Category: Politics

{Leader in power since 1980 insists he will contest 2018 elections, by which time he will be 94 years old.}

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has said his ruling ZANU-PF party and the people of Zimbabwe see no viable successor to him for next year’s general elections.

Mugabe has been in power since 1980 and in December his party confirmed him as its candidate for the next presidential election expected in mid-2018, when he will be 94.

The world’s oldest national leader, Mugabe turns 93 on Tuesday, with a celebration party planned for next Saturday.

“They want me to stand for elections, they want me to stand for elections everywhere in the party,” Mugabe said in comments to state media.

“The majority of the people feel that there is no replacement, successor who to them is acceptable, as acceptable as I am.”

Mugabe has avoided naming a successor and his party is divided between factions jostling to succeed him.

On Friday, his wife Grace Mugabe said the 92-year-old would be the voters’ choice even after he dies.

“One day when God decides that Mugabe dies, we will have his corpse appear as a candidate on the ballot paper,” Grace, seen as a possible successor to her ailing husband, told a party rally in Buhera, southeast of the capital Harare.

“You will see people voting for Mugabe as a corpse. I am seriously telling you, just to show people how people love their president.”

Grace, who was appointed leader of ZANU-PF’s women’s wing in a surprise move two years ago, is well known for her fiery speeches and verbal attacks on her husband’s opponents.

In 2015, she led a campaign which led to the ousting of deputy president Joice Mujuru, accusing Mujuru of fanning factionalism, plotting to topple Mugabe and corruption and bribery.

Grace has previously pledged to push Mugabe in his wheelchair to election rallies if needed.

Source:Al Jazeera

{Pensioner Sarjo Manneh celebrated more joyfully than most when former leader Yahya Jammeh agreed to leave The Gambia in January.}

After a decade, he believed he might see his son again.

But nearly a month later, he is still waiting.

His son Chief Ebrima Manneh, a journalist for a pro-government newspaper, went missing in 2006 during a summit held in the tiny west African country.

Agents of the feared National Intelligence Agency (NIA), which reported directly to Jammeh, appeared at the offices of the Daily Observer and took him away.

{{HOPE SHATTERED}}

His colleagues and family have never seen him again.

In 2009 The Gambia’s then Attorney-General Marie Saine-Firdaus told Parliament that Manneh was not in state custody, while others including the current chief of police claimed he was living in the United States.

Jammeh’s stunning electoral defeat in December — after 22 years in power — triggered the release of many political prisoners — but not the journalist.

{{“My hope is shattered,” his father told AFP.}}

{{ONE MAN}}

Despite the crushing sorrow he feels, Manneh is shaking off the fear that kept him from fighting a symbiotic system of secret police and trained killers that took an unknown number of lives.

“I want to institute criminal action in court against Yahya Jammeh and those responsible for the disappearance of my son,” Manneh said.

Gambian diaspora media regularly published lists of the unsolved crimes concerning the missing, appealing for details and circulating years’ worth of rumours about the most high-profile cases.

And there are nascent signs the new government of President Adama Barrow is determined to bring closure for families like the Mannehs, even while mired in a financial crisis and faced with reforming a state that Jammeh’s critics say catered to the interests of one man.

{{BLACK SITES}}

Interior Minister Mai Fatty, one of the most vocal Jammeh opponents within the new administration, has said a body will be set up to look into forced disappearances and to investigate “black sites” that may still be holding victims.

“The responsibility lies on us to give an explanation to our people,” he told AFP.

Pro-regime figures may still be holding Gambians incommunicado.

“Some people may still be held and are not known because the previous government has so many detention centres that were not disclosed to the public,” Fatty said.

Barrow has promised to reform the NIA, changing its name, replacing its chief and promising training for staff whose work would be limited to “intelligence gathering, analysis and advice to the relevant arms of government”.

{{DEATH SQUAD}}

“An appropriate commission will be established to conduct inquiries into disappearances,” he said.

Almost every sector of society was targeted by the NIA and the “Junglers”, a group of around 40 men described as Jammeh’s death squad.

Tumani Jallow, a 24-year-old soldier with the elite State Guards battalion that personally protected Jammeh, had an elevated status in Gambian society, but when the NIA came this suddenly meant nothing.

After he was arrested in September 2016, taken to NIA headquarters in Banjul, and then whisked to an unknown location, Jallow’s family are painfully aware he may never return.

“He and two of his colleagues in the Gambia Armed Forces were arrested by state security agents shortly after the arson attack on the ruling party’s headquarters,” said his brother Buba Sawo.

{{OPEN HEARINGS}}

“We have searched for him everywhere, but the NIA said he is not in their custody,” Sawo told AFP. “We are pleading with the current administration.”

Fredy Peccerelli, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist who has helped nations as varied as Guatemala and Sri Lanka identify scores of victims, told AFP the process would probably take several years.

Work on genealogy, forensics, testimony and any documentation from the prison system would be required, along with the funds — potentially from international donors — to pay for it.

The Gambia would have to decide whether to have open hearings, amnesties for those who provided information, or other incentives for whistleblowing like lesser sentences, Peccerelli said, referring to the truth commission Barrow has promised.

{{ARRESTS}}

Such testimony could also be key in any future prosecutions.

Since Jammeh left for exile last month, arrests of high and low profile regime targets have begun.

Suwandi Camara, a former fighter for Liberian warlord Charles Taylor, and accomplice Bubacarr Jarju have been charged with abducting a Gambian lawmaker and a businessman in Senegal with intent to murder them.

General Bora Colley, former head of the country’s notorious prison system, was arrested in Senegal last month, though later released without charge.

The biggest fish so far, former Interior Minister Ousman Sonko, was arrested in Switzerland in late January.

{{TORTURE}}

Under investigation for crimes against humanity, Sonko could face prosecution in Switzerland where authorities are under pressure from rights group TRIAL to prove he authorised what they called “large-scale torture that political opponents, journalists and human rights defenders suffered”.

For Adama Kujabie, a relative of Jammeh’s whose father nonetheless fell into the hands of the NIA in 2006, a day in court cannot come soon enough.

“Those responsible for this heinous crime should face justice,” he told AFP, urging an investigation to answer his single, desperate question: “Is he alive or not?”

Source:AFP

{Tunisia has extended for another three months a state of emergency in place since a 2015 jihadist attack, the president’s office announced Thursday.}

President Beji Caid Essebsi has decided “to extend the state of emergency for three months from 16 February”, his office told AFP.

The state of emergency has been in place since a November 2015 jihadist bombing in Tunis that killed 12 presidential guards on a bus.

The Islamic State jihadist group claimed the attack as well as bombings earlier in 2015 at the Bardo National Museum and at a beach resort that killed 59 foreign tourists and a Tunisian guard.

They were part of an ongoing jihadist insurgency since a 2011 revolution toppled long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

The government has repeatedly renewed the state of emergency despite its assurances that security has improved in the North African state.

The state of emergency grants emergency powers to the police and in theory grants authorities the right to prohibit strikes and meetings likely to provoke “disorder”.

It also allows measures “to ensure control of the press”.

Prime Minister Youssef Chahed told local radio station Mosaique FM on Wednesday that the state of emergency would be “definitively lifted in three months”.

Defence Minister Farhat Horchani added that there had been a “major improvement” in the security situation.

“But as long as our situation is linked to Libya and as long as Libya does not have a government that is in control of the situation… the threat exists,” he said.

Tunisia shares a 500 kilometre border with Libya, a country plagued by chaos since the 2011 fall of its longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Jihadist groups including IS have taken advantage to set up operations in ungoverned areas of the country.

Source:AFP

{The Democratic Republic of Congo will not be able to afford an agreed presidential election this year, the government says.}

Budget Minister Pierre Kangudia said the cost of organising the poll, which was said to be $1.8bn (£1.5bn), was too expensive.

Last year the government and the opposition agreed that new elections would be held by the end of 2017.

President Joseph Kabila’s final mandate ran out in November 2016.

Mr Kabila’s opponents have accused him of repeatedly delaying the poll in order to remain in power.

The plan to hold an election before the end of 2017 initially reduced tension between the government and the opposition,

The electoral commission said last November that it needed at least until July 2017 to register more than 30 million voters in a country similar in size to Western Europe, but with one of the worst transport and communication networks in the world.

Earlier this month, the death of veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi led to concerns about the country’s future.

Elections in DR Congo are often controversial. Last year, protests against moves to delay the presidential poll resulted in at least 50 deaths.

DR Congo has never had a smooth transfer of power since independence more than 55 years ago.

Mr Kabila took power in 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila. He has won two elections and the constitution bars him from running for a third term.

Source:BBC

{A “failure of Kenyan diplomacy” is to blame for President Donald Trump’s decision on Monday to make phone calls to the presidents of Nigeria and South Africa but not Kenya, a well-placed source in Washington has told Nation.}

“Nigeria and South Africa have been working this for some time,” said the source who is knowledgeable about the Trump administration’s moves to formulate its Africa policy.

“They’ve been in contact. Kenya hasn’t done that,” the source added.

The Washington insider who spoke to Nation on condition of anonymity, noted that Kenya’s Ambassador to United States Robinson Njeru Githae has been away from the US capital city for some time.

Foreign Affairs Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed has been “preoccupied with her failed campaign” to become chair of the African Union Commission, the source added.

Contacted, the Foreign Affairs PS, Dr Monica Juma refused to comment on President Trump’s phone calls to Nigerian and South African leaders. She said Kenya doesn’t comment on the activities of the President of another country which do not involve Kenya.

Kenya’s Deputy Chief of Mission to Washington David Gacheru told Nation that a telephone conversation between President Kenyatta and President Trump is already in the works.

“It should be taking place within a short time frame. Unfortunately, I do not have further information on an exact time, as these logistics are still being determined by the presidents’ staff,” Mr Gacheru said.

{{Diplomatic miscue }}

Trump’s phone calls to President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa represented his first contacts with African heads of state in his capacity as the US president.

Kenya should have realised, the source suggested, that “this president is not all that engaged in Africa, and that you need to take advantage of whatever opportunities do arise to engage him and the key people around him.”

However, the source noted that with the Trump administration still in its first month, Kenya has time to recover from its “diplomatic miscue”.

But other Washington analysts contacted by Nation offered a more forgiving view of Kenya’s exclusion from Mr Trump’s first set of calls to African leaders.

“I urge Kenyans not to take this as a slight,” said Witney Schneidman, a former African specialist at the State Department and currently a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

{{Largest economies }}

“South Africa and Nigeria being two largest economies on the continent have always had pride of place in US policy,” Mr Schneidman noted.

“Monday’s phone calls should be seen as an initial outreach to the continent and not necessarily reflective of the Trump administration’s Africa policy,” he added.

Mr Mark Bellamy, a former US ambassador to Kenya, had a similar response to Mr Trump’s omission of President Kenyatta from his call list.

“Mr Trump’s Africa team is not yet in place. The president was likely urged by advisors to reach out to some prominent figures in Africa, so he called the heads of the two largest states,” the former envoy said.

“It was probably reflexive, not the result of any considered judgment about priorities in Africa or the importance of partners like Kenya,” he added.

John Campbell, a former US ambassador to Nigeria and now a fellow at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, also pointed out that Nigeria and South Africa have the largest economies in the sub-Saharan region.

“Both are on democratic trajectories,” Ambassador Campbell added. “Both have actual or potential influence throughout the continent. Buhari and (to a lesser extent) Zuma do not have the baggage of Kenyatta,” he wrote in an email.

The former envoy was referring to President Kenyatta’s indictment by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. Mr Kenyatta was charged in 2012 in connection with the 2007-2008 post-election violence. The ICC suspended the case against him two years later.

Source:Daily Nation