Is the CMJD taking a new political gamble that may derail the political process? If yes, how huge is it? What's Ely up to when he shouted out his anger in the face of everybody? And why the spokesperson of the CMJD broke his silence now?
The key to answering all these sticky questions is the timing of the President's controversial address. With less than two months to go before next presidential polls, Ely wanted to get his message across the board to all political players. It is that the governing military body is a power to be reckoned with and that its days are not over yet. In fact Ely had never missed the opportunity to remind the public that power is his, he got it and can preserve it. Although he never went as far as to backtrack on his promises to a peaceful handover of power to an elected government. The CMJD and its spokesman are caught in the dilemma of looking strong and relevant while being at the same time intent on winning the hearts and minds of an angry and skeptical political class. The record of the CMJD doesn't point to much success in this regard. Worse, the general mood on the ground is not on its side, which explains why soon after the warm and sincere welcome the CMJD received right after the coup it started receiving big hits. The last hit was in the form of rumors about plans to stage public rallies asking Ely to stand in next polls. This rumor came hot at the heels of another one about the CMJD's plans to back Sedioca and thus set a cabinet by proxy in power. Never mind their credibility, these rumors speak of a trust crisis between the military and the political class, a crisis that neither is willing to address in a serious manner.
If our recent history has anything to teach us, it is that we have to maintain a minimum level of trust between the government and the opposition. Twenty one years of Taya's rule kept the country perched on the brink of chaos precisely because of mistrust and absence of dialogue between the contenders of power. It costs us two coups to overthrow Taya and bring the country back on the track of reconciliation and trust. Now, the CMJD and the opposition have started the trade of accusations and this ugly tit-for-tat may be costly on the long run.
The president's address didn't do anything to solve the political stand off, rather it fueled more suspicion of plans to stay in power. Flexing the muscles on both sides of the political divide will only escalate the situation and very likely, if it lasts until 11 March, will jeopardize the upcoming elections. Until now, the two parties seem adamant in hitting at each other, mindless of the national stakes involved in their political behavior.
One thing is sure. It is that Ely can not go back on his promises, simply because it's not up to him. It is equally sure that an escalation by the opposition would not help a smooth transition and its aftermath. The two parties have to step out of their complacency and start trust building measures to spare us the trouble of political uncertainties. This is the most secure way out.
mom
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
NKTT, The Sprawling Wasteland
I am getting mad. Literally. I can't stop thinking that well into the digital age we still have to struggle with living in a mega garbage dump, misleadingly called our capital city. Nouakchott is a funny linguistic anachronism and a city apart by modern standards. If you take the pains of touring the country trying to find someone to tell you what "Nouakchott" means, you will, to your great disappointment and dismay, find out that no one knows. It's a name without a referent, just to begin with. But in a deeply conservative culture like ours, names tell about people and their characters, the same way that language in general has the power to give life or take it away. It still matters back home whether someone "daa lek" or "daa aleik" at breakfast, meaning whether he curses you or prays God for your good. Whatever happens to you all that day long will be the outcome of the kind of words uttered at breakfast, we persist to think. It follows, and rightly so, that Nouakchott is a city without a name and consequently without a life.
What would you make of a coastal city without tourist resorts or distraction facilities? What would you make of a core urban magnet that alienates and excludes its dwellers more than it includes and accommodates them? A quick and short tour will give everybody a sense of the recipe of failure that we call NKTT. Dull scenes of shanty impoverished areas accompany you all the way long, irrespective of where you're heading. Endless sea of rubbish-strewn shacks flood the horizons on both sides of the road, and if you are so unfortunate to let go with the main road you will be lost to the human misery ahead of you. The same inadequate living conditions leave you with the impression that you're in the middle of a hostile mega slum that keeps expanding as you drive along. Regardless of where go, to Ryad, Toujounin, Dar Annaim, Tayaret or any other district, it's the same sight of urban degradation, of people of all ages and sexes crammed into crowded squalid areas that look like make-shift camps of the kind we see in tsunami-hit regions in southeast Asia. I'm not talking here about the quality of life and the poor management of the urban space by the authorities, that's another story. Only insiders and city dwellers know and experience the full drama of that story. What I have in mind is the sheer feeling of helplessness and loss you share with the people who inhabit these shanties and who are left to apparent chaos and lawlessness. For you to weigh the devastating impact of this life, you have to experience it firsthand. To take my words for truth, you need only to drive overnight in Bouhdida or let say in any another place in the southern and southwestern poverty belt, extending from Dar-Elbarka to Ryad. The feel would be something like you're thrown into the abyss of hell.
This doesn't mean that districts like Capital or Tafragh Zeina or Ksar are in any way different from the rest of the city. To me, each villa or palace is a big prison, where the inmates can not venture out. If you can bring yourself to forget for a moment the luxurious comfort inside these villas, you will certainly agree with me that city life outside is no more different. Same windy sand roads, no public places, no health clubs, no public green places; in short, no city life. It's may be a paradox that Nouakchott is good at nothing except that its hostile to all, rich and poor. The haves and the have-nots can live in different houses but they still share the same sprawling slum. I hope that the shocking poverty of some districts would not make you lose sight of the broader picture. Poverty is bad but its existence did not stop booming cites around the word from seeing daylight. At no time in the year is this truth more visible than during fall time when the dusty streets of NKTT turn into torrential mud-rivers carrying cholera and a host of other diseases . In the downpour, the city turns into a huge swamp unfit for life for the poor and the rich alike, actually forcing them to flee for the countryside where they are reduced to nomadic and rural life.
And yet we can not speak of Nouakchott without shining a light on the poor who in their thousands were the most scarred by life in this unwelcoming city. These are the ex-peasants and herdsmen who were carrot-and sticked into fleeing the countryside for Nouakchott. It's they who bore the brunt of the city's violent history. I'm referring again to those who lived in the squatters, illegal shanties that were accurately called "kebba" or "Gazra". Not only they were denied the right to clean drinking water, electricity and flush toilets but also were coerced and displaced by the state. You remember how the police demolished thousands of shanties who were the dwellers of "Kebba and Gazra" and bulldozed very thing to the ground. This "tsunami-like" horror was not a necessary sacrifice to remodel the city on some other prosperous international capitals. The plan was not to construct multi-story buildings, businesses, offices and malls. It was to sell their lands to bunch of influential rich. These people owe us to keep the memory of their displacement and dignity alive. Even though the state gave them legal status, it left them to start their lives from scratch in what would become Riyad, Arafatt, etc. These are the most suffering of NKTT dwellers who struggle everyday to make ends meet.
You may allege that I'm blowing things out of proportion abit, that it's still too early to pass a judgment on Nouakchott, which is now only forty eight year old. All this would have sounded Ok to me had we been in the middle ages and still needed pioneering technological breakthroughs to develop hi-tech boom cities. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. We're now in the postindustrial era where we can make hypercities rise from the ground up in less than a month, provided we have the political will and the financial resources. By contemporary standards, forty eight year old cities worldwide are prosperous urban spaces which have come of age financially, institutionally and in terms of infrastructure.
The dark cloud which hung for decades over the lives of NKTT residents may be easing now. We've heard that President Ely is drafting plans to build a new city center with modern standards and rumors are fast-circulating that a new international airport will be alive and kicking soon. Just imagine how would our down town look like, had each of our previous presidents built one and only one high-rise building. We would now boast of a different "CAPITAL".
I leave you on this note.
mom
What would you make of a coastal city without tourist resorts or distraction facilities? What would you make of a core urban magnet that alienates and excludes its dwellers more than it includes and accommodates them? A quick and short tour will give everybody a sense of the recipe of failure that we call NKTT. Dull scenes of shanty impoverished areas accompany you all the way long, irrespective of where you're heading. Endless sea of rubbish-strewn shacks flood the horizons on both sides of the road, and if you are so unfortunate to let go with the main road you will be lost to the human misery ahead of you. The same inadequate living conditions leave you with the impression that you're in the middle of a hostile mega slum that keeps expanding as you drive along. Regardless of where go, to Ryad, Toujounin, Dar Annaim, Tayaret or any other district, it's the same sight of urban degradation, of people of all ages and sexes crammed into crowded squalid areas that look like make-shift camps of the kind we see in tsunami-hit regions in southeast Asia. I'm not talking here about the quality of life and the poor management of the urban space by the authorities, that's another story. Only insiders and city dwellers know and experience the full drama of that story. What I have in mind is the sheer feeling of helplessness and loss you share with the people who inhabit these shanties and who are left to apparent chaos and lawlessness. For you to weigh the devastating impact of this life, you have to experience it firsthand. To take my words for truth, you need only to drive overnight in Bouhdida or let say in any another place in the southern and southwestern poverty belt, extending from Dar-Elbarka to Ryad. The feel would be something like you're thrown into the abyss of hell.
This doesn't mean that districts like Capital or Tafragh Zeina or Ksar are in any way different from the rest of the city. To me, each villa or palace is a big prison, where the inmates can not venture out. If you can bring yourself to forget for a moment the luxurious comfort inside these villas, you will certainly agree with me that city life outside is no more different. Same windy sand roads, no public places, no health clubs, no public green places; in short, no city life. It's may be a paradox that Nouakchott is good at nothing except that its hostile to all, rich and poor. The haves and the have-nots can live in different houses but they still share the same sprawling slum. I hope that the shocking poverty of some districts would not make you lose sight of the broader picture. Poverty is bad but its existence did not stop booming cites around the word from seeing daylight. At no time in the year is this truth more visible than during fall time when the dusty streets of NKTT turn into torrential mud-rivers carrying cholera and a host of other diseases . In the downpour, the city turns into a huge swamp unfit for life for the poor and the rich alike, actually forcing them to flee for the countryside where they are reduced to nomadic and rural life.
And yet we can not speak of Nouakchott without shining a light on the poor who in their thousands were the most scarred by life in this unwelcoming city. These are the ex-peasants and herdsmen who were carrot-and sticked into fleeing the countryside for Nouakchott. It's they who bore the brunt of the city's violent history. I'm referring again to those who lived in the squatters, illegal shanties that were accurately called "kebba" or "Gazra". Not only they were denied the right to clean drinking water, electricity and flush toilets but also were coerced and displaced by the state. You remember how the police demolished thousands of shanties who were the dwellers of "Kebba and Gazra" and bulldozed very thing to the ground. This "tsunami-like" horror was not a necessary sacrifice to remodel the city on some other prosperous international capitals. The plan was not to construct multi-story buildings, businesses, offices and malls. It was to sell their lands to bunch of influential rich. These people owe us to keep the memory of their displacement and dignity alive. Even though the state gave them legal status, it left them to start their lives from scratch in what would become Riyad, Arafatt, etc. These are the most suffering of NKTT dwellers who struggle everyday to make ends meet.
You may allege that I'm blowing things out of proportion abit, that it's still too early to pass a judgment on Nouakchott, which is now only forty eight year old. All this would have sounded Ok to me had we been in the middle ages and still needed pioneering technological breakthroughs to develop hi-tech boom cities. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. We're now in the postindustrial era where we can make hypercities rise from the ground up in less than a month, provided we have the political will and the financial resources. By contemporary standards, forty eight year old cities worldwide are prosperous urban spaces which have come of age financially, institutionally and in terms of infrastructure.
The dark cloud which hung for decades over the lives of NKTT residents may be easing now. We've heard that President Ely is drafting plans to build a new city center with modern standards and rumors are fast-circulating that a new international airport will be alive and kicking soon. Just imagine how would our down town look like, had each of our previous presidents built one and only one high-rise building. We would now boast of a different "CAPITAL".
I leave you on this note.
mom
Sunday, January 21, 2007
A Step To Make To Kick Start Things
Where I live, it's not likely to catch sight of people warmly shaking hands when they exchange their morning hello and rush their ways. Such sights are a rarity, and if you're lucky enough to witness one make sure to have it recorded on your video camera. The next day the same luck won't be in store for you. An explanation that comes to mind for this weird habit is that people are too busy to have any time to spare on social formalities. Yet in spite of their hardworking nature and their strict ethics of work, people here are mindful of manners and social decorum. You don’t need to shake hands and bow in respect to your boss to move up in your job. The same way you don't need to go through that painful ritual to win the favor of a girl friend. And, to my mind, if you can secure a stable income and a warm bed you will never feel under pressure to do anything against your will. (lol). Guaranteed. Take my word for it. So, what has gone wrong? Why diligent and caring people fail what is for us, Mauritanians, a basic test of hospitality and openness? The answer lies in some other more subtle layers of this complex Western self. It has to do with their individuality and the network of attitudes that follow from it. But without going down that philosophical road, I would said that these people don't associate on a random basis. I mean, it's not because we crossed each other around some street corner or sat down in the same down-town coffee that we have to be friends and exchange stories and family photos. In the West, it doesn't work that way. People don't associate with foreigners but with those with whom they have something in common. Doctors hold the company of doctors, policemen with their work colleagues, lawyers with lawyers, and prostitutes with their kind. Any mix would be explosive and doomed. These professional categories are worlds apart and if they intermingle "Inna lillahi wa inna ileihi rajioun" (lol). The point is that individuals are dedicated to what they chose to do in life, and dedication means devoting time and energy to one's plans. If it happens that you find a doctor who is involved with some law enforcement business, have worries that something wrong is going on, and so on. Go and call the law enforcements, don't call the hospital services (lol). In the West these professional communities have taken the place of traditional categories like tribe, ethnitcity, region, gender, etc. You don't introduce yourself as John from the Vikings, or Jane from the Celts, and so on. Instead you are known for what you do not for what your ancestors did, and by the same token you move up or down in society according your success of failure in what you do. We call this social mobility. About time to see how the story unfolds on the other side of the Atlantic, at home, in Mauritania.
I'm not going to spend more time telling you how and why we shake hands. Yet, it'll do good to endure the embarrassment of failing your expectations. We shake hands, because we don’t know why. To us, it's just because it's the right thing to do. If you don't share this abrupt conclusion go and organize your own polls. The result would be 50 percent of thinking Mauritanians never thought about the question, and the remaining fifty percent find it too obvious to ponder. So we don't know why. I have to retrieve some scenarios from the day to day life in order to refresh your memories and help you fathom out the gravity of the issue before you make up your minds. It's commonplace in the National Hospital to see a patient being rushed to the emergency department while the doctor on shift is busy performing some handshaking at the far end of the passageway. Shocking as it is, the doctor will observe social manners, mindless of his professional duty. The social voice inside him is capable of suppressing and silencing that of the doctor, never mind the cost is the life of his patient. Out in the street where you are spared the trouble of looking too far to find another example. At the nearest roundabout, you will find a heavy-bearded, tall and flyweight policeman grapping someone else's hands with his own. The traffic jam is awful, as expected. You start wondering where is the policemen and why it's a mess on our poorly paved roads? The answer will be something like a returned question: where's the doctor and why we lose our lives only in hospitals. Why don't we change the name of hospitals to cemeteries and save the financial cost of treatment? And so on and son on, the list is too long to name. Our teachers are involved in politics and the business of "tsamsir". Our Imams perform their daily fife prayers and go to attend their overnight tribal meetings, and I let you draw your conclusions. Our ladies who hold high positions in the administration have been high on our ministers' entertainment list before they make it to the public spotlight. Example are too many to count.
No wonder then that nothing works the way it should be in this land of ours. No wonder we're a world apart. You earnestly ask yourself why the pervasive tribalism, the rampant racism and all sorts of evils that are turning the country into a real quagmire. It's indeed mind-boggling. One likely answer is that we still shake hands, we still have a long way to go before we behave in professional terms and organize in professional communities. As long as we exchange the question "Ente men ey lekhoutt" when we first meet we will not be able to perform efficiently in the workplace. Everyone of us will be the sum total of everything, which means that he is nothing. We have to change if we want to see things moving forward in the this country.
I hope the day will come when I go to "Marsatt Capital" and be able to tell the lawyer, the bank-manager, the "decent-looking" prostitute, the professor, the "teifay", the Immam, to tell these people from each other. Now, no way I can. All look same to me.
mom
I'm not going to spend more time telling you how and why we shake hands. Yet, it'll do good to endure the embarrassment of failing your expectations. We shake hands, because we don’t know why. To us, it's just because it's the right thing to do. If you don't share this abrupt conclusion go and organize your own polls. The result would be 50 percent of thinking Mauritanians never thought about the question, and the remaining fifty percent find it too obvious to ponder. So we don't know why. I have to retrieve some scenarios from the day to day life in order to refresh your memories and help you fathom out the gravity of the issue before you make up your minds. It's commonplace in the National Hospital to see a patient being rushed to the emergency department while the doctor on shift is busy performing some handshaking at the far end of the passageway. Shocking as it is, the doctor will observe social manners, mindless of his professional duty. The social voice inside him is capable of suppressing and silencing that of the doctor, never mind the cost is the life of his patient. Out in the street where you are spared the trouble of looking too far to find another example. At the nearest roundabout, you will find a heavy-bearded, tall and flyweight policeman grapping someone else's hands with his own. The traffic jam is awful, as expected. You start wondering where is the policemen and why it's a mess on our poorly paved roads? The answer will be something like a returned question: where's the doctor and why we lose our lives only in hospitals. Why don't we change the name of hospitals to cemeteries and save the financial cost of treatment? And so on and son on, the list is too long to name. Our teachers are involved in politics and the business of "tsamsir". Our Imams perform their daily fife prayers and go to attend their overnight tribal meetings, and I let you draw your conclusions. Our ladies who hold high positions in the administration have been high on our ministers' entertainment list before they make it to the public spotlight. Example are too many to count.
No wonder then that nothing works the way it should be in this land of ours. No wonder we're a world apart. You earnestly ask yourself why the pervasive tribalism, the rampant racism and all sorts of evils that are turning the country into a real quagmire. It's indeed mind-boggling. One likely answer is that we still shake hands, we still have a long way to go before we behave in professional terms and organize in professional communities. As long as we exchange the question "Ente men ey lekhoutt" when we first meet we will not be able to perform efficiently in the workplace. Everyone of us will be the sum total of everything, which means that he is nothing. We have to change if we want to see things moving forward in the this country.
I hope the day will come when I go to "Marsatt Capital" and be able to tell the lawyer, the bank-manager, the "decent-looking" prostitute, the professor, the "teifay", the Immam, to tell these people from each other. Now, no way I can. All look same to me.
mom
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