The candidates’ seats were lit up on Friday at 00:00 (GMT and local) in Nouakchott, capital of this vast country of around 4.5 million inhabitants at the crossroads between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, according to an AFP journalist.
Tents were set up on major avenues and songs in praise of the competitors began to ring out, for this two-week campaign, scheduled to end on June 27.
President Ghazouani, 67, at the head of the country since 2019 and favorite for a second term, launched his campaign in a stadium in Nouakchott on Friday, in the presence of thousands of galvanized supporters.
Mr. Ghazouani, one of the four candidates who began their campaign in Nouakchott, praised the “great achievements” of his five-year term and promised the fight against mismanagement and future actions dedicated to youth.
The three other candidates, including human rights activist Biram Ould Dah Ould Abeid, second in the 2019 presidential election, started in towns in the interior of the country.
Besides MM. Ghazouani and Ould Abeid, the five other candidates are running for the first time in a presidential election, including that of the Islamists of the Tewassoul party, Hamadi Ould Sidi el Moctar.
Read also: Mauritania: the countdown to the June 29 presidential election is on
The opposition denounced a “unilateral election”, accused the independent national electoral commission (Ceni) of “doing nothing to ensure its smooth running”. She called in particular for biometric verifications of voters’ names during the vote, in a press release last week.
This request was judged by the CENI to be “impossible” to carry out within normal deadlines and would be “very costly financially”.
The Constitutional Council did not accept the candidacy of the former president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who had fallen into disgrace under Mr. Ghazouani, who had been one of his most faithful companions in the past and for whom he had prepared the election to the presidency following him in 2019.
Mr. Aziz is in prison. He was sentenced in December 2023 to five years in prison for illicit enrichment. Calling it a conspiracy, he denies having abused his power to enrich himself.
Mauritania experienced a succession of coups from 1978 to 2008, before the 2019 election marked the first transition between two elected presidents.
Although jihadism has spread elsewhere in the Sahel, the country has not experienced an attack since 2011.
By Le360 Africa (with AFP)
06/14/2024 at 12:11 p.m.
