Mauritania - 2023 Election - Parliament
Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani issued a decree on 13 March 2023 to dissolve the country’s parliament ahead of parliamentary elections on May 13. A statement by the presidency said electoral campaigning for the polls will start as of April 28 till May 11.
Following an agreement between all main political parties reached in September 2022, several new features were introduced for the May 13 elections. The number of deputies in the National Assembly increased from 155 members to 176. Of those, 88 will be elected in multi-member constituencies based on a proportional system, and the remaining 88 will be elected through a two-round majoritarian system. The country's largest city, Nouakchott, was divided into three constituencies, each with seven deputies.
A national list reserved for youth and composed of 11 members was introduced to increase youth representation in Parliament. Each party is required to include two persons with disabilities in one of its national lists.
The head of the candidate list that receives the most votes will be declared the mayor or president of the region. Due to the introduction of the proportional system, a council may not receive a stable majority. In such cases, the Ministry of Interior will be responsible for finding a compromise. For the first time, Mauritanians residing abroad will elect four representatives directly through a two-round majoritarian system. Previously, members of the National Assembly elected representatives on behalf of Mauritanians residing abroad.
The electoral system in Mauritania is a combination of proportional representation and two-round majoritarian systems. Most representatives are elected on closed-party lists based on proportional representation in electoral districts of various sizes depending upon the types of elections. Out-of-country voting will occur in eight countries represented by four electoral districts (Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas), each with one seat.
Mauritania is an Islamic Republic with a president as head of state and a constitution grounded in French civil law and sharia. The National Assembly exercises legislative functions but was weak relative to the executive. Voters elect the president, deputies to the National Assembly, municipal mayors, and regional councilors. In 2019 voters elected former Minister of Defense Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani as president with 52 percent of the vote. The election marked the first democratic transition of power between two elected presidents since the country’s independence in 1960. United Nations and African Union observers considered the election to be relatively free and fair. In the 2018 parliamentary elections, the Union for the Republic, the political party founded by former President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, won 95 of 157 seats in the National Assembly.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrests; serious restrictions on free expression and media, including criminal blasphemy laws; serious government corruption; lack of investigation and accountability for gender-based violence including rape, domestic violence, female genital mutilation/cutting, sexual exploitation and abuse, and other forms of such violence; trafficking in persons, including continued existence of slavery and slavery-related practices; crimes involving violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons; and some of the worst forms of child labor.
Politicization, widespread corruption, and ethnic tensions between the Beydane-controlled security forces and Haratine (“Black Moor” or descendants of slaves) and sub-Saharan communities were primary factors contributing to impunity. Prison conditions remained harsh and life threatening due to overcrowding, violence, inadequate sanitary conditions, lack of adequate medical care, and persistent food shortages.
Only after the prosecutor submits charges does a suspect have the right to contact an attorney. By law indigent defendants are entitled to an attorney at state expense, but legal representation was frequently either unavailable or attorneys did not speak the defendant’s language (and defendants were not always provided interpretation services).
The average length for pretrial detention was six to 12 months, and approximately 50 percent of the prison population were pretrial detainees. Members of the security forces sometimes arrested demonstrators and held them longer than the legal maximum time, often due to a lack of capacity to process cases in a timely manner, and in some cases to obtain confessions.
Individuals were generally free to criticize the government publicly but were occasionally subject to retaliation. The constitution and law prohibit racial or ethnic propaganda; however, the government sometimes used these provisions against political opponents, accusing them of “racism” or “promoting national disunity” for speaking out against the extreme underrepresentation in government of disadvantaged populations, namely the Haratines and sub-Saharan Africans. Independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views with limited restrictions. Incidents of government retaliation against media decreased compared with the previous year. Independent media remained the principal source of information for most citizens, followed by government media. Government media focused primarily on official news but provided some coverage of opposition activities and views.
The constitution provides for freedom of peaceful assembly. Registered political parties are not required to seek permission to hold meetings or demonstrations. The law requires NGO organizers to apply for permission to hold large meetings or assemblies. Authorities usually granted permission but, on some occasions, denied it for reasons that NGOs claimed were politically motivated.
In 2018, the party founded by the former president, the Union for the Republic, won 95 of 157 seats in the National Assembly in legislative elections. There are some restrictions on the ability of political parties to register. By decree all political parties must be able to gain at least 1 percent of votes in two consecutive elections to continue to operate legally and receive government funding, and this decree continued to limit the overall number of political parties that could participate. As a result, the number of political parties dropped from 103 in 2019 to 25 in 2022. The government did not approve registration for previously denied activist parties, including the Forces of Progressive Change and the Refoundation for Global Action led by Haratine and sub-Saharan leaders.
Mauritanians voted on 13 May 2023 in the first legislative and local elections since 2019 when President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani came to power in a litmus test for the veteran leader ahead of the presidential vote in 2024. Ghazouani, who has overseen the West African country's relative stability in the violence-wracked Sahel, is widely expected to seek re-election next year, though he had not confirmed his plans.
Ghazouani's El Insaf party was favoured to win among the 25 parties vying for the backing of around 1.8 million voters, who are set to choose 176 members of parliament as well as 15 regional councils and 238 municipal councils. Ghazouani's party was the only one to field candidates in all constituencies, which is likely to give him a boost in particular with rural voters in the vast, arid country.
El Insaf's leading challengers are the Islamist movement Tewassoul, the main opposition party in the outgoing parliament, and the Arab nationalist Sawab.Ghazouani, 66, is a general considered one of the main architects of Mauritania's success against jihadism, in his former role as army chief.
The country's population is divided between Arab-Berber Moors, Afro-Mauritanian descendants of slaves, and other groups of sub-Saharan African origin. Ghazouani made the fight against poverty one of his priorities, carrying out an ambitious social programme that has included distributing food and money to the poorest. But the economy has slowed since the Covid-19 pandemic, and rising inflation due to the war in Ukraine put cost-of-living concerns for the forefront.
El Insaf had a comfortable majority in the previous parliament, and analysts predicted little threat from rival parties. The Tewassoul Islamists are seeking a strict application of Islamic law, and are again expected to be the main opposition group in parliament. Sawab is allied with the anti-slavery activist Biram Dah Abeid, the runner-up in the last presidential election, who has long advocated for the descendants of slaves, a community to which he belongs.
The ruling party in Mauritania scored a comfortable victory in legislative and local elections, according to official results, a litmus test for the veteran head of state ahead of next year's presidential poll. The elections were the first since 2019, when President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani came to power. He had overseen the West African country's relative stability in the increasingly violent Sahel region and is widely expected to seek re-election in 2024, although he has not confirmed his plans.
Ghazouani's El Insaf party was the favourite to win among the 25 parties vying for the backing of the country's 1.8 million voters. El Insaf took 80 of the 176 seats in parliament, announced the head of the independent electoral commission (CENI), Dah Abdel Jelil. Thirty-six other seats went to parties allied to the president and 24 to the opposition, nine of them to the Islamist Tewassoul movement. Tewassoul — which is seeking a strict application of Islamic law — was the main opposition group in the outgoing parliament, in which El Insaf had a comfortable majority.
There will be a run-off vote on May 27 for the remaining 36 parliamentary seats. El Insaf won all 13 regional councils and 165 of the 238 local constituencies up for grabs.
The opposition complained of "massive fraud" in the elections, which saw an official turnout of 71.8 percent. Ghazouani, 66, is a general considered one of the main architects of Mauritania's success against jihadism, in his former role as army chief. His party was the only one to field candidates in all constituencies in this month's parliamentary and local polls. This was forecast to give him a boost in next year's presidential ballot, in particular with the vast, arid country's rural electorate.
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