Category: Politics

{Political rivals fall out over choice of prime minister before poll agreed under peace deal}

For months, it was a battle for the presidency that threatened to plunge the Democratic Republic of Congo back into conflict. Now, just weeks after a surprise political deal that pulled the country back from the brink, a power struggle has erupted over who will be the next prime minister.

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If successful, the vote would mark the country’s first democratic transition of power since independence in 1960. But squabbles between Mr Kabila and the opposition over the selection of a prime minister are undermining the deal even before it is implemented.

“What’s going on shows an implosion is inevitable because the [political] system is not set up to solve problems like these,” said Hans Hoebeke, an analyst at the International Crisis Group. “We’re not there yet, and in the past negotiations in Congo have taken a year longer than planned. But the signs are worrying.”

Catholic bishops who brokered the agreement and secured Mr Kabila’s pledge to step down when the elections are held warned at the weekend that “every day of delay makes it harder to achieve our goal”.

“The establishment of a national unity government is more than urgent,” they said in a statement.

Under the constitution, Mr Kabila, who has led the DRC since the assassination his father, former president Laurent Kabila, in 2001, was supposed to relinquish power when his second elected term ended on December 19. But his insistence on remaining in office sparked a series of deadly protests in which dozens of people were killed. Further unrest was predicted before the bishops managed to broker the unexpected accord.

The parties agreed that Mr Kabila would retain power, with the opposition to nominate the prime minister of a new interim government that would organise elections by the end of the year. The president would then step down. The deal was seen as a breakthrough in the large, mineral-rich country that has been blighted by years of conflict and instability.

But three weeks later, little progress has been made. Not only are the two sides split on how the prime minister should be appointed, they cannot agree on how the electoral commission should be restructured, let alone set a timetable for the polls.

The opposition has nominated Felix Tshisekedi, son of Etienne Tshisekedi, a veteran politician, for the premiership, while the government insists five candidates should be put forward.

Neither Mr Kabila nor Samy Badibanga, his prime minister, has signed the accord.

Furthermore, promised freedoms have yet to materialise. Many political prisoners remain in custody, Radio France International is among media that are still barred and the activities of human rights groups is severely restricted.

Both sides blame each other for the stalemate.

Andre-Alain Atundu Liongo, a government negotiator, issued a statement last week accusing the opposition of wanting to “create a fractious atmosphere of crisis . . . to realise their plan of chaos and to establish an alternative regime”.

Abraham Luakabuanga, an opposition spokesman, said Mr Kabila’s administration was not committed to achieving a deal.

“They want to keep all the main ministries [in the new government] for themselves — justice, defence, the interior and finance,” he said. “This is nonsense.”

Jason Stearns, director of the Congo Research Group at New York University, said an election this year was “very unlikely”.

“There’s a good chance it will happen in 2018 because everyone’s legitimacy is based on holding elections sooner rather than later,” he said. “But that’s not guaranteed and if it doesn’t the country is in deep trouble because the current fragile consensus will break up.”

Neighbouring countries appear increasingly concerned.

Denis Sassou Nguesso, president of the Republic of Congo, told the bishops on a visit to Kinshasa last week they were “the last bulwark” for peace and like “a dam that must not yield”.

Angola, once a close ally of Mr Kabila, has started distancing itself from the president, while reminding him to abide by the deal.

International pressure was crucial in securing the accord. Mr Stearns believes it will be equally important to prevent the process collapsing amid concerns that Mr Kabila has little intention of leaving office unless pushed.

“His game plan is to play for time and hope that something will turn up,” Mr Stearns said. “His problem is he doesn’t know what that something will be.”

{President Adama Barrow may have been waiting to take power in The Gambia for nearly two months but many in the west African country have been longing for a change of guard for years.}

Yahya Jammeh held on to power for so long that many Gambians almost began to believe his claim he would rule for “a billion years” if Allah willed it.

But after 22 years in the saddle, he lost the December 1 election but refused to cede power. Jammeh only left the country on Saturday and went into exile in Equatorial Guinea under threat of a regional military intervention.

“We have waited 22 years for this. We give him (Barrow) all our trust,” said Ibrahima Jahama, plastering a billboard on the way to the airport in the capital Banjul ahead of the new president’s arrival on Thursday.

{{Heavy security }}

At Banjul international airport meanwhile, marching bands were preparing to welcome a different president home amid heavy security provided by Senegalese and Nigerian special forces.

When Barrow finally arrived from neighbouring Senegal, where he has been living for safety reasons since January 15, dignitaries on the tarmac almost seemed to breathe a sigh of relief that Barrow was safe and sound.

“I’m a happy man today. It was part of the struggle and I think the bad part is finished now,” Barrow told journalists before climbing into a reinforced vehicle and waving to fans out of the sunroof.

His supporters packed onto vans and taxis to follow him, immediately blocking all traffic and replicating the mobile rallies that he held as a candidate in November, where the streets filled with Barrow fans: a defiant gesture in a country where protest was largely illegal.

PEACE, LOVE, UNITY!

The long wait gave Barrow’s supporters a chance to begin the party early in the kilometres of gridlocked traffic that stretched back from his convoy.

“Peace, love and unity!” shouted Binta Makah, swinging her legs off the top of a mini bus.

“We have freedom of speech”, her friend Mariana Darboe told AFP, shouting down from the roof.

Once it became clear no one was moving on the one road back into town, perhaps for several hours, engines were switched off and the dancing and drumming began.

“The moment I saw the president, I felt like I was entering paradise,” said Musa Kitteh, a young man wearing a Barrow T-shirt, who had driven to the airport with a dozen friends, “because he brings freedom to us.”

{{Keeping political opinions secret }}

With tears pricking his eyes, Kitteh continued: “We cannot even emphasise… during Jammeh’s time, we were in a dictatorship. Nobody say your opinions because whatever he decides, we are going to do.”

For Gambians, Barrow’s arrival means the end of looking over a shoulder at all time for the secret police, and of keeping political opinions secret, even among friends.

“You can go home at night and sleep without worrying you will be arrested before daybreak,” pensioner Ibrahima Gaye told AFP earlier in the day.

Gambians ranging from ministers to farmers have disappeared due to the actions of Jammeh’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and his feared “Jungler” death squad, locals and rights groups say.

The relief that this era was over was clear.

“I pray for him: let God help him, said taxi driver Amadou Ba, speaking of Barrow.

But everyone admitted the new president faced an uphill task having inherited a dysfunctional economy, a highly politicised security force and a drain of young talent seeking better lives in Europe.

{On the day President Museveni formally announced takeover of government 31 years ago, a peasant family in the Ntungamo District was thrilled but for an entirely different reason: the birth of a baby boy. }

The parents named him Constantine Ahimbisibwe, a surname meaning “praise him”. This was to acclaim him as God’s gift but not to validate the Kalashnikov rifle-slinging National Resistance Army (NRA) rebels’ march on Kampala.

As President Museveni walked to the podium yesterday to give an account of his three decades in power, making him Africa’s fifth longest-serving leader, Mr Ahimbisibwe, who lives in southwestern Uganda, said his headache will be how to put food on the table for his family of four.

“Life has been miserable because I get problems accessing basic necessities,” said the Senior Four drop-out and father of two.

With inadequate employable skills, Mr Ahimbisibwe’s struggles epitomise his generation’s dilemma and the general divide of the Ugandan society where progress has concentrated opportunities and riches in the hands of a few.

It is the kind of inequality which, according to Oxfam International’s January 18, 2017 report titled “An economy for the 1 per cent”, has enabled the world’s wealthiest 62 people amass as much fortune as half of the global population.

“My biggest trepidation is the likely war between the poor and the rich,” former Museveni government minister Aggrey Awori said of the Ugandan situation. “The gap is getting wider and tribalised. Once the inequality becomes ethnicised, it becomes dangerous.”

Both inequality and sectarianism are two of many ills that the President set forth to fight after seizing power in 1986.

“The third point in our programme is the question of the unity of our country,” he said in his January 29, 1986 inaugural speech on the foyer of Parliament. The crowd thundered.

He added: “Past regimes have used sectarianism to divide people along religious and tribal lines…Politics is about the provision of roads, water, drugs, in hospitals and schools for children.”

To Mr Museveni’s credit, the Universal Primary Education (UPE) his government introduced in 1997, has increased primary school enrolment from 2.5 million to about eight million today. Mr Gershom Nuwemuhwezi, a lecturer at Bishop Stuart University, is a UPE beneficiary. His mother in 1986 began experiencing birth pangs while vending bananas at a market in Kazo in Kiruhura, the President’s home district, and delivered at the nearby Kazo Health Centre III (now Health Centre IV).

{{Period of peace}}

With a First Class Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree pinned to his lapel, Mr Nuwemuhwezi recaps his life lived under one president as a period of “peace and luck”.

“We lived hand-to-mouth,” he said, “While growing up, most of the places were hard-to-reach, and one would even fear to travel at night. But now I board the night bus to go and study at Uganda Christian University [in Mukono] without having to worry about who is seated next to me.” The overnight travels, previously considered precarious due to possible ambushes, are happening across the country.

Peace and stability, discounted in northern Uganda by the protracted Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency that ended in 2005, alongside management of the army and economy are President’s flagship feats. They have earned Uganda regional and international acclaim, projecting the country’s profile.

Besides, Uganda’s gross domestic product under Museveni’s watch increased from $4b (about Shs14 trillion) in 1986 to $33b (about Shs115.5 trillion) in 2013, according to World Bank figures, expanding eight times almost the same as Kenya’s which within the same period jumped from $7.2b to $55b.

In Uganda, what Mr Awori calls “unprecedented corruption” threatens the dividends of this growth in spite of a plethora of institutions such as the Inspectorate of Government, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, the police and the Anti-Corruption Court assembled to fight graft.

Transparency International’s 2016 Corruption Perception Index report released yesterday ranked Uganda among 25 countries with the worst graft record, and it dropped 12 places from its previous year’s rating.

Eliminating corruption, together with other vices such as tribalism, were among 10 priorities in NRA/M’s must-do-list. Political opponents have accused the President of practicing ‘naked’ nepotism. His wife is the Education minister, their son, who was a teenager in 1986, bypassed predecessors and rose to a one-star general within 12 years to command the country’s Special Forces, before being re-assigned this month as his father’s adviser, a similar role the President’s brother Salim Saleh plays.

Mr Museveni has defended this family-web as a “sacrifice”, not favouritism. Critics call the semantics obscurantism, the parlance the President used in his inaugural address to explain a brand of politics “where ideas are deliberately obscured so that what is false appears to be true and vice versa”.

Mr Elly James Makholo was born in June 1986, but after obtaining a diploma in Social Works and Social Administration from UCU last year, the unemployment reality staring at him contrasts the lofty promises of education.

Unfulfilled aspirations, said Mr Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesman, is likely to alienate the masses from the NRM because people generally have a “high expectation” due to prevailing peace and government’s robust investment in infrastructure.

The construction of Karuma and Isimba dams, once completed next year, will increase electricity supply from the current 852 megawatts to 1,635, likely to spur industrialisation which is at the heart of the incumbent President’s programme to transform Uganda.

For Mr Makholo in Mbale District, there is the disappointment of poor quality public service and joblessness. The construction of Bukeinde Health Centre III in 2014 reduced the walking distance to the nearest health facility to his home by more than two kilometres under the decentralisation policy meant to bring services closer to the people..

“Most of the time, patients are there but there are no drugs. That’s the life we are living,” said Mr Makholo, a leader of Mbale Youth Ministry. His embrace of ministering to the youth mirrors the gust in Pentecostal movement in the country -and the appeal of prosperity gospel- shown in the almost 7 percentage point rise in number of Pentecostals in the decade to the 2014 National Housing and Population Census.
The uneven benefits of Museveni rule contrasts with the chosen theme for today’s anniversary; “Success under NRM: a shared victory”.

Obliterating 27 rebel groups and winning five consecutive elections, questions about vote rigging notwithstanding, have made Mr Museveni the only constant in a changing Uganda. Concerns about how he departs from the scene when the time comes – whether through force, ballot or natural causes- ties Ugandans’ fate to his own.
Mr Opondo said a disruption would be unlikely because “safety valves through democratic elections have provided adequate platforms for citizens to vent…and the elite are unable to merge their concerns with that of the masses”.

{Rowdy youths disrupted a rally addressed by ODM leader Raila Odinga at Changamwe’s Volleyball ground Wednesday evening, forcing him to cut short his address at least six times to call for order.}

The youths waved twigs just five meters from the dais forcing security men to push the crowds away.

Mr Odinga, at some point, was so infuriated that he warned the youths that they would be forcibly ejected from the venue.

“If you came here for the meeting then keep quiet. If you came here to cause chaos, you will be ejected…keep quiet…young men keep quiet because I have come here with a very serious message,” he pleaded but his pleas fell on deaf ears as the noise continued.

Mr Odinga ordered security people to bring to the dais a seemingly notorious youth who kept on shouting obscenities.

“Bring that youth here…bring him here to me,” ordered Mr Odinga.

When he drew closer, the youngman accused area MP Omar Mwinyi of abandoning them for five years only to come back to campaign for the ODM leader.

But the noise persisted again forcing Mr Odinga to give further warning that “the five youths causing chaos should shut up” as pandemonium momentarily broke out with the fearful and confused crowds trying to disperse to avoid being hurt.

Mombasa Governor Hassan Joho took the microphone from Mr Odinga and warned the youths to shut up or “you will be forced to listen to ODM leader Raila Amolo Odinga”.

Later on, some youths were dragged out by security personnel but when they were out of the grounds, they started hurling stones sending the crowds into more confusion.

When calm was restored, Mr Odinga challenged President Uhuru Kenyatta and his government to stop what he described as intimidating him with threats of causing chaos.

“I was here at Shimo la Tewa prison for three-and-a half years, Manyani prison for one year and all the major prisons in Kenya. I have suffered for this democracy you are enjoying as it has a price. Let Uhuru Kenyatta stop intimidating me. He has never been to a cell for a day,” he said.

Mr Odinga denied allegations that the Opposition was bent on causing chaos instead accusing the government for such a plan.

“Security Cabinet secretary Joseph Nkaissery displayed police equipment last week indicating that they are preparing for violence”, he said.

Addressing another rally at Tudor matatu stage earlier, Mr Odinga decried the low numbers of people registering as voters in the coast, Eastern, Nyanza and other opposition strongholds.

“The only weapon you can use to send the Jubilee government home is the voter’s card.” he said.

{Kinshasa – Congolese opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi headed on Tuesday to Belgium for medical treatment – just as his party is trying to negotiate a power-sharing deal following President Laurent Kabila’s refusal to step down.}

The 84-year-old head of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), a historic heavyweight in DRC’s opposition movement, took off from Kinshasa’s airport aboard a private plane at 06:00, an AFP journalist reported.

The departure of the frail leader could complicate negotiations over the timetable for a New Year’s Eve deal under which Kabila will stay in office before new elections are held in late 2017.

The country’s influential Catholic bishops brokered the deal in a bid to prevent more bloodshed in a crisis that has already claimed dozens of lives in the chronically unstable nation.

{{‘He’s not dying’}}

The UDPS, saying it wanted to put an end to “rumours”, published a statement overnight saying its leader would be leaving for Brussels on Tuesday on a trip that had been “postponed several times because of the political situation in the country”, without specifying the reason for his departure.

But a source close to the Tshisekedi family said he was going to Belgium for medical tests. “He’s not dying, but he has to go for a test in Brussels,” the source said.

A senior UDPS official expressed greater concern over the health of “the Old Man”, as Tshisekedi is affectionately known among his political allies, saying the opposition leader’s health had rapidly deteriorated.

“This could be a one-way trip, we can’t rule that out,” the party official said on condition of anonymity.

The UDPS statement said Tshisekedi would be returning to DRC as soon as possible to “take up his historic responsibilities”.

{{Triumphant return}}

Tshisekedi had made a triumphant return in July after two years of medical treatment in former colonial power Belgium, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets to welcome him home.

Kabila, who has been in power since 2001, was due to step down on December 20 at the end of his second and final mandate, but has shown no signs of wanting to leave office.

Tshisekedi is supposed to head a transitional body that will be set up until the elections due at the end of the year, with a prime minister to be named from opposition ranks.

He had unsuccessfully fought the 2011 presidential election against Kabila, a vote which the opposition alleged was marked by massive fraud.

{Opposition leader Raila Odinga has insisted the National Intelligence Service (NIS) is meddling in the ongoing voter listing exercise.}

Mr Odinga, speaking on Tuesday at Funika grounds in Mtwapa, alongside Mombasa Governor Hassan Ali Joho and his Kilifi counterpart Amason Kingi and senator Stewart Madzayo, he challenged NIS director-general Philp Kameru to respond to his claims that security agencies including the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and the police were interfering with the exercise.

Mr Odinga further claimed that the recent display of new police vehicles by President Uhuru Kenyatta was deliberate “chest-thumping” to intimidate opposition voters with the “might of force’’.

“NIS is the one being used to steal votes. They used it in 2013. The KDF, police and civil servants are now enlisted in the same. But we want to warn them that this time round, things will be bad in Kenya if a single vote is stolen,” said Mr Odinga.

He added: “Let the NIS Director General come out in the public and announce that the department will be neutral. They should serve all Kenyans and not Jubilee alone.”

Mr Joho, Mr Kingi, Mombasa Woman Rep Mishi Mboko, her Kilifi counterpart Aisha Jumwa, Mr Madzayo and MPs William Mtengo (Malindi), Rashid Bedzimba (Kisauni), William Kamoti (Rabai) and other leaders concurred with Mr Odinga.

“They have turned KDF officers, NIS, police and civil servants into Jubilee campaigners. Let them be warned that we are taking their names and will reveal you. Don’t dare steal votes and if you do, we will deal with you ruthlessly. Things will be bad,” said Mr Joho.

Mr Bedzimba warned that if anyone steals votes “it will be an eye for an eye because we will revenge” while Ms Mboko said if the election will be rigged, chaos will erupt in the country.

On arrival at the Moi International Airport, Mr Odinga’s convoy of over 15 vehicles made its way into town through the new Airport road through the port of Mombasa and onto Malindi road to Mtwapa.

Speaking at a stopover at Port Reitz junction, Mr Odinga said he had come to the coast to launch the voter registration exercise and ask voters to support his and Cord’s bid to take over leadership.

At Mtwapa, Mr Odinga repeated claims that the security agencies were out to eliminate Mr Joho and dared them with dire consequences.

The former prime minister warned: “Let them try, let them try, I dare them. Kenya will never be the same.”

Mr Odinga said he had launched a programme to protect Cord’s votes called “Adapt a polling Station” which was used in Ghana during its recent elections.

“I call on all our supporters to volunteer to protect our votes. Let those able come up with food, logistics and other necessities to maintain the volunteers. All the 44,000 polling stations in Kenya should be guarded”, he said.

He is expected to be in Mombasa and Kwale counties on Wednesday.