Mauritanians will probably extend
President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz’s mandate in tomorrow’s first-round election as most opposition groups say they will boycott
because of concern the vote won’t be fair. Abdel Aziz, 58, of the Union for the Republic faces four
candidates, including independent Ibrahima Sarr, 65, and Lalla
Mariem Mint Moulaye Idriss, 57, the second woman to run for the
highest office there. A coalition of 11 other opposition
parties, including the Islamist party Tawassoul, pulled out of
the election, citing a breakdown in talks with the government.
Results will be released as early as tomorrow.
The opposition’s “main point is that it is not a fairly
contested process,” Geoffrey Howard, North Africa analyst at
Control Risks Group, said by phone from London. This is an
attempt to “give a cloak of democracy to what is essentially a
pretty authoritarian regime.” Abdel Aziz, who has positioned himself as a Western ally in
the fight against Islamist militants, led a 2008 military coup
that ousted Mauritania’s first elected president, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. Abdel Aziz won the 2009 elections against
Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, who said the vote was fraudulent.
Mauritania is Africa’s biggest exporter of iron ore after South
Africa.
The opposition coalition has said that the Abdel Aziz
didn’t include them in a transitional government that organized
tomorrow’s elections. Sarr has called for equal rights in
Mauritania, where as many 160,000 of a population of 3.8 million
people are enslaved, according to the Global Slavery Index. “Western powers want a stable Mauritania and know that
stability is tied to a democratically elected government.
Source: Bloomberg News
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