stations, or 1,198 out of 4,145 stations) from the election on March 18 put Bozizé in the lead with about 55% of the votes, according to the election commission: 184,734 out of 334,732 votes counted were for Bozizé. This was over 140,000 votes more than his nearest rivals, Ziguélé and Kolingba, who took 12.86% (43,058 votes) and 12.65% (42,374 votes) of the vote respectively. The opposition Union of Active Forces of the Nation (l'Union des forces vives de la Nation, UFVN), a grouping of Bozizé's rivals, denounced the elections on the grounds of alleged fraud and irregularities, and it called for the elections to be declared null. On the other hand, election observers endorsed the vote as free and fair. On March 31, official results were announced: Bozizé came in first with just under 43% of the votes, while Ziguélé came in second with 23.5%. Turnout among voters was said to have been 68.27%. Since no candidate won a majority, a second-round presidential vote was required between Bozizé and Ziguélé. In the parliamentary election, contested by a total of 909 candidates, 17 of the 105 seats were won outright in the first round; the remainder were decided by the results of the second round. Convergence Kwa Na Kwa, the coalition supporting Bozizé, did not win any seats in the first round. Among those who did win seats were Jean-Paul Ngoupandé, also a presidential candidate, and Mireille Kolingba, the wife of presidential candidate André Kolingba. Three of the presidential candidates who were defeated in the first round, Abel Goumba, Charles Massi, and Henri Pouzère, ran in the parliamentary second round. In voting that was taking place abroad in Paris, voters destroyed election materials and results there were cancelled as a result. Second round The run-off between Bozizé and Ziguélé, initially scheduled to take place on May 1, was postponed to May 8. The reason for the postponement was to avoid interference with the marking of Labour Day on May 1. Campaigning took place from April 23 to May 6. Theoretically, as all the opposition candidates (except Auguste Boukanga) were part of the UFVN, there was, based on the mathematical results of the first round, a majority against Bozizé. However, support for Ziguélé in the UFVN was not unconditional. Josué Binoua refused to endorse either candidate, while Ngoupandé, Massi and Goumba backed Bozizé. Kolingba, the third-place finisher, did not endorse either candidate.