The Union of Democratic and Progressive Patriots (french: Union des Patriotes Démocrates et Progressistes, UPDP-Chamoua) is a centrist
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology ...
National Assembly
In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...
between 1993 and 1999.
History
The party was established on 11 December 1990. It received 3% of the vote in the 1993 parliamentary elections, winning two seats. Although Salifou had been provisional head of state during the transition to democratic rule in 1991, and was consequently barred from standing in the 1993 presidential elections; instead Illa Kané was nominated as the party's candidate, and finished fifth in the eight-candidate field with 3% of the vote.African Elections Database: Niger Accessed 2009-05-22. Following the elections the UPDP went into opposition until 1995.
In the 1995 parliamentary elections, the party was reduced to a single seat, with Salifou elected in Zinder. Following the 1996 coup, the party did not participate in the 1996 presidential elections, but did contest the
parliamentary elections
A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...
later in the year. Due to a boycott by the main opposition, the party won four seats, its best-ever result.
In the 1999 general elections that followed another coup, Salifou ran for president again, finishing sixth out of seven candidates with 2% of the vote. However, in the parliamentary elections the party's vote share was only 0.6%, resulting in it losing all four seats. The party did not nominate a presidential candidate in the 2004 general elections, and remained seatless after receiving only 0.2% of the vote in the parliamentary elections. However, Salifou was given a role in
Tandja Mamadou
Mamadou Tandja (1938 – 24 November 2020) was a Nigerien politician who was President of Niger from 1999 to 2010. He was President of the National Movement for the Development Society (MNSD) from 1991 to 1999 and unsuccessfully ran as the MNSD ...
2011
File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...