Mauritanians began voting on Sunday in the Islamic republic’s first elections since the end of 21 years of authoritarian rule in a bloodless coup 15 months ago.
Voting commenced at 7am local time and Mauritanians have 12 hours to cast their ballots at 2 336 polling stations scattered across this mainly Sahara desert country straddling West Africa and Arab North Africa.
About a million people in this poverty-stricken Islamic republic of about three million people are eligible to vote for 95 lawmakers in the lower house of the national Parliament and 219 local government councillors.
Turn-out was high in the capital’s popular districts of El Mina and Teyrett, where long queues of voters had been already formed before the opening of the polling stations.
”The majority of the polling stations opened on time and we have already noted a strong turnout in the interior of the country,” Cheik Saad Bouh Kamara, a member of the national independent electoral national commission told the media.
”All is going on well, polling stations opened on time in Nouakchott and no problem has been reported to us so far,” a member of the European Union observer said.
The elections are the first in a series to bring the former French colony to civilian democratic rule after more than two decades of a de facto one-party government in a country where power has never changed hands through polling.
They form part of a package of democratic reforms being rolled out by a military junta that ousted autocratic ruler Maaouiya Ould Taya in August last year, after two decades in power.
The elections follow the overwhelming approval in a June referendum of a new Constitution that limits presidential mandates to two five-year terms and gives Parliament powers to censure the government.
Sunday’s local and legislative polls are to be followed by a senatorial election in January, and the process is to culminate in a presidential ballot two months later.
About 30 parties have fielded in all about 1 600 candidates for the parliamentary and municipal seats, but only five parties are considered favourites.
About 500 observers — 200 foreign and 300 local — have been deployed across the country’s 13 regions.
The first provisional results are expected Monday night. — AFP
