Mauritanians vote for leader, opposition boycotts
Mauritanians voted Saturday to choose their next president, but with the major opposition parties boycotting, the incumbent seems certain to hold on to power.
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Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who assumed power in a coup in 2008 and won elections a year later, has been a staunch ally of the West in facing the growing terror threat in West Africa.
The National Forum for Democracy and Unity, a group of the main opposition parties, called the vote "grotesque theater" on Friday. They decided to boycott when the election date was chosen without their input and they have also said that Aziz's control of state institutions will ensure his victory.
On Saturday, security forces guarded polling stations, as voters cast their ballots. Turnout seemed low in the wealthier areas of central Nouakchott, the capital. But in the city's poorer outskirts, which are Aziz strongholds, lines were forming. Aziz is from the country's ethnic Arab elite, but his policies have made him popular with the poor.
"The important thing is to keep the state strong where citizens can freely express themselves and vote freely," said Mariam Mint Abdallah, a shopkeeper who was voting in an area north of the capital where Aziz himself voted Saturday.
The next president will face huge challenges. Insecurity is growing in the Sahel, a band of countries, including Mauritania, that lie just south of Sahara, which has vast ungoverned spaces where Islamic militants roam. Mauritania's neighbor Mali, for instance, was overrun by al-Qaida-linked fighters in 2012, until a French-led intervention pushed them back.
But the economy may pose an even greater hurdle. Mauritania is one of the world's poorest countries with great economic inequality, partially driven by a divide between those of Arab descent, from which the ruling class is typically drawn, and the country's blacks. Even though illegal, slavery persists.
"There are not going to be a big fixes to Mauritania's democratic process any time soon. And the much bigger challenges are those of economic growth, employment and youth employment," said Jennifer Cooke, the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Mauritania doesn't have a whole lot working for it on the economic front in some ways: the levels of inequality, the racial disparities, the broader challenges that all of the Sahelian countries face," including increasing droughts and other climate changes, generally few resources and the militant threat.
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Aziz faces four candidates, one of whom is the descendent of slaves. If no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, a runoff vote will be held July 5.