Police raid leading opposition candidate's home

Opposition supporters in Mauritania have reacted angrily to a police raid on the home of the leading opposition candidate in Friday’s presidential election. Police raided the house of Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidallah on Monday, reportedly acting on a tip-off that weapons were being stored there and that Ould Haidalla and his supporters were planning to sabotage Friday’s vote. But sources at the scene said a seven-hour police search of the house turned up nothing. “They just want to create trouble," Professor Ely Ould Sneiba, Haidalla's spokesman, told IRIN on Tuesday. "It is provoking us. We think it is irresponsible and undemocratic." Ould Sneiba urged the Mauritanian authorities to let the democratic game play itself out. The police raid was the first major incident in a two-week campaign which ends at midnight on Wednesday. There have, however, been incidents of stone-throwing by supporters of President Maaouiya Ould Taya’s Democratic and Social Republican Party (PRDS). Ould Taya has also received more television and radio coverage during the campaign than the other candidates. The election campaign comes against a difficult background for the incumbent. Ould Taya saw off a coup attempt in June. The government subsequently rounded up a number of Muslim clerics, who it said had lent support to the putschists. Dozens of people arrested at the time are still awaiting trial. Ould Haidalla, 63, is a former army colonel, who was president from 1980 until 1984. He is now seeking to replace through the ballot box the man who overthrew him in a military coup 19 years ago. So far he has emerged as the strongest opposition candidate. Ould Taya, 63, has ruled Mauritania with an iron hand, changing his political allegiance from Saddam Hussein's Baghdad to George Bush's Washington as time went on. Five challengers including the country’s first-ever female presidential candidate, Aicha Mint Jiddana, are vying to oust Ould Taya who is seeking to extend his rule. The candidates include Ahmed Ould Daddah, the brother of the country’s first president, Moktar Ould Daddh, who passed away last month. If no candidate achieves more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round of voting, there will be a run-off between the two leading candidates two weeks later. A desert-country with chronic food insecurity, Mauritania gained independence from France in 1960. Sparsely populated with 2.5 million inhabitants for a territory of over one million sq.km, Mauritania established its own currency, the Ouguiya, whose highest denomination is the equivalent of US $5 in 1973. In 1981, Mauritania officially abolished slavery and 10 years later adopted Islam as the official state religion. Its military has played a key role in politics since its first president, Moktar Ould Daddah, was overthrown in a 1978 coup.