The Maysorian Nation 7

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Oliver Keridavian installed as new president. Many protests against results of presidential elections.

(Bizet). On June 27, former prime minister Oliver Keridavian was officially installed as the new president of the republic, taking over after Muhammad Nuruddin, who resigned after having been head of state since 1998. Mr. Keridavian got 62 % of the votes in the second round of the presidential elections on June 16 and thus defeated his opponent John Golenge who got only 38 %. Already in the first round Mr. Keridavian got, most surprising, 36 % of all votes and this was seen by many inhabitants of the country as "proof" that the outcome of the elections was drawn up in advance by the PNR (Party for National Renewal) who has been the ruling party since the coup d´etat in 1998. Many suspected therefore that the candidate of the PNR would win even these elections, even though Mr. Keridavian in the polls before the elections was called the candidate of whom was said that most people didn´t trust him, but like his predecessor Muhammad Nuruddin, who was re-elected four times as president, many fear now the same will happen with Oliver Keridavian. The turnout in the second round was thus quite low, not even two third of the total electorate made its way to the voting stations and protests broke out in several cities already after the first round. But in his first speech as president, Mr. Keridavian of course didn´t mention this controversy at all and instead thanked all his voters and said he was honored by the fact that the Maysorian people had had the confidence to choose him as the new head of state and hoped to be a president for all inhabitants of the republic. Now it was the time to unify and work together for a better future and not to let any disagreement whatsoever divide our republic, he said. In connection with this he asked prime minister Faiz Rahman and foreign minister Abdul Hamid Rasul to stay on in their function, but he also offered Mr. Ahmed, the candidate of JIMAS, to become the new minister of Internal Affairs, which Mr. Ahmed accepted.

But the comments in most newspapers were not very positive at all. According to these comments one could really wonder how it could be possible for the candidate of the PNR to win again. According to the Bizet Times, the largest newspaper of the country, it will probably take a much longer time as most people had thought to get rid of the legacy of the military dictatorship and that real democracy in our country is possibly something we have to fight for, because in a real democracy Mr. Keridavian would never have been elected, the newspaper wrote. On the other hand, the Daily Republican wrote that most observers of the African Union had declared that the elections had been fair and without any incidents and the newspaper urged all protestors just to go home and accept the outcome of these democratic elections. Also the High Court of the republic confirmed that the electoral process had been according to the constitution and refused to declare the elections invalid as the opposition had demanded.