Opposition candidates in Mauritania's presidential election on Sunday cried foul after government candidate Mohamed Cheikh El-Ghazouani claimed victory before full results were in. Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar, addressing a news conference along with three other candidates, 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, vowing that the opposition would use "every legal means" to challenge them. The electoral commission earlier Sunday issued results showing that Ghazouani won an absolute majority in the first round with counting completed in 3,729 of a total of 3,861 polling stations.
According to data published on the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) website, the 62-year-old former head of the domestic security service won 51.5 percent of the vote. If the result is confirmed, Ghazouani will have won outright, with no need to contest a second-round runoff.
Ghazouani had already declared himself the winner in the early hours of Sunday in the presence of outgoing president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, his supporters and journalists. Another candidate, Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, told the news conference: "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."
Although this ballot is the first in Mauritania's coup-strewn history that looks set to see an elected president complete his mandate and transfer power to an elected successor, the opposition has raised concerns that the vote could perpetuate a government dominated by military figures. Some 1.5 million people were eligible to vote in the vast predominantly Muslim state, which is approximately twice the size of former colonial power France but has a population of just 4.5 million. Turnout was 62.68 percent, CENI said. Abeid came second with 18.58 percent of the votes and Boubacar followed in third place with 17.82 percent, the CENI data showed.