Madar (Nouakchott) - Isselkou Ould Bahah, an MP for the National Rally for Reform and Development (Tawassoul), has called on his opposition colleagues to boycott the parliamentary debate on the government's general policy statement, in protest at the National Assembly Conference of Presidents' refusal to give each MP three minutes to speak, according to a text by the MP relayed by the Cridem website on Sunday evening, 8 November 2026.
Ould Bahah said the refusal was a sign that the National Assembly was being weakened. He noted that the statement covers the work of a government with more than thirty ministerial departments, and described the extra half-minute sought by opposition MPs as a modest request given the issues at stake.
He said the decision was all the more worrying as it comes ahead of the political dialogue, in which public freedoms and the rule of law are among the themes, the same source said.
The MP listed what he presented as signs of the legislature's growing dependence on the executive, including cuts to the parliamentary TV channel's programmes, which now mostly broadcast sessions, and the vote by El Insaf and majority MPs to lift the immunity of one of their colleagues, which he described as a first in the Mauritanian parliament's history in more than thirty years.
He also referred to National Guard personnel preventing two women MPs from entering the Assembly building on 14 July, before they were removed from parliamentary offices, according to his account, and argued that boycotting the session would express more clearly the opposition MPs' rejection of the conditions of the debate.
