Mauritania ruling party boosts majority with election win

Mauritania’s ruling party has strengthened its parliamentary majority, official election results released Sunday 28th of May, showed. After the second round of voting on Saturday, the El Insaf party of President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani has secured a total of 107 seats in the 176-seat legislature, according to the results issued by the Independent National Electoral Commission.

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Tewassoul party remains the second largest in Mauritania parliament

The El Insaf party, which had 93 mandates in the outgoing Assembly, took 80 seats in the first-round vote on May 13 and a further 27 out of the 36 seats at stake on Saturday. El Insaf will also be able to count on the support of 42 deputies from allied parties, leaving the opposition with only 27 seats. The Islamist Tewassoul party remains the second largest in the National Assembly, but now with 11 seats, down from 14 in the previous parliament. All the candidates in the fray on Saturday 27th May were from constituencies outside the capital Nouakchott.

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Opposition figures have called for a rerun of the first round, citing what they call electoral fraud and other problems. One of the elected MPs, anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, said that the seriousness of the situation could lead some Mauritanians to “take up arms”. He was arrested and released on Friday. In the first round of voting, the ruling party also won all 13 regional councils and two-thirds of the municipalities.

Ghazouani, a 66-year-old former army chief, is considered one of the main architects of Mauritania’s success against jihadism in the violent Sahel region. The election results strengthen his position at the helm of the vast country since 2019. Mauritania is a pivotal point between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa and a centre of stability in the Sahel in the face of the spread of jihadism. Ghazouani has not officially announced his candidacy for a second term in 2024, but observers are in no doubt that he will stand for re-election.

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© Agence France-Presse