NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania
The incumbent Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani won the presidential election with 56.12% of the vote, while human rights activist Biram Ould Dah Abeid came in second with 22.10%, the National Independent Electoral Commission announced on Monday morning.
Hamadi Ould Sidi el Moctar, leader of the opposition Islamist party National Rally for Reform and Development secured third place with 12.76% of the vote, the electoral authority said, which completed the count for the presidential election held on Saturday.
El-Aid Ould Mohamedan, an opposition lawyer and parliament member, finished fourth with 3.57% of the vote, followed by politician Mamadou Boukari at 2.39% and opposition leader Atouma Soumare at 2.06%. Finance inspector Mohamed Lemine El Mourtaji El Wafi received only 1% of the votes.
Mauritanians voted for a new president on Saturday, choosing from seven candidates. According to electoral authority figures, the North African country has 1.9 million registered voters out of a population of approximately 4.5 million, with a turnout of 55.39%.
Earlier on Sunday evening, opposition candidate Dah Abeid refused to accept the election results, calling it an “electoral coup.”
He announced that he will now campaign for an investigation into the election results, calling them “fraud.”
In a related development, the Mauritanian Interior Ministry announced early Monday that its security forces had quelled “riots” following the announcement of election results.
The ministry said its forces responded to “riots” involving “tyre burning, disrupting traffic flow, and attempting to intimidate peaceful citizens and damage their property.”
Security forces “promptly addressed these acts of vandalism and fully controlled the situation,” the ministry added.
The northern African country has experienced several coups between 1978 and 2008, with 2019 marking the first peaceful power transfer between elected presidents since its independence from France in 1960.
