Kurt Bassuener September 18th, 2008

As I wrote on Monday, the landmark power-sharing deal between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and opposition MDC leader and now Prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai drew only lukewarm plaudits from the democratic world, which preferred to see it operationalized and implemented.  A wait-and-see attitude seems to have been the right approach, given the fact that the talks on the structure of the cabinet have now deadlocked over apportionment of ministries.  The MDC claims ZANU-PF wants all the most powerful ones safely in its hands.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said talks on Thursday had been “inconclusive”.

Zanu-PF was “claiming all the powerful ministries” but discussions were continuing, Mr Chamisa said.

“It was a deadlock and has been referred to the negotiating teams for further work to try and find common ground,” he told the Reuters news agency.

Under the terms of the power-sharing deal signed on Monday, Mr Mugabe is to retain control of the army. Mr Tsvangirai is understood to want control of the police by holding the home affairs portfolio.

On Tuesday, Mr Tsvangirai told the BBC that he was working to reassure President Mugabe that he had nothing to fear.

But as was apparent in his “look back in anger” speech Monday, Mugabe is having difficulty with the concept of sharing power with anybody:

Earlier on Thursday, Mr Mugabe described the power-sharing deal as a “humiliation” that would not have happened if the party had not “blundered” in the March elections.

But he said Zanu-PF nevertheless remained “in the driving seat”.

“We are still in a dominant position which will enable us to gather more strength as we move into the future,” he said, according to the state-run Herald newspaper.

Before the parties met, an opposition source said Zanu-PF wanted control of powerful portfolios such as finance, defence and information, while the MDC wanted an “equal share”.

This would include three posts for one of the MDC factions, whose leader Arthur Mutambara will be deputy prime minister.

The African Union and SADC, who got the Kenya-style arrangement they were aiming for from the beginning of the electoral crisis (look for more of this split-the-difference and worry about the details later model in the future), now need to press Mugabe to give the MDC, which has more democratic legitimacy, a greater share of real power.

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Eric Witte September 18th, 2008

IRIN news takes a look today at the potential long-term effect of a broad freeze in western development aid to Mauritania following the August 6 coup.  Some of that aid, for example from France, is already in the pipeline and continues to be disbursed, while other aid has stopped cold.  IRIN reports that an EU-funded road project is on hold, and World Bank staff have left the country.  The head of the EU delegation in Nouakchott is quoted as saying:

“It will take at least six months to one year for these aid cuts to really affect state operations [under the control of coup leaders]. And this is even truer as we anticipate a rise in oil revenue in the coming months. I think therefore military leaders can, withstanding everything else, survive the shock of this belt-tightening [reduction in donor assistance], which will not affect the everyday lives of Mauritanians.”

On the other hand, the UN chief in Mauritania warns: “With the potential cutbacks, in the medium to long term, there is potential for greater hardship and more vulnerability [in Mauritania] to humanitarian crises.”

This may well be true, but because international emergency and humanitarian assistance is continuing, there is no short-term humanitarian crisis.  Despite significant popular support for the coup, Mauritanian development is best served in the long-term through democratization, including establishment of the rule of law.  The more pressure the international community can bring to bear on the revenue streams of the junta in the short term, the greater the chances that the democratic order can be restored, and medium-to-long-term suffering of the Mauritanian people averted.  There is a clear correlation between undemocratic rule and corruption.  If the junta is allowed to continue in power, Mauritania’s medium-to-long-term development can be expected to suffer, as it has for decades.  In short, accomodating the new regime in the name of humanitarianism would be self-defeating. 

It should be noted that the coup plotters accuse deposed president Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi of rampant corruption.  If Abdallahi is restored to power, the opposition can pursue legal options against him, perhaps even leading to his ouster. As part of the deal for Abdallahi’s restoration to the presidency, the international community perhaps could provide material support to any investigation of the allegations against him that is conducted in compliance with the Mauritanian constitution. 

Meanwhile, however, the pressure should mount for the junta to give up power.  The IRIN report linked above cites the EU representative in Nouakchott as saying that no EU funds have been paid for the lucrative EU-Mauritanian fishing deal that had been due to take effect at the end of August, and which I blogged about again yesterday.  That’s good news, but there’s still no word on official suspension of the deal, which EU Aid and Development Commissioner Louis Michel requested last month.

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