BFF-08,09 Mauritanians in last vote before key presidential election

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MAURITANIA-ELECTION

Mauritanians in last vote before key presidential election

NOUAKCHOTT, Sept 1, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – After a turbulent campaign,
Mauritania, a frontline state in the Sahel’s fight against jihadism, goes to
the polls Saturday for triple elections that will test head of state Mohamed
Ould Abdel Aziz’s record seven months before a presidential vote.

Military personnel cast their votes Friday to free themselves up to
provide security in the vast and arid west African state with a registered
electorate of some 1.4 million.

Polling booths will open at 0700 GMT and close 12 hours later with first
results not expected until the middle of next week. There will be no
international observers.

Unlike in the last polls which it boycotted in 2013, the opposition is
standing in the legislative, regional and local elections in which a record
98 parties will take part.

Potential run-off elections would take place on September 15.

Aziz, 61, came to power in a coup in 2008. He was elected in 2009 and
again in 2014 for a second five-year term.

He has been frequently accused by opposition figures and NGOs of rights
abuses, including the arrest of a former senator and the “secretive”
detention of a blogger.

Although Aziz has said several times he will not seek a third mandate,
something that would be against the West African country’s constitution,
statements by his ministers and supporters have allowed opposition suspicions
to flourish.

Final campaign rallies drew sparse attendance despite the opposition
shelving its boycott.

Aziz has slammed opposition leaders as “villains” and “troublemakers.”

He has described some as “dangerous Islamists, racist extremists and the
leftovers of former regimes which brought the country to its knees”.

“We must keep them far from office with a massive vote for the UPR,” his
Union for the Republic party, which he vowed would “continue on the path of
high achievement and the fight against mismanagement”.

MORE/SSS/0901 hrs

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MAURITANIA-ELECTION-2-LAST

– ‘Assassinating democracy’ –

Earlier this week he accused Islamists of “just awaiting their political
failure to take up arms”.

That brought an indignant response from Jemil Ould Mensour of the Islamist
party Tewassoul.

“It is Mr Aziz who has taken up arms against elected regime and is
assassinating democracy,” he charged.

Longtime opposition leader Ahmed Ould Daddah, who heads the Gathering for
Democracy (RFD), urged voters to make “the necessary leap to get rid of
dictatorship and generalised bankruptcy”.

The UPR is campaigning largely on changes it made in the 2017
constitution.

Under it, the country’s senate was abolished and a new national anthem and
flag were ushered in. Voters endorsed the controversial measures, while the
opposition warned they would give the president more power.

– Living standards –

On the economic front, authorities say growth has revived, with three
percent in 2017 and a poverty rate of 31 percent, against over 40 percent in
2008.

The opposition, on the other hand, says there has been a fall in living
standards since the introduction at the start of the year of new, lower-value
bank notes. National debt is equal to GDP.

Mauritania, which hosted an African Union summit in July, has recently
revived diplomatic ties with Morocco, after years of tension over the status
of Western Sahara.

That territory, lying inland from the Atlantic coast beside northern
Mauritania, was annexed by Morocco in 1975 after Spanish colonial rule ended.

The largely desert country also signed fishing and oil exploitation
agreements with its southern neighbour Senegal earlier this year. In July, a
Mauritanian general took over the command of the G5 Sahel force. The armed
forces work alongside Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad in a joint military
operation aimed at tackling jihadists in the region with backing from Europe.

BSS/AFP/SSS/0902 hrs