Mauritanian President set for re-election as vote counting reaches 78%

With 78 per cent of votes counted, Mauritanian President, Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani has obtained over 55 per cent of total votes cast.

This places him in a hard-to-defeat position over six other presidential candidates, as his closest challenger, Biram Dah Abeid, has received less than 23 per cent of total votes.

As counting continued Sunday evening, incumbent President Ghazouani held the almost unassailable lead in the nationwide election of Saturday, June 29.

The country’s Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) announced the preliminary results in the later hours of Sunday afternoon, explaining that this was after counting more than 78 per cent of the ballots.

After Mohamed Ghazouani and second-placed Biram Dah Abeid came Hamadi Ould Sid’ El Moctar with 12.82 per cent; then El-Aid Ould Mohamedan who ranked fourth with 3.52 per cent.

Mamadou Boukari secured fifth place with 2.38 per cent, while Outouma Soumare came sixth with 2.24 per cent followed by Mohamed Lamine Mourteji El Wafi with 0.97 per cent.

The Mauritanian electoral body CEMI reported that it counted votes in 3,523 out of 4,503 polling stations nationwide, accounting for 78.15 per cent of the total.

Mauritania, a North African country of 4.5 million people, registered 1.9 million voters to elect one of the seven candidates who presented themselves for the June 29 presidential election.

Incumbent Mohamed Ould Ghazouani had even before the election been widely expected to win.

Critics accuse him of corruption but, apparently, enough Mauritanians favour him as their beacon of stability and progress to return him to power.

Ghazouani, seeking reelection on the promise of further economic growth, is a former army chief and currently the chairman of the African Union, AU.

He was first elected president of Mauritania in 2019 in the first democratic transition in the country.

The Islamic Republic of Mauritania has a Parliament composed of a single chamber, the National Assembly.

In the power equation is a prime minister, but while the president is directly elected by absolute majority popular vote, it is the president who appoints the prime minister.