NOUAKCHOTT,
November 8 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Amid charges and
denials of electoral fraud and with one of the candidates failing to
vote for herself, outgoing Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Taya
was re-elected in the first round of the presidential elections.
Ould
Taya was well ahead of the five other candidates in Friday's election
having won the lion's share of the results already counted, the
authorities said Saturday, November 8, according to Agence
France-Presse (AFP).
He
had netted 64.6 percent of the vote after 80 percent of ballot papers
had been counted, the director of political affairs Sidi Yeslem Ould
Amar Cheine told reporters.
Next
came former President Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla with 19.78 percent
followed by Ahmed Ould Daddah with 7.62 percent and Messaoud Ould
Boulkheir with 5.52 percent, according to the partial figures.
The
two minor candidates, Moulaye El Hacen Ould Jied and Aicha Bint
Jeddane, a woman, respectively got 1.55 and 0.51 percent, Ould Amar
Cheine said.
Turnout
was initially put at 60.5 percent of the 1.1 million electors, Ould
Cheine said.
The
president's office had said earlier he was well ahead with over 60
percent of the vote.
A
source close to his campaign management said Ould Taya, who has been
in power since 1984, was ahead in all the northwest African country's
13 regions.
Foul
Play
At
the end of the polls, campaign managers for the main opposition
candidates said there was "no doubt" Ould Taya would win.
Candidate
Ould Haidallah underlined that there had been "all sorts of
intimidation" of voters.
His
deputy campaign manager, Cheikh Ould Horma, declared: "Fraud has
reached such dimensions that this election cannot be validated."
Bint
Jeddane, the only woman in the six-way race, reportedly failed to vote
for herself.
Ould
Daddah, a third candidate and half-brother to the recently-deceased
father of the country's independence, said: "First indications
point to massive fraud across the country."
"Stuffing
of ballot boxes began at 7:00 am (0700 GMT)," when polls opened,
Ould Daddah had told reporters Friday, after casting his vote in a
school in the capital Nouakchott.
During
the day, his campaign team published a list of what was described as
"nationwide irregularities at 11.30 am."
These
included votes being cast by people without identity cards and a ban
on candidates' representatives entering polling stations.
Opposition
candidates claimed their representatives did not have access to lists
of voters and were not allowed to use their portable telephones,
according to AFP.
But
the manager of the campaign of Ould Taya, Interior Minister Hamoud
Ould M'Hamed, rejected the charges and said Ould Daddah's claims of
ballot-box stuffing were "lamentable".
Shortly
after voting ended, Ould Taya's spokesman Mohamed Vall Ould Bellal
said the election had gone well.
