Mauritanians vote on Sunday to choose a civilian president, completing a handover of power by a military junta that took control of the Islamic state on the western edge of the Sahara in a 2005 coup.
Voters and international observers hope the poll can establish a multi-party democracy in the largely desert former French colony, which has experienced several coups and years of authoritarian rule since its independence in 1960.
Just over one million voters across the country, which is twice the size of France and straddles Arab and black Africa, are being asked to choose between 19 candidates.
They include a veteran opposition figure, a former military ruler, an ex-central bank governor and a descendant of black slaves in the racially diverse nation, which has traditionally been ruled by a white Moorish elite.
If no candidate wins more than 50% of the total votes in the first round, a second round will be held on March 25.
Members of the outgoing military junta, whose bloodless coup ended more than two decades of rule by president Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, barred themselves from standing for election and have said they will respect the authority of the new head of state.
They organised a referendum reforming the Constitution in June to limit a president’s period in office. Multi-party legislative elections were held late last year.
Many voters said they want the new president to ensure wealth from the country’s natural resources is distributed more fairly and to end inequality among the mixed three million population of white and black Moors and black Africans.
”We have everything in our country, fisheries, oil, mining. What we want is good government,” said Diatahir Mamadou (47), an unemployed driver who lives in Nouakchott’s sprawling Keube shantytown, mostly inhabited by black Mauritanians.
Ancient caste system
”And we want no more racism,” Mamadou said, expressing the feelings of black Mauritanians who say they have suffered discrimination and slavery under a centuries-old caste system that kept the white Moorish elite in power.
Slavery was legally banned in 1981 but rights groups say it still exists in parts of the country.
International observers say Sunday’s poll could be the freest and most open ever held in Mauritania, in contrast to the past when a single leader and party kept a tight grip on power.
”People who are 30 years old don’t know what a free election is here,” said Marie Anne Isler Beguin, chief of the European Union observer mission.
”This can be a model of democracy to follow in Africa and the Arab world,” she said.
Beguin said some of the about 80 European observers would monitor voting ”under tents” out in the desert, where most of the population live as nomads.
Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, the outgoing head of the junta who will be replaced as president after Sunday, told Reuters he believed he had accomplished his promised mission to hand over power to civilian rule.
But some voters said they did not know for whom to cast their ballots.
”They all make promises and then do nothing. I don’t know who to trust, black or white. Only God knows,” said Zeinabou Sey, sitting in her ramshackle hut with her children as dust blown out of the Sahara swept over Nouakchott. — Reuters