The Islamist Tewassoul party, the opposition party in Mauritania, announced on Thursday the candidacy of its leader for the presidential election scheduled for June 29, a first for this political group since 2009.
Hamadi Ould Sid’ El Moctar, president of the National Rally for Reform and Development also known by the abbreviation Tewassoul, will represent this party legalized in 2007 and which has since become the first opposition party in the Mauritanian Parliament with 11 deputies (out of 176) .
Tewassoul boycotted the 2014 presidential election and supported a candidate outside his ranks in the 2019 election.
The big favorite in the June election is the president elected in 2019, Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani, who announced on April 24 his candidacy for a second term at the head of this country known to be a pole of stability in a region plagued by jihadist spread.
Tewassoul explains in a press release that he decided to present a candidate after a “long debate” which concluded that there was a “need for a change in the deplorable situation into which the regime has plunged the country.”
“The Mauritanian citizen dreams of this change and counts on the commitment and dynamism of our activists and all the opposition forces to vote against the candidate of power to achieve it,” added the authors of the text.
A little less than a dozen other contenders have so far announced their candidacy, including human rights activist Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, who came second in the 2019 presidential election.
Mauritania, a vast hinge country between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa of around 4.5 million inhabitants, experienced a succession of coups d’état from 1978 to 2008, before the 2019 election. marks the first transition between two elected presidents.
While jihadism spread elsewhere in the Sahel, and particularly in neighboring Mali, the country has not experienced an attack since 2011.
The electoral campaign will officially begin on Friday June 14 at midnight and end on Thursday June 27 at midnight.
