NOUAKCHOTT (AFP) — Thousands of people turned out Thursday in Nouakchott to listen to their favourite candidates as Mauritania's presidential election campaign kicked off in a festive atmosphere ahead of the July 18 vote.
Ten candidates are competing for office, including the three main opposition leaders, after a successful international bid to end a political crisis that began with a military coup last August.
The three leaders are Ahmed Ould Daddah, head of the main opposition party, the Rally of Democratic Forces, parliamentary speaker Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, who is the candidate of the National Front for the Defence of Democracy, and Jemil Ould Mansour, leader of the Islamist party Tewassoul.
Heading up the ranks of their political foes is retired General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who on August 6 last year overthrew the first democratically leader of the mainly desert nation, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi.
Ould Abdel Aziz quit the junta and the army to run for president himself. He at first sought to stage a presidential vote last June 6, but this deepened the political crisis in the wake of his coup in the west African country.
The former junta chief on Thursday told supporters that he would "put an end to the waste and all the shocks that have brought Mauritania to its knees after several decades of misrule."
For his part, Ould Boulkheir argued that "Mauritanians should never agree to bend their spines" and he told his followers that his candidacy was a "historic turning point towards the realisation of goals" that he fought for as an anti-slavery activist.
Each of the main candidates set out in the capital to broaden their support base with talk of real change, economic and social progress and development in the largely arid nation on the southwestern side of the Sahara.
An agreement to hold no elections before July 18 was only hammered out at the last minute, then the opposition was slow to come back on board during a mediation process led by Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade.
The African Union on Wednesday ended the suspension of Mauritania after the naming of a transitional government to steer the country toward the elections, when an AU summit opened in Sirte, Libya.
The AU's Peace and Security Council asked "that efforts are undertaken to ensure that the election unfolds with the transparency, fairness and freedom required."
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