Mauritania: Auto-Legitimising Another Coup-Maker in Africa?

Mauritania has a new “elected” President since 5 August, exactly a year after the 6th August 2008 military coup that overthrew the first democratically elected president in the post-colonial history of the country.

Published on 14 August 2009 in ISS Today

Issaka K Souaré, African Security Analysis Programme, ISS Tshwane (Pretoria)

Mauritania has a new “elected” President since 5 August, exactly a year after the 6th August 2008 military coup that overthrew the first democratically elected president in the post-colonial history of the country. The new president is none other than the author of that military coup, General Mohamed Ould Abdoulaziz. He was declared the winner of the presidential election of 18 July with some 52.47 per cent of the votes at the first round and well ahead of his eight rivals, making a runoff vote unnecessary. National Assembly President Massoud Ould Boulkheir and the candidate of the political movement that remained loyal to the ousted president was his closest rival, but he only garnered about 16 per cent of the votes.

Despite opposition protests, alleging massive irregularities in the electoral process, both the Interior Ministry and the Constitutional Court in the country have confirmed Abdoulaziz’s victory. Most of the international observers that monitored the poll have also blessed its outcome, despite their acknowledgment that the processes suffered from some imperfections. In a statement released on 20 July, the electoral observer mission of the AU that monitored the poll considered it to have been “free, transparent, credible and democratic.” French Cooperation Minister, Alain Joyandet, who attended Abdoulaziz’s inauguration – along with presidents Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal and Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali and others – is reported to have declared “Mauritania is once again a key French partner in the region.”

This raises the question as to whether the African Union (AU) – and the rest of the international community – is, by accepting this outcome, perpetuating the trend of auto-legitimisation of coup-makers in Africa, whereby authors of unconstitutional changes of government decide to organise elections in order to “constitutionalise” their unconstitutional enterprise. Occurring at a time when the AU is struggling to restore constitutional order in Guinea and Madagascar after unconstitutional changes of government in these countries, can one be sure that Guinean Moussa Dadis Camara and Malagasy Andry Rajoelina will not be inspired by this and decide to auto-legitimise themselves in the same way? But what could/can the African Union do faced with such a challenge? 

In its initial reactions to the coup, the African Union Commission, spearheaded by the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the AU insisted that the ousted president not only be reinstated, but that should new elections be held, no member of the military junta should be allowed to stand. Whether or not the election of Abdoulaziz as president of Mauritania and its acceptance by the AU contradicts this initial position is a question that should be looked at in two ways: political and legal.

Politically, it is certainly disappointing and likely to contribute to the perpetuation of the trend of auto-legitimisation of putschists on the continent. One could also argue that it sent the wrong signal to the current rulers of Conakry and Antananarivo. It is true that the 18 July election followed the formation of a government of national unity that had been instituted by the Senegalese-brokered Dakar Global Agreement reached by the Mauritanian parties on 4 June. It is also true that the ousted president, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, was “technically” reinstated, before signing the decree establishing the transitional government and “voluntarily” resigning immediately after the swearing-in of the new government. The military junta had also been disbanded and transformed into the High Council of National Defence and theoretically placed under the supervision of the government, according to Article 34 of the Constitution. But without denying the symbolism of all these acts, it is clear that the outcome reflects more the design of Abdoulaziz than anything else.

Legally speaking, however, there is little if any to reproach the AU if one undertakes a critical reading of AU’s mechanisms concerning Unconstitutional Changes of Government. AU’s policy on this matter is contained in and governed by three instruments: a) the July 2000 Lomé Declaration on Unconstitutional Changes of Government; b) the Constitutive Act of the AU (Article 30); and c) Chapter 8 (“Sanctions in Cases of Unconstitutional Changes of Government”) of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, adopted in Addis Ababa in January 2007.

Whereas the ideal political outcome and AU’s initial position was to refuse the auto-legitimisation of Abdoulaziz and all other coup-makers on the continent, neither the Lomé Declaration nor the Constitutive Act talks to this issue. It is only the Addis Charter that deals with this, by unequivoquely stating: “The perpetrators of unconstitutional change of government shall not be allowed to participate in elections held to restore the democratic order or to hold any position of responsibility in political institutions of their State.” It has to be noted, however, that this Charter has not yet entered into force. This is conditional on the passing of thirty days after the deposit of fifteen instruments of ratification by AU member states. Yet, only Mauritania (28 July 2008) and Ethiopia (6 January 2009) have so far done so. One could therefore argue that initial statements to this effect with regard to Mauritania were based on a policy that is not yet operational or on a different reading of the other two policy frameworks.

But other measures that the AU threatened to take as per the Lomé Declaration were indeed taken. First, Mauritania was suspended from the AU soon after the coup, for an initial six-month period during which the AU engaged with the military junta to restore constitutional order. When the continental body realised that despite several high level meetings and consultations between the AU and its partners on the one hand, and the military junta on the other, there had not been any meaningful progress by the junta in the direction of restoring constitutional order by 5 February 2009 (the end of the six-month period), the decision was taken to impose targeted sanctions against all those whose activities were seen as designed to maintain the unconstitutional status quo in Mauritania. The candidature of Abdoulaziz also came after he had “resigned” from the presidency and the army, as per the Mauritanian constitution.

In the final analysis therefore, one could argue that albeit disappointing in political terms and falling short of the ideal outcome, the AU was legally toothless to prevent the coup-maker from taking part in the elections. The AU – as any organisation – being the sum of its member states, the onus is therefore on the latter to ratify the Addis Charter in order to get the requisite ratifications that will make it binding. It will therefore only be through skilful political and diplomatic crafting that the AU could – and should strive to – prevent Rajoelina and Camara from staying in power after the upcoming elections in their two countries.