Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi

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Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi

Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi ( Arabic سيدي محمد ولد الشيخ عبد الله, DMG Sīdī Muḥammad walad aš-Šayḫ ʿAbd Allāh ; * 1938 in Aleg ) is a Mauritanian politician . He was elected President in March 2007 and was President of Mauritania from April 19, 2007 until he was ousted by a coup on August 6, 2008.

Life

Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi comes from an influential family of Islamic clergymen. He attended the École normal William Ponty in Senegal , which he graduated with a Baccalauréat . He then studied mathematics, physics and chemistry in Dakar (Senegal) and obtained a Diplôme d'études approfondies (DEA) in economics in Grenoble . He then returned to Mauritania in 1968. Under Moktar Ould Daddah he was a minister from 1971 to 1978. In his function as Minister of Economics, he was responsible for the introduction of the Mauritanian currency - the Ouguiya - and the nationalization of the iron mines. After Moktar Ould Daddah was ousted, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was imprisoned until 1979. 1982–1986 he worked in Kuwait as a consultant for the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development .

After his return to Mauritania, he was first energy, then fisheries and finally finance minister under President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya from 1986 to 1987, until Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was alleged to have committed corruption when he was minister for fisheries. imprisoned.

1989–2003 Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi lived in Niger and worked there again for the Kuwait Funds . In 2006 - after Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was ousted by the Military Council for Justice and Democracy in 2005 - he announced his candidacy for president. He ran as an independent, although some saw him as a "puppet" of the Military Council. In the first round of the presidential election on March 11, 2007, he was with 25% of the vote ahead of second-placed Ahmed Ould Daddah . Third-placed Zeine Ould Zeidane announced his support for Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi on March 17th and won after Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi won the second ballot on March 25th with 52.85% of the vote and 10 of the 13 regions had whose prime minister. This made him the first freely elected president in the history of his country.

Presidency and dismissal

As president, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi announced that he and his cabinet would forego 25% of his salary because of a budget deficit of 112 million US dollars as a result of technical problems in oil production. Under his government, the parliament passed a law that criminalized slavery in Mauritania , which was banned in 1980/81 . The return of Afro-Mauritanian refugees who fled to Senegal from attacks by the army in 1989 also began . At the same time, the government was confronted with hunger protests in the context of rising food prices around the world .

Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi has been criticized in part for allowing an Islamist party to be founded in 2007. Above all, however, he was accused of accepting several former ministers Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Tayas into his government in May 2008; According to critics, this could have led to a return of the dictatorship Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Tayas.

On August 6, 2008, he was ousted in a military coup after trying to depose the commander of the presidential guard. He was placed under house arrest.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. BBC News: Mauritanian MPs pass slavery law
  2. IRIN News: Mauritania: Overview of pressures leading to military coup
  3. IRIN News: Mauritania: Coup leader moves forward despite international condemnation and Overview of pressures leading to military coup
  4. Tagesanzeiger Online: Putsch in Mauritania
  5. NZZ online : Mauritania has a government again: Putschists are in the majority in the new cabinet