MPs walk out of Mauritania's ruling party

Mauritania faced a political crisis on Tuesday after 48 MPs walked out on the ruling party less than two weeks after a vote of no confidence in the government prompted a cabinet reshuffle.

The walk-out by 25 MPs and 23 senators on Monday from the ruling National Pact for Democracy and Development (PNDD) is a new blow to the government and to President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, who became Mauritania's first democratically elected president last year.

The breakaway group said they will form a new party because they want to change direction, but it was unclear Tuesday whether they would align themselves with the opposition or the government.

Prime Minister Yahya Ould Ahmed Waghf, in an interview with Al-Fajr published Tuesday, said he had no fears of losing the backing of the majority in parliament because he believed the renegade MPs would not join the opposition.

In an earlier radio interview Sunday, when expectations were rife of a mass walk-out, the prime minister had said: "It is inconceivable that you say you support the majority and as the same time align yourself with the opposition against the government of a regime you support."

But Mauritanian newspapers were unconvinced, with the weekly Le Calame asking on its front page "Is this the beginning of the end?" The daily Le Quotidien de Nouakchott contemplated the "redistribution of the cards" in parliament.

A spokesman for the PNDD, Aboubekrine Ould Ahmed, still clung to the hope on Tuesday that the situation could still be salvaged, and that the break up "will not be definitive".

"If that is not the case we will keep the MPs that remain and build bridges with other political forces willing to work with us to keep our majority in parliament," Ahmed told AFP.

They renegade lawmakers criticized Abdallahi's exercise of "personal power", adding that he had "disappointed the hopes of Mauritanians," a spokesman said.

The Mauritanian president last month threatened to dissolve parliament after MPs filed a motion of no confidence in his new government, which then resigned.

Recently, they tried to call a special session of parliament to create a commission to investigate the country's response the rising cost of living, and also the financing of a foundation run by the president's wife.

A largely desertified former French colony, the West African country imports over 70 percent of its food needs and has been hard hit by the food crisis.