{"id":23726,"date":"2016-03-06T23:52:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T23:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/benin-vote-count-begins-as-33-candidates-fight\/"},"modified":"2016-03-06T23:52:34","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T23:52:34","slug":"benin-vote-count-begins-as-33-candidates-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/benin-vote-count-begins-as-33-candidates-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"Benin vote count begins as 33 candidates fight for presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Votes are being counted in Benin, where 33 candidates are fighting to become president.}<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Boni Yayi is stepping down as leader in the West African nation of 10.6m people after two terms.<\/p>\n<p>The ruling party&#8217;s candidate is Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, who used to head France&#8217;s largest investment bank.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday&#8217;s election was delayed after problems with the distribution of polling cards, an issue that continued until the day before the vote.<\/p>\n<p>Benin&#8217;s electoral commission is yet to start publishing official results, but local media reported that Mr Zinsou would probably go to a run-off.<\/p>\n<p>They said that he would compete against businessman Patrice Talon.<\/p>\n<p>Official results are expected on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Zinsou, who is Franco-Beninese, is considered as &#8220;France&#8217;s candidate&#8221; by his detractors, RFI reports. Benin gained independence from France in 1960.<\/p>\n<p>Job creation and anti-corruption drives are two of the main promises made by candidates.<br \/>\nAmong other leading candidates is another businessman Sebastien Avajon, as well as economist Abdoulaye Bio Tchane and financier Pascal Irenee Koupaki.<\/p>\n<p>Benin&#8217;s constitution barred Mr Boni Yayi from seeking a third term, although he had tentatively sought changes to the text allowing him to do so.<\/p>\n<p>The rulers of other African countries such as Burundi, Rwanda and Congo-Brazzaville have recently changed their constitutions to allow third terms.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-10795 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_88604536_88604535.jpg\" alt=\"Former banking chief Lionel Zinsou ran on behalf of the ruling party\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Votes are being counted in Benin, where 33 candidates are fighting to become president.} Thomas Boni Yayi is stepping down as leader in the West African nation of 10.6m people after two terms. The ruling party&#8217;s candidate is Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, who used to head France&#8217;s largest investment bank. Sunday&#8217;s election was delayed after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23726"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23726"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}