President of Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani was re-elected head of state following Saturday’s national vote, provisional results show.
The electoral commission’s website shows he won 56% of the vote, defeating six opposition candidates.
In second position was the anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid with 22%, while Hamadi Sidi el-Mokhtar of the Islamist Tewassoul party came in third place with 13%.
Analysts expected him to win the elections in the first round.
The president, a former army chief, is credited with establishing stability since his first election five years ago after decades of political unrest and frequent coups.
It has been an ally of Western partners such as France and the US, but has also maintained ties with junta-led neighbors including Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, which have turned to Russia in recent years.
Mauritania has largely avoided the Islamist insurgencies affecting neighboring Sahel states.
On Sunday, Abeid said he would not recognize the results, calling them an “electoral coup.”
“We will not accept these results from the so-called independent electoral commission. We will use our own electoral commission to proclaim the results,” he told journalists, according to the AFP news agency.
Abeid, whose grandparents were slaves and spent much of his life campaigning against this practice in the country, was running for president for the third time.
He came second in the 2019 elections, also won by Ghazouani.
He and other opposition candidates alleged irregularities in that election, which led to small-scale protests.
Before this year’s elections, third-place candidate Mokhtar warned that his party would not accept the results if it suspected fraud, reports AFP news agency.
Participation in the elections was around 55%, according to the electoral website.
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