NOUAKCHOTT, 9 August 2005 — Ousted Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Taya yesterday called on his former security forces to reinstate him, and vowed to return to the northwest African country “very soon,” according to an interview broadcast by an Arabic satellite TV channel. Interviewed by Al-Arabiya TV from Niger, where he took refuge after being overthrown while he was out of the country last Wednesday, Ould Taya called the coup leaders “criminals who had betrayed him” and “deceived the people.”
He had “given orders to his forces to intervene to re-establish constitutional order and promised to return to his country very soon,” he told the interviewer.
The report said Ould Taya had not been in contact with the Military Council for Justice and Democracy, set up to run Mauritania after the bloodless coup.
Ould Taya said he was pursuing contacts internationally, notably with the African Union, which suspended Mauritania on Thursday in line with its rules but has not adopted any other sanctions.
The tone was different from an earlier interview with Radio France Internationale on Friday, when the ousted leader merely said he was “surprised” by what he called a “senseless” coup.
Since seizing power the military council has asked a former prime minister of Ould Taya to form a government, released political prisoners, issued a proclamation guaranteeing human rights and promised to step down within two years, after national approval of a new constitution and parliamentary and presidential elections.
The coup has been generally welcomed within Mauritania, which was ruled with an iron hand by Ould Taya for more than two decades, and there has been no overt military opposition to it.
Meanwhile, Mauritania’s new military rulers face their first credibility test yesterday as they start naming a caretaker government.
The military council which swept Taya from power last week has been riding a wave of good will, with people taking to the streets in celebration at the end of a government seen as corrupt and dictatorial.
The new junta has started freeing political prisoners, held meetings with parties from all sides and promised presidential elections within two years, whipping up popular support from around the West African country as it does so.
But as the euphoria subsides, talk is turning to who the military council — led by Taya’s former security chief Col. Ely Ould Mohamed Vall — will pick for its interim Cabinet.
The prime minister it appointed on Sunday — Sidi Mohamed Ould Boubacar, a former premier under Taya who later became Mauritania’s ambassador to France — is already stirring debate.
“I’d hoped for better. I wanted a clear line drawn under the old regime. This is continuity, taking the same people and starting again,” said Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, head of the Popular Progressive Alliance, a main opposition party.
“But you have to give the council the benefit of the doubt and give them some time. The question is whether they have the political will,” he told Reuters.
Power has not changed hands through the ballot box in Mauritania since independence from France in 1960, leaving some skeptical as to whether the leaders of the latest coup will really make sweeping changes.
“Vall was a friend of the former president,” said one student in his 20s, sipping coffee in a Nouakchott cafe.
“You don’t just wake up one day and think, damn, I’ve been serving the wrong guy for the past 21 years,” he said, suggesting the new leader may have a similar outlook to the old.
Taya seized power in a 1984 coup and brooked little dissent over the next two decades.
He managed to ostracize Mauritania both from sub-Saharan Africa - by expelling thousands of black Africans - and from the Arab world, by establishing diplomatic links with Israel.
Residents in the dusty and litter-strewn capital speak of a police state in which under cover agents, sometimes close relatives, exposed anyone who spoke out against the government.
“These people would never have come out like this before,” said one bystander as another convoy of cars with young men making victory signs and honking their horns drove by.
