Mauritania's 2024 Elections: Continuity and Context

The president is re-elected...and journalists have short memories.

Mauritania held presidential elections on June 29. President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, who was elected in 2019, was declared the provisional winner yesterday (July 1) by the Independent National Electoral Commission (French acronym CENI). The Constitutional Court now needs to validate the results, but basically the election has concluded.

This result was widely anticipated, and represents continuity both in terms of the president’s re-election but also in terms of the overall structure of the results. Here are the 2019 and 2024 elections side by side, with the top three candidates represented:

There are also deeper continuities here. Ould Ghazouani has been a central figure in Mauritanian politics since at least the 2000s, or even the 1980s if you go back to his time as aide-de-camp to longtime President Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya (in power 1984-2005). Ould Ghazouani co-led the military coups of 2005 and 2008 alongside Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (a third officer, the late Ely Vall, also co-led the 2005 coup). Ould Ghazouani was the country’s de facto number two during the presidency of Ould Abdel Aziz (military head of state 2008-2009, and elected president from 2009-2019) - which was a key reason he was tapped by Ould Abdel Aziz as his successor once Ould Abdel Aziz abandoned hopes of an immediate third term. After Ould Ghazouani was elected, the two allies soon fell out, with major legal consequences for Ould Abdel Aziz. But the point is, Ould Ghazouani has been on the scene for a long time.

Western media outlets covering the election have, to my mind, understated the continuities at play. This BBC article, for example, says that Ould Ghazouani “is credited with establishing stability since his first election five years ago, after decades of political unrest and frequent coups.” The above summary of his career should show why this is a strange formulation; Mauritania has not had a coup since 2008, and Ould Ghazouani participated in that coup.

Western media outlets have also, in the past few days, consistently framed Ould Ghazouani as someone solicitous of alliances with the West. I think it’s more complicated than that. After all, under Ould Abdel Aziz and Ould Ghazouani, Mauritania held itself somewhat aloof from French counterterrorism operations in the Sahel; for example, Mauritania participated (in my reading, at least) somewhat half-heartedly in the French-backed G5 Sahel Joint Force, contributing commanders to the force but without rushing into intensive combat in Mali, Burkina Faso, or Niger. I’ve written about Mauritania’s approach to insecurity here, at least as that approach was unfolding in the late 2010s, and I don’t think Mauritania’s leaders, past or present, are exactly leaping into the arms of the West.

In terms of the opposition, both Dah Abeid and the Islamists (mainly through the Tewassoul Party) have demonstrated considerable staying power and political presence as I tried to suggest in the table above. Neither is close, according to the provisional results, to threatening Ould Ghazouani, but they each represent a significant share of the vote and thus tell us something about key currents in the society. Dah Abeid, an anti-slavery activist-turned-politician (you can read an old but important English-language profile of him here), even won pluralities of more than 40% in Nouakchott South and Nouadhibou, pointing to major urban strength - although the president ran up scores of more than 70% in several provinces, more than compensating for those slight losses in the capital and in Nouadhibou. The Islamists did not win a single province, but they did top 10% in many of them and even ran ahead of Dah Abeid in various places, for example Hodh El Gharbi and Hodh Chargui; in Nouakchott North, they placed third but still took nearly a quarter of the vote. During Ould Ghazouani’s first term (and indeed during Ould Abdel Aziz’s two), neither Dah Abeid nor the Islamists stood close to the centers of power, and I don’t expect that to change now, but again, they tell us something about the society. If you think the results are substantially rigged, then the powers that be are throwing Dah Abeid and the Islamists a bone by giving them second and third place; if you think the results are more or less accurate, than Ould Ghazouani is a fairly popular president who nevertheless has two major currents of opposition.

In 2019, there was significant post-election protest by Dah Abeid’s supporters, and significant repression. The authorities appeared less concerned with total electoral domination than they did with control of physical and media space in the aftermath. We may see a similar dynamic this time. International media attention, however, will likely dry up soon. With the election over, I expect Mauritania won’t make international headlines too often, as per usual - and I imagine Ould Ghazouani doesn’t mind that.