Mauritania’s President Ghazouani leads in presidential election

President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani won 55.72% with more than 91 percent of votes counted, electoral commision data shows.

Mauritania’s incumbent Mohamed Ould Ghazouani holds an unassailable lead in the country’s presidential election with more than 91 percent of the votes counted, provisional results showed.

Ghazouani, a 67-year-old former army chief of staff and defence minister who is widely expected to win the race in the first round, had 55.72 percent of the vote, the tallies on the electoral commission Ceni’s website showed as of 14:40 GMT on Sunday.

The results from 4,068 polling stations out of the total 4,503 showed that his main rival, anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, was at 22.46 percent, while Hamadi Sidi El Mokhtar of the Islamist Tewassoul party was third with 13 percent.

Abeid said that he would not recognise the results of “Ghazouani’s Ceni”.

“We will only recognise our own results, and therefore we will take to the streets” to refuse the electoral commission count, he said, although he insisted their response would be “peaceful”.