is France’s youngest president. He will take over a country under a state of emergency, still facing a major terrorism threat and struggling with a stagnant economy after decades of mass unemployment. France is also divided after an election campaign in which anti-establishment anger saw the traditional left and right ruling parties ejected from the race in the first round for the first time since the period after the second world war.

Turnout was projected to have been the lowest in more than 40 years. Macron’s victory came not only because voters supported his policy platform for free market, pro-business reform, and his promises to energise the EU coupled with a leftwing approach to social issues. Some of his voters came from other parties across the political spectrum and turned out not in complete support of his programme, but to stop the Front National.

In a political landscape with a strong hard left and far right, Macron faces the challenge of trying to win a parliamentary majority for his fledgling political movement En Marche! (On the Move) in legislative elections next month. Without a majority, he will not be able to carry out his manifesto promises.

After the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as US president, the race for the Élysée was the latest election to shake up establishment politics by kicking out the figures that stood for the status quo, ejecting the mainstream parties that have dominated French politics for 50 years and leaving the political novice Macron to do battle with the far right.

His victory comes after a bitter campaign with Le Pen in which she accused him of being part of an elite that did not understand ordinary people, and he said Le Pen represented the “party of hatred” that wanted a “civil war” in France. The run-off pitted France’s most Europhile candidate against its most Europhobe.

Hours before the end of campainging on Friday night, Macron’s campaign was hacked, which Paris prosecutors are investigating. Hundreds of thousands of emails and documents were dumped online and spread by WikiLeaks in what his campaign called an attempt at “democratic destabilisation”.

Macron, a former investment banker and senior civil servant who grew up in a bourgeois family in Amiens, served as deputy chief of staff to the Socialist president, François Hollande, but was not part of the Socialist party.

In 2014, Hollande appointed him economy minister, but he left government in 2016, complaining that pro-business reforms were not going far enough. A year ago, he formed En Marche!, promising to shake up France’s “vacuous” and discredited political class.

Macron campaigned on pledges to ease labour laws, improve education in deprived areas and extend protections for self-employed people.

The election race was full of extraordinary twists and turns. Hollande became the first president since the war to decide not to run again for office after slumping to record unpopularity with a satisfaction rating of 4%.
His troubled five-year term left France still struggling with a sluggish economy and a mood of disillusionment with the political class. The country is more divided than ever before. More than 230 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in little more than two years, the political class is questioning Islam’s place in French society, and more than 3 million people are unemployed.

The rightwing candidate François Fillon, one seen as a favourite, was badly damaged by a judicial investigation into a string of corruption allegations, including that he had paid his wife and children generous salaries from public funds for fake parliamentary assistant jobs.

The ruling Socialist party, under its candidate Benoît Hamon, saw its score plunge to 6%, while the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon finished third.

The final round marks a redrawing of the political landscape, away from the old left-right divide towards a contest between a liberal, pro-globalisation stance, and “close the borders” nationalism. Le Pen has styled the election as being between her party’s “patriots” and the “globalists” she says Macron represents.

–

Source: The Guardian

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The second round contest pits centrist Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old former investment banker, against the far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen, 48.

Citizens in some overseas territories and many French expats abroad have begun voting.

The polls opened in metropolitan France at 08:00 local time (06:00 GMT) on Sunday and close at 19:00 (17:00 GMT).

Polling stations will remain open in some big cities until 20:00 local time (18:00 GMT), with early estimates of the result due to be reported immediately after they close.

The two candidates, who topped a field of 11 presidential hopefuls in the first round election on 23 April, have offered voters starkly different visions of France.

Mr Macron, a liberal centrist, is pro-business and a strong supporter of the European Union (EU), while Ms Le Pen campaigned on a France-first, anti-immigration programme.

She wants France to abandon the euro in the domestic economy, and hold a referendum on France’s EU membership.

Mr Macron is widely expected to win the vote, but analysts have said high abstention rates could damage his chances.

The run-off will be keenly watched across Europe, ahead of elections in Germany and the UK and as Britain negotiates its exit from the EU.

In whittling down a field of candidates to Mr Macron and Ms Le Pen, France’s voters rejected the two big political parties – the Socialists and the Republicans – that have governed for decades.

The campaign has been marked by its unpredictability, and in a final twist on Friday evening, soon before campaigning officially ended, Mr Macron’s En Marche! political movement said it had been the victim of a “massive” hack, with a trove of documents released online.

The Macron team said real documents were mixed up with fake ones, and electoral authorities warned media and the public that spreading details of the attack would breach strict election rules and could bring criminal charges.

En Marche compared the hack to the leak of Democratic Party emails in last year’s US presidential election that was blamed on Russian hackers.

Mr Macron has previously accused Moscow of targeting him with cyber attacks, which Russia strongly denied.

On Saturday, French President François Hollande promised to “respond” to the attack.

Management of the economy, security, immigration and France’s relationship with the EU have all been key issues in the campaign.
One of the overriding issues is unemployment, which stands at almost 10% and is the eighth highest among the 28 EU member states. One in four under-25s is unemployed.

The French economy has made a slow recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and both candidates say deep changes are needed.
Ms Le Pen wants the pension age cut to 60 and to “renationalise French debt”, which she argues is largely held by foreigners.

Mr Macron wants to cut 120,000 public-sector jobs, reduce public spending by €60bn (£50bn; $65bn), plough billions into investment and reduce unemployment to below 7%.

If voters opt for Mr Macron, they will be backing a candidate who seeks EU reform as well as deeper European integration, in the form of a eurozone budget and eurozone finance ministers.

Ms Le Pen promises quite the opposite. She wants a Europe of nations to replace the EU.
They are similarly divided on other foreign policy issues. Mr Macron opposes any rapprochement with Russia, while Ms Le Pen met Vladimir Putin in Moscow recently and has previously stated her approval of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

The presidential election will be followed by legislative elections on 11 and 18 June. Mr Macron, who quit the Socialist government of President Hollande to found his new political movement, has no MPs, and Ms Le Pen has only two.

Whoever wins the presidency will need to perform well in those crucial elections if they want to win a parliamentary majority to push through their proposals.

–

Source: BBC

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About 50,000 police and 7,000 soldiers are being deployed across the country to secure polling.

Eleven candidates are vying to be the country’s next president, with leading candidates spanning the political spectrum from far-left to far-right.

The two with the most votes will go to a run-off round in a fortnight’s time.

Polling stations in France opened at 08:00 local time (06:00 GMT), although some overseas territories began the voting on Saturday.

Voting ends at 20:00, with exit polls expected quickly afterwards.

Four candidates are currently seen as being within reach of the presidency: the conservative François Fillon, the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, liberal centrist Emmanuel Macron and the far-left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The candidates have created plenty of debate in the country, all offering dramatically different visions of Europe, immigration, the economy and French identity.

Extra security measures are in place on polling day after Karim Cheurfi, a convicted criminal, shot a police officer in the head on the Champs Elysees in Paris.

Cheurfi was killed by security forces and a note defending the so-called Islamic State group was found near his body.

National security had been one of the main talking points during the campaign, but candidates have been accused of exploiting the most recent attack for political gains.

However, no candidate is expected to get the 50% of votes required for an outright win.
A second round between the top two will be held on 7 May.

Mr Fillon is the only one among the leading contenders from an established party of government.

Benoît Hamon, the socialist candidate from the same party as the current president, is seen as out of the running.

The unpopular President François Hollande is not seeking a second term, and is the first French president in modern history not to do so.

–

Source: BBC

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Speaking to Citi News’ Norbert Akpabli on the sidelines of a public forum to ensure credible general elections in the Volta Region, Mr. Ramadan asked Ghanaians to devise strategic means to police the ballot boxes during the general elections.

He said the only way to ensure a more credible election is for electorate to be vigilant at the polling stations and make sure that the right processes are adhered to.

He further indicated that it will be unnecessary for Ghanaians to drag the EC to court over the credibility of the voters’ register at this crucial time when the country is preparing for the polls.

“Looking at time, 62 days to election, how long can you drag a case before court before making your point for judges to give judgement before elections?”

“I am looking at the Commission doing the right thing so that on the day of special voting ,we would know the results.We should not have the tradition when the ballot boxes are carried and kept somewhere supposedly and after one week they bring the ballot boxes and come and say this is special voting so we have opened the ballot box and we are now going to count,”he said.

Abu Ramadan who earlier sued the Electoral Commission (EC) over the credibility of the voters’ register said though he intends suing the EC over its reforms, he will go back to court after the polls.

“As for court issues we have not finished. We will come back to court issues after the general election and challenge the cases that have to be challenged but for now let us concentrate on the ballot and how we will police the ballot.We will come back to court after this issue.”

–

By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Follow @EfeAnsah

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