Parliamentary Elections, 12 January and 16 February 2025

Comoros held first round parliamentary elections on 12 January 2025 with a second round on 16 February Renewed every five years, the Parliament of Comoros consists of two chambers: the Assembly of the Union (33 members), elected through direct popular vote; and the Assembly of each island, with some seats allocated through a majority system and others through proportional representation. 

All 33 members of the Assembly of the Union are directly elected by absolute majority vote in up to two rounds and must be confirmed by the Supreme Court of Comoros. On 22 January 2025, the Supreme Court invalidated four constituencies due to procedural irregularities, causing the rerun election to occur on 30 January. This was only the second time a rerun election has occurred in Comoros, with the first being after the 2016 presidential election (International IDEA n.d.a). On February 16, 2025, the second round was held as scheduled, concurrently with municipal elections to renew local councils. The CRC (Convention for the Renewal of the Comoros) party won most of the 54 constituencies including the capital, Moroni (World Bank n.d.).  

Elections in Comoros are administered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), the National Press and Audiovisual Council (CNPA), the Supreme Court, the Ministry of the Interior—responsible for the electoral register—and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. CENI has branches per island (three) and municipal constituencies (54) and is the main electoral administrator (International IDEA n.d.b).

Comorian citizens residing outside country can still be registered to vote by being regularly registered at the consulate or embassy in their country of residence and must be listed on an electoral list of the relevant jurisdiction. However, out of country voters still have to travel back to Comoros to vote, since there is no access to mail-in ballots (Comoros 2010).

The opposition Juwa party announced before the election that they would be boycotting the polls due to the lack of transparency and alleged fraud that occurred during the presidential election in 2024. Many people were also reporting to believe that the elections themselves are fraudulent, with the appointments already decided beforehand and did not have much, if any, faith in the results of the election (Comores Infos 2025). 

On election day, organizational issues were observed of some polling stations. For example, one reported that their doors opened at 11:00; voting should have started at 08:00 (Jeune Afrique 2025). Due to the polls opening late, the vote was extended until 18:00 when it was originally scheduled to end at 16:00, but the instructions from the electoral commission were not always followed. In Mbueni, south of Moroni, for example, the police had to intervene to reopen polling stations so that the extension could be applied (RFI 2025). 

In another neighborhood south of Moroni, a candidate stated he was arrested while trying to prevent an attempt to cheat, according to his version of the facts. He was released shortly after. In another polling location, an official claimed to have been injured after trying to prevent stuffing of ballot boxes at the end of the day. Additionally, some polling stations were not properly set up for the elections and had to improvise, which reportedly caused some voters to worry about the privacy of their vote (Mecca Times 2025). 

28 out of the 33 seats were initially won by the CRC, including victories for seven ministers and the president of the National Assembly. However, on 28 January 2025 the Supreme Court invalidated the election results in four constituencies—Domoni I, Domoni III, Niomakele III and Itsandra-Sud—due to irregularities. On the island of Moheli, four out of five constituencies had a single unopposed candidate from the ruling party. The only opponent, from the Orange party, then pulled out of the race at midday, reportedly to join the boycott. The end result after the rerun and the second round was that the CRC had control of 31 of the 33 Assembly seats. One of the remaining two seats were taken by the Party for the Reform of Institutions (PARI) and the other seat was taken by an independent (IPU n.d.).

Voter turnout was 66.27 per cent for the first round, an increase of nearly four per cent from the previous 2020 election (62.42 per cent) (International IDEA n.d.c). Voter turnout for the second round has not been announced. Approximately 339,000 voters were registered out of a total population of 850,000 (IFES 2025).

Innovations

A February 2023 bill restored the statutory number of members from 24 to 33, as it had been before a reduction in 2020. Grande Comore now has 16 seats, Anjouan 12, and Mohéli 5 (World Bank n.d.; IPU n.d.).