Foreign Observer Missions have revealed that the first round of Liberia’s presidential election was broadly free of irregularities.
This comes ahead of an expected announcement by the electoral commission of provisional results.
Observers from the European Union and the U.S.-based Carter Center and National Democratic Institute also said they had not identified any major problems in the voting or subsequent counting.
The Three political parties that fielded candidates in Tuesday’s 20-person race, however, alleged fraud and vowed to contest the results, threatening to mar an election expected to mark Liberia’s first democratic transfer of power in more than seven decades.
Liberia, Africa’s oldest modern republic, was founded by freed American slaves in 1847 but its last democratic power transfer occurred in 1944.
