Mauritania approves independent electoral body

An independent commission will be responsible for supervising all stages of Mauritania's electoral process.

By Raby Ould Idoumou for Magharebia in Nouakchott – 14/12/11

The Mauritanian authorities gave a green light to creating a monitoring body to ensure the independence and transparency of the country's electoral process.

The interior ministry made the announcement last Wednesday. The National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) will follow up on recommendations made by a national dialogue held between opposition leaders and the government in October. Its members will be appointed by consensus between the ruling majority and opposition parties.

The Mauritanian national dialogue held on October 19th recommended organizing municipal and parliamentary elections before March 2012 based on a fatwa from the Mauritanian constitutional council.

The newly-created institution will monitor all future elections. It will cover the entire process, starting with the preparation of lists up to the announcement of results. The ministry assured that the commission would have full powers and capabilities to guarantee free and fair elections.

But some opposition leaders remain skeptical. Tawassoul party chief Jamil Mansour insisted that electoral changes cannot precede overarching political reforms.

"In the absence of political reforms and given the current regime's monopoly and hijacking of the state, any reform of this type will always have a limited impact," he said.

"The independent electoral commission as a product of a dialogue between the majority and some opposition parties is a committee with incomplete powers," Mansour added. "This is because there is a parallel committee operating alongside in the interior ministry. Therefore, we don't think that it will play its natural role."

The announcement was received with some apathy, said political analyst Abdallah Ould Atfagh Mokhtar. "It didn't fully meet the conditions set by the opposition parties that refused to take part in the political dialogue and considered it to be just a formality," he explained. "In addition, the government's approval of this commission was made in an emergency ministerial meeting; something that would raise doubts that this decision was taken prudently."

He alleged that the interior ministry had been "involved in large-scale rigging of election and use of unreal voters for the benefit of a candidate accepted by the military institution and security departments".

Others believe that the existence of a parallel body in the interior ministry would not affect the neutrality of the new commission.

"The committee in the interior ministry will have technical, organizational and security-related tasks only," Mohammed Lamine Ould al-Sheikh, a member of the executive bureau of the ruling Union for the Republic Party, told Magharebia. "This will help the independent electoral commission do its job competently and ideally."

He argued that CENI would fill the gaps that might have been in the previous committee and organize and supervise elections in a transparent manner.

"No political step is free from criticism, but as far as the idea is concerned, the approval of the commission will boost voters' hopes about the transparency of elections," said political activist al-Salem al-Naji Ould al-Mustafa.

Source: Magharebia.
Link: http://www.magharebia.com/cocoon/awi/xhtml1/en_GB/features/awi/features/2011/12/14/feature-02.