Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, the current president of Mauritania, comfortably secured reelection with 56.12% of the vote, the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) announced on Monday.
With the win, the former army chief will serve a second term as leader of the huge desert nation, which is expected to start producing gas and is viewed as a pillar of security in the unstable Sahel region of Africa.
If Ghazouani hadn’t received more than half the votes in Saturday’s poll, there would have been a runoff. As it happened, CENI president Dah Ould Abdel Jelil declared the results, showing that he finished far ahead of his biggest opponent, anti-slavery campaigner Biram Dah Abeid, who received 22.10 percent.
Abeid declared on Sunday that he would not accept the CENI results, claiming the government had corrupted them.
According to CENI, Ghazouani’s primary opponent, Hamadi Ould Sid’ El Moctar, the leader of the Islamist Tewassoul party, came in third place with 12.78 percent.
“We did everything we could to prepare the conditions for a good election and we were relatively successful,” said the head of the electoral commission.
Voting on whether to re-elect Ghazouani started on Saturday for Mauritanians.
Seven candidates competed for the position of leader of the West African country, which has mostly resisted a wave of jihadism in the region and is poised to become a producer of gas. The country has about 1.9 million registered voters.
Ghazouani became the country’s ninth president in 2019 after winning an election. This is the first time two elected presidents have led the country since its 1960 independence from France and the string of coups that occurred between 1978 and 2008.
Although there have been several military takeovers in the Sahel recently, and jihadist activity has increased, especially in Mali, Mauritania has not had an attack since 2011.
Most people believe that Ghazouani, 67, is the brains behind the West African state’s seeming security.
