Members of a national transitional council chose the female mayor of Central African Republic's capital to lead the country out of chaos today, as a top UN official urged the international community to keep the nation from "crossing the tipping-point into an all-out sectarian conflict."
At two meetings in Brussels, international donors pledged a total of USD 496 million in humanitarian assistance and European Union foreign ministers took a first step toward potentially deploying hundreds more troops to reinforce French and African peacekeepers to secure the lawless and violent country where nearly 1 million people are displaced.
Bangui Mayor Catherine Samba-Panza was chosen as interim president after two rounds of voting, becoming the first female leader in the country's history.
She beat out Desire Zanga-Kolingba, the son of a former president in Monday's runoff. Samba-Panza, dressed in a bright pink suit jacket, thrust her arms into the air in victory. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius described the 59-year-old Samba-Panza as a "very remarkable woman."
Samba-Panza, a longtime corporate lawyer in the insurance industry who took over the mayor's office last June, now will be tasked with organizing national elections before the end of 2014, a job critics say may be nearly impossible given the amount of looting and destruction to administrative buildings throughout the country.
She also faces the enormous task of stemming anarchy and bloodshed that has left an untold number dead since a March 2013 coup. An armed Christian movement known as the anti-Balaka arose in opposition to the mostly Muslim Seleka rebellion that seized power then.
"I call on my children, especially the anti-Balaka, to put down their arms and stop all the fighting. The same goes for the ex-Seleka, they should not have fear. I don't want to hear any more talk of murders and killings," she said.
She urged the 100,000 people sheltering near the airport, nicknamed with bitter irony the "Ledger" after the town's sole five-star luxury hotel, to return home.
"I'm also calling on the international community to help us quickly restore order in our country which today is on the brink of chaos," she said.
Under mounting international pressure, rebel leader-turned-president Michel Djotodia stepped aside 10 days ago after it became clear he lacked control over the fighters who brought him to power and who were later implicated in scores of atrocities against the predominantly Christian civilian population. Djotodia was the country's first Muslim leader, and an armed Christian militia movement launched an attempted coup in early December.
