AU Urged to Act against Mauritania Coup

(PANA)--A Ghanaian political scientist has urged the African Union (AU) to take a ‘firm and decisive’ action against Mauritanian army generals who seized power in the west African country on Wednesday.

Dr. Kwesi Jonah, a senior fellow of the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG), a governance think tank in Ghana, said the AU should send a strong signal to the coup makers that the continent detested the overthrowing of legitimate governments. ‘The AU must be firm and decisive to compel the coup leaders to immediately form a caretaker government to manage affairs and prepare for democratic election within 12 months,’ Dr. Jonah said on Wednesday. The generals struck after President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi tried to dismiss the military’s top commanders, including the head of the Presidential Guard, Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz, who responded by launching the coup.

They ousted the country’s first freely-elected leader and formed a State Council to rule the country after detaining President Abdallahi along with his Prime Minister, Yahia Ould Ahmed El-Ouakef. President Abdallahi came to power last year, taking over from a military junta. Dr. Jonah said the Mauritania coup was against the AU’s own protocols and set a bad example for the continent’s movement towards consolidating democratic governance. He said the coup makers must not be given any room to operate as it would give a wrong signal to other disgruntled military officers and politicians to disrupt democratically-elected governments across the continent.

Mauritania has a long history of coups, with the military involved in nearly every government since independence from France in 1960.

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