Mauritania coup casts doubts over democracy

The leader of Mauritania’s military coup Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz talks to the media in the city of Nouakchott, Mauritania, last Sunday. Aziz said Sunday the junta had not decided if its members could stand for election to replace the ousted president, leaving open the possibility he could run for the post. The international community condemned the coup engineered in the overwhelmingly Islamic nation in Africa’s northwest. (AP photo/Candace Feit)

Todd Pitman

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania — The small clique of army generals who masterminded Mauritania’s latest coup say all the right stuff: they want to end authoritarianism, they want elections, they want real democracy.

Problem is, that’s exactly what they said after their last putsch three years ago, when they laudably ended a 21-year dictatorship and set the stage for the first free ballot in the Islamic nation’s history.

The 2007 vote transferred power to a civilian president, culminating an extraordinary era of optimism in Africa’s newest oil producer. But today, the man who won that election is being held at a secret location and the new junta’s familiar promises are ringing hollow.

Facing international condemnation, the generals’ biggest challenge this time may simply be getting the world to believe them. That will be vital to assuring foreign investors and securing aid programs that see Mauritania as a bulwark against the encroachment of al-Qaida-linked militants in North Africa.

The United States has already cut aid programs and the European Union has threatened to follow suit.

The coup also raises the question of whether Mauritania’s next elected leader will have any real autonomy or power.

“They talk of democracy, but they just want their hands on the power,” 30-year-old Oumar Sow said of the army’s top brass. He spoke last Friday after baton-wielding riot police chased away dozens of protesters holding the image of ousted President Sidi Cheikh Ould Abdallahi on a street in Nouakchott, the capital.

One thing the coup made crystal clear is that the army is in control, democracy or no.

That’s par for the course in Mauritania, a country of 3.4 million people on the southern edge of the Sahara desert that bridges the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa. The coup was the country’s fifth since independence in 1960. Many more have failed.

It is impossible to say how much of the country supports the coup, but the new military junta has overwhelming support from the country’s 95-member parliament and the 56-member senate.

At stake are potentially lucrative offshore oil reserves discovered in 2006 and extensive iron ore deposits under the sand.

But there’s been no curfew, no big clampdown, no massive military presence in the streets since last Wednesday’s coup. Indeed, driving around Nouakchott, it’s hard to tell there was even a coup at all.

Despite the fact their president and prime minister have not been heard from since being detained days ago by soldiers, life went on as normal in the capital last Saturday. Shoppers nipped in and out of grocery stores. People devoured shish kebabs at sun-blasted sidewalk cafes. Traffic still snarled sand-swept streets.

The military’s presence could be seen only at vital strategic centers. Outside the state radio and television buildings — now controlled by the junta — jeeps with anti-aircraft guns could be seen. Military vehicles were also posted outside other key buildings in the town.

But the very fact of the coup does not bode well for a country — or a continent — trying to escape decades of military dictatorships. Some of the worst were in Nigeria, where juntas stayed in power for years, ruling police states low on human rights and high on theft of state treasuries.

Led by Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Mauritania’s junta seems altogether different, and well aware that military rule cannot last long. One of their first statements promised democratic elections “as soon as possible.”

When Aziz engineered the last coup in 2005, his junta promised elections in 24 months and held them in 19 to widespread praise. It fostered a free press and guaranteed unprecedented personal freedoms for a people who once whispered politics and worried about informants and arrests.

Since then, critics say, President Sidi Cheikh Ould Abdallahi became increasingly dictatorial.

Exercising his constitutional right, Abdallahi shuffled his Cabinet several times, but in June parliament passed a vote of no confidence. Lawmakers demanded an investigation into allegations of corruption and misappropriation of public funds by his wife.

Increasingly isolated, he tried to build alliances with Islamist politicians and those in the regime of former dictator Maaouya Sid’Ahmed Ould Taya, who was overthrown in 2005’s wildly popular coup. When Abdallahi named Taya loyalists to the Cabinet last month, 49 legislators quit the president’s own party in protest.

Abdallahi’s actions were all constitutionally sound, and supporters credit him with helping bring home thousands of refugees from Senegal who fled decades before. Under his rule, parliament also passed laws imposing harsh jail terms for slavery.

His error was thinking that Mauritania’s fragile new laws were actually strong enough to protect him.

The trigger came last Wednesday when the president fired the country’s top four military officers — including former supporter Aziz. An hour later, Abdallahi was toppled.

Critics say the country could not afford to wait for the next elections in 2012.

“The wait-factor is a luxury we don’t have,” said Dr. Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, a Foreign Ministry official with Harvard ties who is a member of Aziz’s extended family. “We couldn’t let dictatorship return under the guise of democracy.”

Others thought the coup itself sullied Mauritania’s democracy.

“We didn’t really like Abdallahi, but he was democratically elected,” said Sow, the protester. “What’s the point of having a constitution if he can be forced out like that?”

Even the promise of new elections did not lift his pessimism.

“If the next president doesn’t follow orders, this will all happen again,” Sow predicted.

(Associated Press)