MAURITANIA:
Old men vie for power in poor desert state
NOUAKCHOTT, 23 October (IRIN) - It is rare in Africa for an incumbent
head of state to lose a presidential election and President Maaouiya
Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya of Mauritania is determined to prolong his 19 years of
strong-arm-rule in the poll set for 7 November.
But diplomats and local politicians say that this time, the 70-year-old
army colonel, who came to power in a 1984 coup, may find it more
difficult to retain his iron grip on power on this vast desert state of only
2.5 million people.
Firstly, they say, new more rigorous voting procedures will make it
more difficult to rig the poll in Ould Taya's favour than in the
presidential elections of 1992 and 1997.
Since the 2001 parliamentary and municipal elections, the government
has issued new voter cards which are more difficult to falsify.
Furthermore, the complete roll of Mauritania's 1.1 million voters has been
published on the internet. And transparent ballot boxes, which are more
difficult to stuff discreetly, will be used at the 1,900 polling stations.
Secondly, the president's control of the army, a key force in
Mauritanian politics, has become more tenuous since a bloody uprising in June.
The revolt led to two days of heavy fighting in the capital Nouakchott
before the rebel units were defeated.
Ould Taya, who during his 19 years in power has graduated from being a
firm friend of deposed Iraqi leader Sadaam Hussein to a staunch ally of
the United States, enjoys the advantage of a divided opposition.
The constitutional court has cleared five candidates to challenge him
for a new six-year term. They range from Mauritania's first ever woman
presidential candidate to the man Ould Taya overthrew to seize power
nearly two decades ago.
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.
All the opposition candidates are campaigning for change at the top,
greater democracy and less corruption in government. But local analysts
say voters are as likely to be swayed by the appeal of individual
personalities and subtle ethnic allegiances, as by the candidates' policies.
The two-week election campaign, which began on 22 October, is being run
in an atmosphere of strictly limited political freedom.
The government, which has always been sensitive to media criticism,
seized the entire print run of four different weekly newspapers earlier
this month, because it objected to their content. It has also banned
civil society organisations from forming an independent body to monitor the
poll. And it has quietly closed the door to foreign observers.
These actions have raised fears that despite reforms to make the
election more transparent, Ould Taya may still try to rig the poll in his
favour, as opposition politicians have accused him of doing in the past.
The three main opposition presidential candidates expressed such
concerns in a joint statement at the end of September. Like Ould Taya, they
are all old men in their early seventies.
One is Mohamed Khouna Ould Haidalla, 72, a retired army colonel, who
ruled this Islamic state that forms a bridge between Sub-Saharan Africa
and the Arab world, from 1980 to 1984. He was overthrown by Ould Taya
who had until then served as his prime minister.
Ould Haidalla has assembled a broad coalition of supporters ranging
from reformist liberals to Islamic radicals. The latter are regarded as
potential subversives by the present government, which arrested dozens of
Islamic clerics earlier this year. Several prominent Ould Taya
loyalists have defected to Ould Haidalla's camp, but his campaign has got off
to a slow start and shows signs of poor organisation.>
Like the present head of state, Ould Haidalla, belongs to the
fair-skinned skinned "Bidan" Moorish community, which has formed the ruling
elite of Mauritania since independence from France in 1960.
The second main challenger to the current head of state is Messaoud
Ould Boulkeir, 70, who belongs to the "Harratin" black Moorish community.
Until fairly recent times, the Harratins served as slaves to the Bidan.
They form a large and growing percentage of the country's population.
They are mostly poor and are only lightly represented in the upper
echelons of government.
Ould Boulkeir served as Minister of Rural Development under Ould Taya
in the early 1980s, but subsequently broke with the president and
founded his own opposition party, which was banned last year. However, he
continues to sit as one of 11 opposition members in Mauritania's 80-seat
parliament.
Ould Boulkeir is the only Harratin candidate standing in the election.
The other five are all Bidan Moors. The black negro tribes of southern
Mauritania, which account for nearly a third of the population, are
unrepresentative in the poll.
Ould Boulkeir has so far proved the most eloquent and lively speaker of
all the presidential hopefuls, who have plastered Nouakchott with their
posters and filled the main streets with their campaign stalls.
Unlike the others, who deliver their speeches in classical Arabic - the
country's official language - Ould Boulkeir has chosen to speak in
popular local dialects.
Playing on the Harratin's traditional role as the underdog of
Mauritanian society, he has presented himself as the candidate of the poor and
the dispossessed. Ould Boulkeir said in his inaugural campaign speech
that he was "the candidate of the people, who feels for and understands
those who are hungry, who feels for and understands those who need to
learn, who need be looked after, who need a house to live in and a decent
life."
The third main opposition candidate is Ahmed Ould Daddah, a younger
half-brother of Mauritania's first president, Moktar Ould Daddah, who died
in a French hospital earlier this month.
Ould Daddah headed the central bank until his brother was deposed in a
1978 coup. He went on to work as an economist for the World Bank.
The veteran politician, who is now about 70, espouses a social democrat
philosophy and commands support in Mauritania's small urban middle
class. He was officially credited with a third of the vote when he stood
against Ould Taya in the 1992 presidential election.
The candidates have each been allocated 90 minutes of air time on state
radio and television during the two-week election campaign to spread
their message to remote areas of the interior.
Ould Taya has meanwhile mobilised the machinery of government to spread
his own campaign message of a solid record of achievement in
government. The president boasts that he has built new roads and extended the
electricity and telephone networks and has put more children into school,
while ensuring law and order and national unity.
The most striking of the two minor opposition candidates is Aicha Mint
Jiddana, the first woman to ever stand as a presidential candidate in
Mauritania. The 43-year-old businesswoman is a defector from Ould Taya's
Republican Social Democrat Party who has spoken out against forced
marriages and female circumcision.
Finally, there is Moulaye Ould Jiyed, a former engineer who worked in
the fishing industry. Now in his late 50s, he came to prominence as the
mayor of the northern iron-mining town of Zouerate.
Mauritania ekes out a living from fishing and exports of iron ore, but
the country's hopes are pinned on offshore oil. Exploratory drilling in
2001 yielded encouraging results, but the finds have not yet been
declared worthy of commercial development.
Strong economic growth during the 1990s has given the sparsely
populated country an average per capita income of US $1,677, according to
the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This is relatively high by
African standards, but most of the population still lives in grinding
poverty.
Officials of the UN World Food Programme said recently that about
300,000 subsistence farmers in the south of the country would continue to
require emergency food next year, despite an exceptionally good rainy
season.