The electoral commission of Mauritania declared Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, the ruling party candidate, as the winner of the recently held presidential election in the country, reported Reuters.
The 62-year-old former head of the domestic security service won with 52 percent of the vote. As Ghazouani has won with a clear majority of the votes, there’s no need for a second-round runoff election.
Ghazouani’s closest rival, anti-slavery campaigner Biram Dah Abeid, came second with 18.58 percent of the votes, while Mohamed Ould Boubacar, who is backed by Mauritania’s biggest Islamist party, came third with 17.85 percent of the votes. None of the three remaining candidates got more than 10 percent.
Notably, Ghazouani had already declared himself the winner in the early hours of Sunday, even before the final results were officially announced.
Four of the opposition candidates have rejected the results, which are expected to be submitted to the constitutional council for validation. They have cried foul in the voting results.
“We are launching an appeal to the Mauritanian people … to resist, within the bounds of the law, this umpteenth coup d’etat against the will of the people,” Abeid said during the opposition news conference.
Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar said, “multiple irregularities… eliminated any credibility” of the Saturday polls in the West African desert nation.
“We reject the results of the election and we consider that they in no way express the will of the Mauritanian people,” he said.
He vowed that the opposition would use every legal means to challenge the rigged voting results.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) said that voter turnout was 62.66 percent. The election was the first in Mauritania’s history to select a successor to a democratically elected president. After getting independence from France in 1960, Mauritania’s first president held power for 18 years before being ousted in a military coup. More coups followed in 1984, 2005 and 2008.
