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Mauritania coup chief wins vote amid fraud claims
Nearly a year after seizing power in a military putsch that ousted Mauritania's first freely elected leader, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz won the presidency Sunday in a landslide vote his opponents decried as a fraudulent "electoral coup."
The poll was officially held to restore civilian rule, but critics say little is likely to change in this moderate Islamic republic on the western edge of the sand-swept Sahara: Power will remain in the hands of the 52-year-old retired general who spent his life in the military and resigned only to legitimize his grasp on it by running for president.
"We've gone backward to an era of dictatorship," said Boubacar Ould Messaoud, who heads an organization that fights a tradition of slavery that continues here despite being banned.