General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who overthrew an elected government in Mauritania 11 months ago, was himself chosen president of the country in a new election at the weekend. But four opposing candidates rejected the result.
Mauritania's interior minister, Mohamed Ould Rzeizim, announced on Sunday that Abdel Aziz had won the election with 52.6 percent of the vote, or 409,100 votes, reports Agence Nouakchott d'Information from Nouakchott.
Publishing the provisional results, the interior minister placed the number of valid ballots at 778,105, a 68.6 percentage poll. According to him, the elections went well without any incidents. He thanked the country's people for their maturity and patriotism.
He said Abdel Aziz's closest rival – Messaoud Ould Boulkheir – could manage to draw only 126,782 votes, or 16.3 percent of the total, confirming Abdel Aziz the winner in the first round of voting.
The civil society monitoring group, the African Elections Project, reported that Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, Ahmed Ould Daddah, Ely Ould Mohamed Vall and Hamady Ould Meimou rejected the results in a joint declaration at a press conference on Sunday. They said the results had been altered so as to give Abdel Aziz a first-round victory.
Le Potentiel of Kinshasa reports that Mauritanians went to the polls after the democratically-elected president, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi – who was elected in 2007 – was overthrown in a military coup led by Abdel Aziz.
For close to a year, the country has been under the rule of a military junta led by Abdel Aziz, who accused his predecessor of corruption and mismanagement. Abdel Aziz was tipped to be the favourite ahead of the election, as he presented himself as the defender of the poor and promised to bring "constructive change".
Saturday's election was organized in pursuance of an agreement reached in Nouakchott in June under the auspices of the members of the international community, notably Senegal, who were devoted to finding ways of getting the country out of the crisis brought about by the coup.
Nine candidates were vying for 1.2 million votes in 2,500 polling stations across the country. For the first time in the history of the country, expatriates from 26 countries were allowed to cast ballots. The election was monitored by 250 observers drawn from the African Union, the European Union, the Organization of French-Speaking States (Francophonie) and the Arab League.
Report compiled and translated by Michael Tantoh.
