A Man Who Burdened Citizens Until They Hated Him… Do You Know Who He Is?

Mohamed Abderahman Ould Abdallah
Journalist interested in human rights and social issues
medabd@gmail.com

Do you know a man who spent many years overseeing the public treasury of this troubled country, while citizens grew poorer and more distressed? A man during whose tenure prices kept soaring and purchasing power eroded day after day?
Because of his unjust and oppressive policies, hunger, poverty, unemployment, and misery spread across the nation. Thousands of young people emigrated, wandering in search of opportunities and a dignified life, risking their lives in uncertain journeys in every direction.
Who is the man who held the keys to taxation and revenue collection, opening the doors to levies and burdens upon the people while closing the doors of hope before thousands of young men and women seeking employment and a decent future?

Who is the man who sat at the helm of financial and economic institutions, yet the ordinary citizen never felt life becoming easier, services improving, or poverty declining? Instead, people found themselves surrounded by more taxes, fees, hardships, despair, and deprivation.
Who is the man known as “Defendant Number Seven” in the corruption files of the so-called “Decade of Corruption”?

Who is the man who constantly asked citizens for patience and sacrifice while unemployment continued to expand, prices kept rising, social inequalities deepened, and corruption continued devouring the nation’s resources?
What kind of success is measured by the amount of taxes collected rather than by the level of development achieved? And what kind of accomplishment fills the state treasury while emptying the pockets of ordinary citizens?

How can one speak of genuine economic reform in a country where thousands of families still struggle to secure the most basic necessities of a dignified life? And how can some praise a man whose long years of influence witnessed recurring crises in prices, public services, employment opportunities, poor governance, poverty, and unemployment?
Questions for the Sycophants Who Sold Their Consciences Cheaply:
Where are the factories that created jobs?
Where are the major projects that transformed people’s lives?
Where is the development that reached villages and rural communities?
Where are the results that citizens can actually feel beyond official reports and polished speeches?
Who is this man whose name, in the minds of many citizens, is associated more with corruption, taxes, fees, and injustice than with development and social justice?
Who is this man who remained at the heart of power for many years while the suffering of ordinary citizens remained the dominant feature of daily life—and indeed became even worse?
His supporters, beneficiaries, and flatterers may defend him. He has an entire paid brigade dedicated to polishing his image, generously funded, according to critics, from the wealth of the Mauritanian people. They may embellish what the author describes as a record of failure with statistics and slogans, attempting to present him as the man of the moment.
Yet the undeniable truth is that ordinary citizens do not live inside government reports. They live in markets, at the doors of hospitals, in informal settlements, and in remote rural areas where thirst meets darkness and hunger meets disease in a “symphony of the miserable.”
There, and only there, are the successes or failures of officials truly measured.
When the pages of history are eventually opened, the question will not be whether this man was powerful within the corridors of authority. The question will be:
What did he offer to the people who lived under his policies?
Did he alleviate their suffering, or did he increase it?
How much public money was allegedly squandered or stolen during his years in office?
And how much was spent buying the loyalty of pens, voices, and tongues that praised him?
History does not remember officials simply because they occupied positions of power for a long time. It remembers the impact they left on the lives of ordinary people.
And according to the author of this piece, this man left behind not positive achievements but deep wounds—wounds that will remain a lasting stain upon his legacy.

So, do you know who he is now?