Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera has won a third term in office, securing an outright majority with 77.9 percent of the vote in the country's December 28 election, according to a report by Guardian Nigeria. The country's Constitutional Council formally proclaimed Touadera re-elected after certifying the results, which put runner-up Anicet-Georges Dologuele at around 15 percent and third-place finisher Henri-Marie Dondra at roughly 3 percent. Turnout stood at about 52 percent.
Touadera, a 68-year-old mathematician who first took power a decade ago, was able to seek a third term after a 2023 constitutional referendum scrapped the country's presidential term limits, a change critics said was engineered specifically to keep him in office. Part of the opposition called for a boycott of the December vote, describing it as a sham conducted without genuine political dialogue between the government and its rivals.
With the Constitutional Council's certification now final, Touadera begins a new seven-year term under a cloud of contested legitimacy among opposition figures who argue the removal of term limits, rather than the vote itself, settled the outcome well before polling day.