Parliamentary and presidential elections in Mauritania, 2006 and 2007

Islamism in Mauritania and the narrative of political moderation

“…First, mindful of the Algerian scenario of the early 1990s, they were afraid that a good score on the part of an Islamist candidate would trigger a repressive reaction on the part of the military, thus ending this second attempt at democratisation (Brown 2012). Second, the Islamist-sponsored candidate in the 2003 elections had not performed very well (Ould Ahmed Salem 2009: 57) and at the legislative elections of 2006 only a handful of Islamist independents gained seats (Aghrout 2008). Thus, in order to avoid a potentially embarrassing low vote, the Islamist leadership decided to support Ould Daddah in an attempt to become part of the winning coalition.…”

“…This reading however would be quite superficial because the politics of Mauritania represent an interesting distillation of Arab politics as well as a synthesis of the complexity of African politics, including for instance ethnic and linguistic cleavages. In recent years, Mauritania went through a short-lived political transition to an embryonic plural political system in 2006 (Hochman 2007; Zisenwine 2007; Aghrout 2008; Ojeda Garcia & Lopez Bargados 2012) and experienced two military coups, one in 2005 and the other in 2008 (Manning 2005; Jourde 2007b, 2008; Zounmenou 2009). As do other Arab countries, and an increasing number of African countries (Otayek & Soares 2009), it hosts all sorts of different Islamist groups and faces significant economic difficulties that undermine political stability.…”