By Mohamed Salem Ould Brahim, political scientist Nouakchott.
Under judicial control, forbidden to cross the boundaries of Nouakchott, the former Mauritanian president, Mohamed Abdel Aziz nevertheless retains his overflowing verve. At a Ramadan press conference held on the evening of April 28, the General did not bother with oratorical precautions to spit out “his raw truths”. Like this journalist who had the good fortune to question him in French. “We are in a 75% Arab country. Ask me your questions in Poular and why not in Wolof, but not in French, ”retorts the former president in substance in an attempt to please both the Arabic-speaking nationalists who resent the language of Molière and the Negro populations. African women marginalized during his two terms of office by an enlistment policy formerly qualified as “biometric genocide”.
For the most part, President Aziz denounced the confiscation of his property and that of his relatives. “They even cut my former president’s pension,” he reveals in front of the cameras. But, he hastens to clarify, I am not complaining since I can live even with stones “.
The former cadet of the Royal Military Academy of Meknes (ARM) attacked his fellow student and friend of 40 years, in this case the current president, Mohamed Cheikh Ghazouani, of whom he denounces a policy of consensus, “Unnecessary” and “expensive”. Pointing out, between several figures, the increase in the salaries of deputies and the doubling of the presidency’s budget, from 1.2 to 3 billion Ouguiyas (1 dollars USD = 35.99 Ouguiyas), Mohamed Abdel Aziz accused a group of people linked to a region and two tribes wanting to prevent him from playing politics. “The group first tried to convince me of the idea of running for a third term and when it failed in this maneuver, it proceeded with a second plan”, he declares while refraining from naming people and, a fotiori, a tribe.
On the other hand, Mohamed Abdel Aziz copiously charged the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CEP) which issued a damning report on his ten-year reign. Clinging to article 93 of the constitution, which stipulates that a president can only be tried by a special court, the Akjoujt native has so far refused to respond to investigators, parasitizing national and international news. “The current president, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani knows that corruption did not exist during the decade. He worked with me throughout the decade, abotd as Chief of the Army General Staff, then Minister of Defense after his retirement. ” And Mohamed Abdel Aziz to attract the tenant of the Gray Palace in the field of figures: “I challenge Ould Ghazouani, that he comes to discuss with me studies and files relating to the General Staff of the army , 1.2 billion Ouguiyas, which I reduced by dint of discussions to 400 million, he fulminates by multiplying the spikes towards his friend of yesterday.
“I spent 31 years in the ranks of the army, without being part of the officers in charge of management or the officers who sold arms and ammunition”, he asserts, solemnly pledging not to give up to political exercise.
Until then silent on the subject, will President Ghazouani, who has reiterated on numerous occasions his decision not to get involved in an ongoing legal case, will he continue to resist the chief’s temptation? Unless he is a Boudah or a Jesuit, he should at least answer Mohamed Abdel Aziz on the political side, say the hawks of the regime, between two glasses of tea. But, retorts the doves, responding to a Mohamed Abdel Aziz, all sails out and sting forward, is not he joining him in a field he particularly likes, that of controversy? But for those who know the military adage, “the terrain dictates the maneuver”, it is certain that the strategist Ghazouani and the tactic Mohamed Abdel Aziz will not be winners, neither of them, in a duel in front of the cameras , a slippery ground but, rather, in one of these discreet heads to heads, between two dunes, for a sudden consensus of which only the Mauritanians have the secret. Provided the Mauritanians whom Aziz describes as “destitute” are not the dromedaries of the farce.