Nouakchott – Mauritania's ruling Equity Party made significant gains in Saturday's municipal, regional and parliamentary elections after official results showed it won a comfortable parliamentary majority, swept all 13 regional councils and won most local municipal councils across the country.
On the other hand, these elections represented a real setback for the opposition parties, as 3 of them failed for the first time in the parliamentary race completely, such as the "Ettakatol" party, the "Union of Forces of Progress" and the Popular Progressive Alliance, and the representation of the opposition leader's "Tawasul" party was reduced from 18 deputies in the previous parliament to only 11 deputies in the current parliament.
The elections also witnessed an unexpected decline in the popularity of the Sawab Party, which includes human rights defender Ram Dah Abeid, and the only glimmer in these elections was in favor of the opposition after a slight recovery of a new youth opposition that began to form, represented by the victory of 7 parliamentarians in the opposition Republican Front Party.
The overwhelming victory of the ruling party and the setback of the opposition were the reason behind the widespread controversy in the country raised about the elections, and the creation of an electoral crisis that may tend to be a political crisis, as opposition parties demanded the cancellation of the results and the re-election under the pretext of widespread fraud, but the Election Commission, despite admitting some mistakes, still insists that there is no fraud that violates the results.
Mauritanian opposition leaders demand cancellation of results and re-election under pretext of widespread fraud (Al Jazeera)
Seeking redress
The opposition is still adhering to its position rejecting the results, and demands to be returned in the capital Nouakchott and some internal circles, and says that it will submit appeals to the concerned authorities, and that it has irrefutable evidence of fraud "crude" in the elections, which it described as a "farce", but in his speech to Al Jazeera Net sees the director of the Maghreb Center for Strategic Studies Didi Ould Salek that redress is no longer possible because the authority will insist on the results remain as they are.
Ould Salek added that if the opposition resorts to the judiciary, "the deep judiciary is controlled by the executive authority as well as the Constitutional Council, so matters will be settled as long as the judiciary and the Constitutional Council are not independent, and as long as the election commission is not independent".
Electoral crisis Ould Salek believes was caused mostly by the election commission, which he considers "a cake shared by political parties and used by the administration as it wants", and to avoid the current situation, Ould Salek said, the commission should have been composed of legal figures who are not in doubt and have credibility and competence of lawyers, academics, judges and lawyers.
The Insaf Party swept the election results with 107 seats in parliament (Al Jazeera)
How did he sweep fairness?
Parties supporting the Mauritanian president won 84.62% of the seats in parliament, or 149 out of 176 seats, of which 107 seats went to the ruling Equity Party (60.79%), while the opposition won 27 seats (15.34%).
Significant gains came contrary to expectations from the Equity Party, which was suffering from the widening of anger within its ranks before the elections, and the widening difference in results between the opposition and loyalist attributed by political analyst Dr. Mohamed Lamine Ould Aswilem – in his interview with Al Jazeera Net – to the different programs directed to citizens from both parties, and the extent of citizens' conviction of those programs, in addition to the change in time conditions that controlled the political scene in the country.
According to Ould Assouilem, it is unpalatable for the opposition to accuse the Independent Electoral Commission, because it is one of the mechanisms that came as a result of national political consensus, and all competing political parties participate in its construction and are represented within it.
As for the director of the Vision Center, Dr. Suleiman Sheikh Ahmed, he does not see a role for the electoral programs of the Equity Party, as there was no change in the programs or in the candidate aspects, and the scene remained monotonous as usual, but the new proportionality system worked for the benefit of the Equity Party in the regions and municipalities, and eliminated the chances of the opposition.
Didi Ould Salek, director of the Maghreb Centre for Strategic Studies, said that the Insaf Party swept the scene not because of a force in itself, but because of the use of state means and the will of the existing authority aimed at dominating the public scene, and that parliament, municipalities and regions are governed by it.
Opposition demands annulment of election results, calling them fraudulent (Al Jazeera)
Factors of opposition decline
The opposition entered the elections through a political agreement emanating from a consultation it organized with the majority and authority parties, and despite its repeated criticism of the authority for not adhering to the contents of the agreement, it did not dare to confront the regime and stuck to its hopes that the authorities would seek to ensure the integrity of the elections to the last breath.
Ould Salek attributed the decline of the opposition to a number of factors, including what he calls the death of political life in general, the death of programs, and the death of ideas, because – as he put it – the conflict is no longer a conflict of ideas, programs and ideologies, but rather a conflict of tribes and ethnicities, and a struggle for benefits as the state is a booty.
The second factor is that the opposition has emerged from the past decades exhausted, especially from the era of President Ould Abdel Aziz, in addition to the three opposition parties (the Alliance Party, the Ettakatol Party, and the Union Party, the Forces of Progress), whose leadership has aged and not been renewed.
Mauritanian President Ould Cheikh Ghazouani casts his vote in elections won by his party (Al Jazeera)
Features of the stage
After NIAF won a comfortable majority in parliament, some observers expect calm to prevail in the political and parliamentary arena in the coming periods, as "the opposition is clinically dead after these elections," and according to Ould Salek, there is no longer opposition.
Ould Salek pointed out that the arena does not accept a vacuum, there is the rise of a group of young people, and a new opposition can appear through them, but if the country tends to the death of political life, there will be no opposition or loyalty, and the young people who carry the homeland will not have a voice, because there is an overwhelming majority of loyal parties.
Didi Ould Salek listed a number of imbalances that characterized these elections, which he considered "the worst elections the country has known after the colonial period because of the negative manifestations and dangers that took place to the country".
He explained that these elections increased and deepened corruption, as the administration and all state interests were disrupted within 3 months, and ministers and managers went to campaign, which reflected negatively on public state projects, public utilities, development policies and the interests of individuals.
Ould Salek added that these elections grew in segmental and tribal discourse, and most of their nominations were tribal, segmental or businessmen's nominations, and these elections eliminated the remaining laws and institutions because of the prevailing fraud and use of state funds.
In conclusion, Ould Salek warned of the seriousness of the current situation following these elections, which set Mauritania back decades, stressing that if these imbalances and manifestations that have emerged and the resulting negatives are not addressed, and the course of political life in Mauritania is reformed, the country's future and present will be threatened.