Yesterday, Jamil Ould Mansour and Slama Ould Abdellahi broke into what has been variously described as a “brawl” and “a violent fight lasting several minutes” after a back and forth of insults and profanities during a parliamentary session on the civil status law. Al-Akhbar, which tends to give favorable coverage to Ould Mansour’s Tawassoul party (relevant because other accounts are more ambiguous about which MP made it physical), described the incident as an “attack” by Ould Abdellahi. According to their account, Ould Mansour exceeded his time limit while making a speech. Ould Abdellahi made an intervention to protest the excess. The two began to bicker and the committee chairman called a recess for the two to cool off and reconcile. Reports are unclear as to who began the pushing and shoving but after a few minutes of struggle, parliamentarians from the ruling Union for the Republic (UPR, which also happens to be Ould Abdellahi’s party) “urged Ould Mansour not to respond to what he considered an insult”. The same report paraphrases Ould Mansour as expressing “his regret at the tendency of some parties toward violence rather than dialogue or discussion.” CRIDEM writes that Ould Abdellahi made an intervention during which various MPs called out at in opposition; Ould Mansour then made a series of comments deriding the composition of a committee looking at the marital status law which “did not take into account the different components of Mauritanian society.” During the recess, Ould Mansour come upon Ould Abdellahi “n a very tense discussion interspersed with malicious comments, before coming to blows.” Beyond the personal dimension, there are likely other factors at work.
