NOUAKCHOTT: Mauritanians voted Saturday in nationwide elections overshadowed by a widespread boycott of opposition parties, with all eyes on the performance of an conservative party allowed for the first time.

“I think these elections today are a victory for democracy in my country,” President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz said after visiting his local polling booth in Nouakchott.

Around a third of Mauritania’s 3.4 million people are eligible to vote in the first parliamentary and local polls since 2006, a test of strength for Abdel Aziz five years after he came to power in a coup and four years after he won a widely contested presidential vote.

Some 1,500 candidates from 74 parties are registered to vie for 147 seats in Parliament and the leadership of 218 local councils dotted across the shifting sands of the nation.