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.
Source: AHU – David A-O