Mauritania president re-elected according to provisional results

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani has won the country’s presidential election, according to provisional results from over 99.27 per cent of polling stations released by the West African nation’s electoral commission yesterday, Reuters has reported.

Ghazouani was apparently re-elected in the Saturday election with over 56 per cent of the votes cast, results from 4,468 polling stations out of 4,503 showed on Mauritania’s independent electoral commission’s website.

The 67-year-old former army chief of staff and defence minister, who was first elected in 2019, has pledged to boost investment to spur a commodities boom in the country of five million people, as it prepares to start producing natural gas by the end of the year.

Analysts had expected Ghazouani, who faced six challengers in the election, to win the race in the first round, thanks to Mauritania’s ruling party dominance. The provisional results showed that his main rival, anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, was second with 22.14 per cent, followed by Hamadi Sidi El Mokhtar of the Islamist Tewassoul party with 12.8 per cent.

Earlier on Sunday, Abeid rejected the provisional results, alleging irregularities. “We’ll not accept these results from the so-called independent electoral commission,” Abeid told journalists in the capital Nouakchott. “We’ll use our own electoral commission to proclaim the results.”

Before the election, El Mokhtar had also warned that his party would not accept the results if it suspected rigging. In the 2019 election, some opposition candidates questioned the credibility of the vote, sparking small-scale protests.

Preliminary figures showed the turnout at Saturday’s vote was just under 55.33 per cent, the electoral commission data showed.

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