Three days after Mr Dahoud's self-immolation, the president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, announced an extensive price subsidy and agricultural production programme to control living standards, particularly for the urban poor. This appears to have been a direct attempt by the regime to pre-empt Mr Dahoud's actions from catalysing a groundswell of support against the regime, as his suicide note called on the government to monitor the "obscene price hikes" of staple food items. In addition to the immediate promise to control food prices, the government announced that it would recruit 250 more civil servants (a move calculated to pacify educated yet unemployed youth), and that it would build new homes for an implausibly large number of families, 100,000. The latter initiative is unlikely to be achieved on anything like the scale promised. However, the government's intention is probably to provide the short-term prospect of so many new homes-and employment of unskilled labour to build them-to prevent the urban poor from threatening the regime.