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 NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania (AP) - Blue-robed nomads, village elders, lawyers and civil servants stream into Mauritania's presidential palace, urging the bespectacled man who seized control of this desert nation in a coup to stay in power. But Col. Ely Ould Mohamed Vall calls the cream-colored palace generations of dictators have refused to leave his "prison" — and pledges to turn it over as promised to a democratically elected president after an election Sunday.
Coups are typically seen as the enemies of democracy, but it was just such a military takeover that brought the seeds of freedom to this nation on the edge of the Sahara. Vall is packing his bags after two years in power, but many here fear whoever replaces him could plunge the country back into autocratic rule.
"As long as Mauritanians keep on thinking of the president as someone who is indispensable, they will continue to make a monumental error of judgment," said the bookish, soft-spoken man who has the manner of a shy college professor rather than a shrewd military commander. "It's that kind of thinking that leads to dictatorship."
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