Sao Tome and Principe’s ruling party lost an absolute majority in the country’s National Assembly, after the small archipelago in the Gulf of Guinea held parliamentary and local elections on Sunday, according to provisional results.

The center-right Independent Democratic Action (ADI) party which has been in power since 2014, won the legislative elections, but with only 25 of the 55 seats in the Assembly – against 33 previously – according to provisional results released on Monday by the country’s National Electoral Commission.

The ADI plans to join the Sao Tome and Principe Independent Citizen Movement party (MCISTP), which won two seats, but still that will not be enough to ensure a majority.

The Socialist opposition party, the Sao Tome and Principe Liberation Movement – Social Democrat Party (MLSTP-PSD), won 23 seats and plans a coalition with five MPs from a coalition of other small opposition parties.

The final results will be announced in the coming days by the Constitutional Court.

On Sunday, some 90,000 voters in the archipelago of 200,000 inhabitants turned out for the polls.

On Monday evening, hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the Sao Tome Electoral Commission offices alleging fraud in favor of the ADI.

Judge Natacha Amado Vaz’s car was burned down and riot police intervened to disperse the protesters.

Sao Tome and Principe is considered a model of democratic alternation in Central Africa. The country, which lives off cocoa and coffee and is 90% dependent on international aid, opened up to multiparty politics in 1991, after fifteen years of Marxist and one-party rule by President Manuel Pinto da Costa, who led the country since its independence from Portugal in 1975. </s> One person died and 16 others were injured in clashes between Madagascar's security forces and thousands of opposition activists protesting against new election laws ahead of a vote later this year in the politically-volatile island nation.

"We received 17 wounded today, one of whom succumbed to his wounds," Olivat Alison Aimee Rakoto, head of the hospital HJRA in Antanannarivo, told AFP. He did not specify if the injured were protesters or police.

Authorities had earlier in the week declared the protest illegal but opposition activists defied the order and forged ahead with the demonstration which saw thousands throng a public square outside city hall in the capital of Antananarivo.

Clashes erupted after police fired tear gas to try to disperse the protesters as the crowd grew and overwhelmed the security forces, occupying the square, an AFP reporter at the scene said.

Some of the opposition supporters reacted by hurling rocks at the officers.

There was no immediate comment from authorities on the protests.

The opposition has accused the government of President Hery Rajaonarimampianina of wanting to muzzle it through new electoral laws in the run-up to presidential and legislative elections due to be held in late November or December.

The opposition claims that three new laws, adopted earlier this month, favour the ruling party and put in place obstacles to the disadvantage of opponents.

Rajaonarimampianina is out of the country on official business, according to his office, which did not specify where he was.

"The message to the president of the republic who is out of the country, is that it would be good that you remain where you are," an opposition lawmaker Hanitriniaina Razafimanantsoa said.

Elected in 2013, Rajaonarimampianina has not yet announced whether he will stand for re-election.

But two former heads of state have already mooted runs: Marc Ravalomanana, who was president from 2002 to 2009, and Andry Rajoelina, who removed him during a coup.

Both were barred from running in 2013 and their parties were behind Saturday's protests.

The Indian Ocean island nation endured several years of turmoil after Ravalomanana was ousted as president in a 2009 coup that led to the withdrawal of foreign investment and donor money.

Ravalomanana was overthrown in 2009 after an army mutiny that allowed Rajoelina -- then Antananarivo mayor -- to become the country's unelected transition president until 2014.

Rajaonarimampianina's arrival in power brought an end to a long series of political crises in Madagascar.
The ruling Independent Democratic Action (ADI) under Prime Minister Patrice Trovoada loses its absolute majority in the National Assembly.