Mauritania's Colonels: Political Leadership, Civil-Military Relations and Democratization by Boubacar N'Diaye

Author:Boubacar N'Diaye [N'Diaye, Boubacar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: African, Democracy, National, Political Ideologies, Political Science, World, American Government
ISBN: 9781351671422
Google: lRIwDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 36022529
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-08-07T00:00:00+00:00

The 2005–07 transition: hidden agendas

As already mentioned, the international environment in which the 2005 coup took place was determinant in shaping the transition Colonel Ould Mohamed Vall conducted which led to the transfer of power to a civilian president, Mr. Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi on April 19, 2007. In doing so, Colonel Ould Mohamed Vall seemed to have met on behalf of the military its part of the bargain. This was not, however, without twists and turns induced by the well-known difficulty of a military officer, having tasted the joys of (near) absolute power to just relinquish it in the name of a solemn pledge or because of high mindedness or commitment to democracy. At the outset of the transition, the CMJD, the junta set up after the coup, under the pressure of the international community, pledged not only to return power to civilians after a 19-month transition, but to organize free and fair elections in which its members and the government it appointed would abstain from taking side or endorsing a candidate. It turned out that the junta’s most prominent members, singularly its formal number one (Colonel Ould Mohamed Vall) and number two (but informal number one, Colonel Ould Abdel Aziz) did maneuver more or less openly to support candidates in the March and April presidential election. Because of his predominant position in the junta, the candidate supported by Colonel Ould Abdel Aziz, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abballahi ended up winning. While he may very well have won without the support of the prominent members of the junta, the breach in their pledge was an indication of their conception of democracy, not to mention their vision of a post-military regime democracy. Those conceptions and vision involved having a say in who would lead the country and therefore a say in how the country should (and would) be run after a new civilian regime took over. Already prior to the parliamentary election, the Junta chief had gathered the heads of many significant tribes of the Arab-Berber group and asked them not to support candidates of opposition parties, but instead to support independent candidates.20 In designing the electoral rules, he had insisted in making it possible for “independent” candidates to run for parliament. It so happens that the only candidates who had name recognition or who could finance a campaign are individuals who had been part of the Ould Taya regime and embezzled vast sums of money which they used for their campaign. While some were, nevertheless, defeated, many were elected and formed a very important group in the new parliament which could be (and, as discussed below, indeed were) utilized to pursue objectives not aimed at consolidating democracy. This could explain why later, President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi would be overthrown when he refused to be dictated to by some members of the ex-junta in command of the security apparatus.

Prior to that, as the transition neared its end and the presidential election was set to be held, another indication of the

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