Government refuses to legalise new opposition party

The government of Mauritania has refused to even consider legalising a new pro-Islamic opposition party set up by supporters of former president Mohammed Khouna Ould Haidalla. Last Wednesday they filed a request to legalise the new Party for Democratic Convergence with the Interior Ministry. However, on Sunday, Cheick Ould Horma, the party's president, said the government had refused to even accept the application for processing. He said the Interior Ministry had rejected the application out of hand, arguing that the party leadership contained Islamic radicals, several individuals who are wanted by the courts and others who had recently been sentenced to suspended prison terms. Ould Horma told reporters that this action by the government of President Maaouiya Ould Taya was illegal. "They should study the documents and then decide," he stressed. "It is the ministry which is outside the law. We reckon we have followed the right procedure." Although Mauritania's 2.5 million population is staunchly Muslim and the constitution defines the West African country as an Islamic Republic, faith-based political parties are banned by law. Ould Horma admitted that many people, who wanted to see Mauritania's government organised along more strictly Islamic lines had joined the new opposition party whose acronym in Arabic means "Praise be to God." But he argued: "the Islamic radicals have not joined the party as a movement but are there in their own right as individuals." The Party for Democratic Convergence was formed from the broad coalition of opposition forces that backed Ould Haidalla in his failed bid to unseat Ould Taya in last November's presidential election. The opposition claims that poll was heavily rigged. Ould Taya has governed this desert state with an iron hand since he siezed power from Ould Haidalla in a coup 20 years ago and is now preparing to lead it into a minor oil boom as offshore oilfields are commercially developed. Ould Haidalla, a former army colonel, served as Mauritania's military head of state from 1979 to 1984. The government's reference to the new party containing individuals sentenced to suspended prison terms is an allusion to Ould Haidalla himself and several of his supporters. They were arrested immediately after the November election and charged with plotting a coup. After a brief trial, the former president was given a five-year suspended prison sentence and was deprived of his political rights for five years. Nine of his supporters received similar punishments. The government's refusal to legalise Ould Haidalla's new party comes as no surprise. However, political analysts in Nouakchott have warned that the ruling could simply force the mainstream opposition forces in Mauritania to go underground where they were likely to make a common cause with the discontented soldiers who staged a failed coup in June last year.