Global Arab Network | Four cleared to run in Mauritania presidential poll

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Four cleared to run in Mauritania presidential poll

- Adam Turner

Wednesday, 29 April 2009 14:46

Four candidates, including former junta leader Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, were cleared to run on Tuesday in Mauritania's June 6 presidential election after being vetted by the constitutional council.
Ould Abdel Aziz, who seized power in a bloodless coup in August last year is the favorite to win the vote and has no real competitors among the three other politicians also approved to run for president. The former junta leader stepped down as Mauritanian leader on April 15 to pursue his candidacy.

Running against the general are Kane Hamidou Baba, a dissident member of the Union of Democratic Forces (RFD). The RFD, one of Mauritania's major opposition parties, is boycotting the vote which it called "a mascarade".

The other candidates are ethnic negro-Mauritanian Moctar Ibrahima Sarr, who took eight percent of vote in the 2007 presidential elections, and Sghaier Ould M'Bareck, a former prime minister.

All three candidates have refused to condemn the August 2008 coup which ousted Mauritania's first democratically elected president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi.(AFP)

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