MAURITIUS – Incumbent Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani has won Mauritania’s presidential election, securing a second term, according to the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI).

Ghazouani, 67, won 56.12 percent of the votes in the first round of the presidential poll, well ahead of his main rival, anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, who won 22.10 percent, CENI said on Monday. Ghazouani’s other main rival, Hamadi Ould Sid’ El Moctar, who heads the Tewassoul party, came third with 12.78 percent, according to CENI.

Saturday’s presidential election had an overall turnout of 55.39 percent, lower than in 2019. But opponent Abeid said he would not recognise the results of CENI, which he accused of being manipulated by the government. Some of Abeid’s supporters demonstrated in the capital Nouakchott late on Sunday, burning tyres and disrupting traffic. “We did everything we could to prepare the conditions for a good election and we were relatively successful. I congratulate everyone,” CENI chief Dah Ould Abdel Jelil told journalists. The election victory gives former army chief Ghazouani, 67, a second term as head of the vast desert country, seen as relatively stable in Africa’s volatile Sahel region and set to become a gas producer. (Al Jazeera)…[+]