Union of the Forces of Progress
 |
|
| Leader |
Mohamed Ould Maouloud (President) LÔ Gourmo Abdoul (1st Vice-President) |
| Founded | 1991 (name changed 2000) |
| Headquarters | Federal Secretariat Nouakchott, Mauritania |
| Ideology |
Centrism Social democracy |
| Political position | Centre-left |
| Seats in the National Assembly: |
6 / 95
|
| Seats in the Senate: |
1 / 56
|
| Website | |
| www.ufpweb.org | |
The Union of the Forces of Progress (Union des Forces du Progrès, Ar: ittihad quwa al-taqaddum, fl:Dental Doole Demokaraasi, UFP) is a left leaning political party in Mauritania.
The UFP describes itself as a cross ethnic, Republican, social justice oriented party. It has made strong statements against the percecution of dark skinned Mauritanians, the continuation of slavery and unfair labor practices, and for guarantees of safety and resources for those refugees from the 1989 interethnic conflict who remain in Senegal. The UFP has also strongly condemned the involvement of the Mauritanian Army in politics, specifically the 2005 and 2008 coups. They have called upon Mauritanian political leaders to negotiate a political consensus which would define the "rules of the game" for Mauritanian politics, which they view as divisive, ethnically charged, and corrupt.
The party has its roots in the Kadihine (Arabic: "toiler", "worker") movement of the Mauritanian 1960s and 1970s, with its organization, the Parti Kadihine Mauritanien (PKM) working as a clandestine socialist and anti-colonial oppositional group against the single-party rule of Mokhtar Ould Daddah. The party was composed mostly of Moorish Arab Mauritanians, although it was opposed to the prevailing racial and ethno-social discrimination, and subsumed an important faction of Black African opposition politicians inside its organization. After 1969, the party mended its relations with Ould Daddah after he took several steps to the left, nationalizing the mining industry MIFERMA (today's SNIM) in Zouérat, loosening his strong ties with the former colonial power France, and took other measures to strengthen Mauritania's international anticolonial profile. The PKM then divided between a group which agreed to join Ould Daddah's ruling party, the PPM, as a leftist intra-party opposition; and another group which was more reluctant to cooperate with the authorities, and reorganized in new opposition movements, primarily the Mouvement Nationale Démocratique (MND). When Mauritania invaded Western Sahara in 1975 to establish a Greater Mauritania, in collaboration with Morocco, the Kadihines again took a strong stance against the regime, and in favor of Sahrawi self-determination and the Polisario Front (with which the UFP retains strong relations even today). After the 1978 coup d'état, the movement lost much influence, as politics moved over into the military sphere.
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Wikipedia