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Ould Abdallahi celebrates the victory with his supporters after announcing the results |
NOUAKCHOTT — Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, a 69-year-old former government minister, was declared on Monday, March 26, Mauritania's first democratically-elected president since the northwestern African country won independence from France in 1960.
"I hereby proclaim that the next president of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania will be Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi," Interior Minister Mohamed Ahmed Ould Mohamed Lemine told a press conference in Nouakchott.
Ould Abdallahi won 52.85 percent of the run-off vote, while his challenger Ahmed Ould Daddah got 47.15 percent.
Turnout was 67.48 percent, slightly down from the 70 percent in the first round of the elections, held on March 11.
In the first round Abdallahi won about 24 percent and Daddah, a former finance minister and ardent critic of ousted leader Maaouiya Ould Taya, received 21 percent.
Abdallahi was supported by a coalition of 18 political groups once loyal to Ould Taya as well as the third- and fourth-placed first round contenders.
International observers gave the Mauritanian vote a certificate of excellence.
"There have been no incidents, no unauthorized people in polling stations," said EU observer mission chief Marie-Anne Isler Beguin.
The US lauded the process as a model of democracy for Arab and African countries.
The presidential vote was the final stage of democratic reforms led by the military junta that ousted Ould Taya in August 2005.
After a constitutional referendum in June, local and parliamentary polls were held in November and senatorial elections in January.
After being beset by a cycle of coup attempts since 1960, Mauritania has finally seen power changing hands through the ballot box.
Technocrat
Abdallahi, an economist and seasoned technocrat who has served as minister in past administrations, was born in 1938 in Medina city, Senegal.
He studied economy in Dakar and traveled to France to complete his postgraduate studies.
Abdallahi, a father of three sons and one daughter, held a number of ministerial portfolios, including the ministry of national finance from 1971 to 1978 under the country's first post-independence leader Moktar Ould Daddah.
After the ouster of Daddah, he was jailed for a year.
From 1979 to 1985, Abdallahi served as an economic advisor to the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development.
He later served under Ould Taya from 1986 to 1987, first as minister of hydraulics and then as minister of fishing.
From 1989 to 2003 Abdallahi severed as an advisor to ministers of planning and economy and finance in Niger.
One of the major challenges facing Abdallahi, who will be invested on April 19 and can serve a maximum of two five-year terms, would be tackling poverty and widespread social and economic imbalances in the largely desert and poverty-stricken country twice the size of France.
Mauritania, despite rich fisheries, minerals and oil, still suffers from widespread poverty, underdevelopment and simmering racial tensions.
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