As I’m sure all of you remember, Mauritania had a coup d'etat last year, and the country has been ruled by a military junta since August 2005. The Military Council for Democracy and Justice stated from the beginning that they would hold elections within two years of their seizure of power, that the elections would be free and fair, and that no one holding power in the interim government would be allowed to run in the elections.

 

Nice rhetoric, but at the time, it sounded quite like many African coup-ers…except for the part about saying that they themselves wouldn’t be running in the elections – that was a novel, and noble, concept. And so far, it looks like they are going to be true to their words. Since the coup, the Military Council has been active in pushing through legislation that will make Mauritania more of a free democracy, instead of the dictatorship-posing-as-democracy that it was before they took over, including an amendment to the constitution, passed by a general referendum vote, that limits the president to two five-year terms.

 

Legislative elections were held last November, and they passed without any major incidents. There were about 35 different political parties that ran candidates in these elections, but interestingly, there were more independents that won seats in the legislature than any single party. Depending on who you talk to around here, those independents may or may not have been mostly comprised of candidates from the Islamist (religious-based, without any real political platform) parties that had been banned from running in the election, and ran as independents instead.

 

 

Now, while setting up tents and playing loud music don’t seem like very effective campaigning options to Westerners, for some strange reason, they are really important here. In one of the past elections, the president announced beforehand that no one would be allowed to set up tents and play loud music, and then at the last minute, he changed the rule…after his party had rented out most of the tents and sound systems in the country for themselves! 

 

The weird thing, though, is that there are TWENTY-TWO people running, and they all have the same platform (or, rather, lack thereof) – they all make broad, abstract promises about making Mauritania a better place because there are no real issues for politicians to debate about. Several months ago, I met one of the organizers for one of the major parties, and we had a short talk about what his party stood for – he told me they wanted to pave all the roads in Mauritania, set up public parks, and open universities in four of the larger (~40,000 people) cities in Mauritania…it made me think of the type of answer that I would get from a third-grader if I asked him what he would do if he were president, just totally ridiculous and absent of any scope of reality. And this guy was educated in the U.S., and a top leader in one of the most powerful political parties. Bizarre.

 

Another thing that I find disturbing that no one seems to be talking about here is that almost all of the candidates are White Moor, the ethnic group that has ruled the country (pretty poorly, I might add) since independence, which makes up about a third of the population. I haven’t seen any major party that is supporting a Black Moor or an African candidate, despite the fact that those groups make up the other 2/3rds of the population. And no one seems to be bothered by this fact.

 

So the election itself isn’t all that interesting – all of the candidates are from the same ethnic group, all of them have the same campaign slogans, all of them are offering the same abstract ideas for development of the country with no concrete details about how they plan on accomplishing it, and I’m sure all of them have the same backwards notions about how to run things around here.

 

On the upside, however, the campaigning has been refreshingly void of mudslinging and character attacks that are so prevalent in American politics. Plus, since campaigns are so cheap, just about anyone can run (and with 22 candidates, it appears that they take that to heart), not just the fabulously rich and connected, like back home. And there’s no gerrymandering of voting districts and no outdated electoral college, so a person’s vote here actually counts for something. Voter turnout reflects this too – 95% of the country (supposedly) voted in the last referendum, it was around the same for the legislative elections, and I bet it will be about the same for this election too. So while I make fun of the elections here, I still recognize that there’s a thing or two we could probably learn from them back in the U.S.

 

In any case, I imagine that whoever is elected president will probably be elected for a second term in five years, unless he really bungles something major. Then, as his ten years comes to a close, it will be interesting to see if he willingly gives up his powerful post, or if he tries to hold on to it, whether by passing sketchy legislation that allows him to maintain his position, delaying elections endlessly for obscure reasons, or by holding it with military might – all means found in the average African Dictator’s bag of tricks. In a society still largely run with a tribal mentality, where the most powerful will do whatever it takes to maintain their hold on that power by consolidating it within their family and tribe through appointments of friends and family to high posts and such, my guess would be that the instincts of tribalism will take over the desire for a truly free democracy…but I very well could be (and hope that I am) wrong.