President Mamadou Tandja"s ruling MNSD party has won 21 of the 25 seats announced so far after this week"s parliamentary election in Niger, preliminary results showed on Thursday, according to Reuters. Tuesday"s poll was largely boycotted by opposition parties and led to West Africa"s regional bloc ECOWAS suspending the uranium mining country, where Tandja has already extended his powers, prolonged his stint in charge and scrapped limits on the number of terms he can serve. An ally of Tandja"s MNSD secured three seats, while an independent candidate also won one of the 113 seats that were vacated when the president dissolved parliament on his way to holding an August referendum that hardened his authority. Vote tallying was due to continue on Thursday. "From the results that we have already processed, I estimate that we had a good turnout as it was between 40 and 50 percent," Moumouni Hamidou, president of the election commission, told Reuters. Former Tandja allies Mahamadou Issoufou of the PNDS party and Mahamane Ousmane, head of the CDS party and leader of the dissolved parliament, boycotted the poll and have rejected the constitution that was adopted in August. "On the face of it the president has been able to push through his desired changes, but he has alienated much of the domestic and international polity," IHS Global Insight analyst Nana Adu Ampofo said in a note. The ECOWAS suspension follows a European Union aid freeze in July. The government in Niamey has shrugged off the criticism, saying regional powers have "misunderstood" the political situation in the country. Analysts say threats from donors and regional blocs are undermined by the fact Niger has already secured multi-billion dollar investments from French uranium mining group Areva and Chinese oil firms. "Given the support of the military, to which Tandja once belonged, and the relative equanimity of major economic partners outside the region, Tandja is unlikely to bend," Ampofo said. --SPA
