NOUAKCHOTT (AFP) — Mauritania will over the weekend launch a campaign to update its voters' roll ahead of the June presidential poll, 10 months after a coup, the AMI news agency reported Friday.
From Sunday Mauritanians over the age of 18 will be able to apply for a national identity card to allow them to register to vote in the election, AMI quoted the civil registry office as saying.
The announcement comes after the government said Thursday it was creating a national independent electoral commission (CENI) to oversee the new voters' roll and the election build up.
Last week the ruling junta said it would hold a presidential election on June 6, exactly 10 months after it launched a coup to oust the country's first democratically-elected president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi.
Junta leader General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz is expected to run for president himself after he stressed in October that a soldier should have the right to run for office if he stepped down from the army.
Ould Cheikh Abdallahi said he would accept new elections if certain conditions were met, such as the army's withdrawal from power and the reinstatement of institutions created by the 2007 elections.
The international community widely condemned the August 6 coup and demanded a return to "constitutional order". While the African Union has threatened sanctions if this does not happen before February 5.
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