Guinea-Bissau's former prime minister Umaro Sissoco Embalo has won the presidential election held on Sunday, the West African nation's electoral commission said.

According to the provisional results published Wednesday by the National Election Commission of Guinea-Bissau (NEC), Embalo, candidate of the Movement for Democratic Alternation (MADEM-G15), obtained 53.55 percent of the votes during the presidential election runoff held on December 29.

He was competing with another former prime minister Domingos Simoes Pereira, candidate of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), who won 46.45 percent of the votes.

The turnout rate for the presidential election runoff was 72.67 percent, slightly lower than in the first round, the NEC said.

A total of 761,676 voters were called to cast their ballot during Sunday's presidential election runoff in 3,139 polling stations across the country and overseas.

The African Union Election Observation Mission (AUEOM) to Guinea-Bissau's presidential election on Tuesday disclosed that the election was "conducted in peace and security necessary for the free expression of suffrage".

On Nov. 27, the NEC announced the provisional results of the first round of presidential election, which showed former prime ministers Pereira and Embalo won respectively 40.13 percent and 27.65 percent of the votes, respectively.

Born in 1974, Embalo served as Guinea-Bissau's prime minister under the presidency of Jose Mario Vaz from November 2016 to January 2018. The incumbent president Jose Mario Vaz also contested for presidency during the first round of the presidential election, obtaining only 12.41 percent of votes.

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