IGIHE

Category: Rubrique

  • Contenders in Race for Mali’s Presidency

    {{Mali holds a presidential election on Sunday after more than a year of turmoil including a coup and a French-led military intervention to free the north from al Qaeda-allied Islamist rebels.}}

    Here are some details on the main candidates out of a field of 27 running in the election.

    {{- Ibrahim Boubacar Keita}}

    Universally known as IBK, Keita is the political heavyweight in the election race. He has held several portfolios in previous governments and served as prime minister from 1994-2000.

    Keita, who heads the RPM party, was also president of Mali’s National Assembly before launching failed bids for the national presidency in the 2002 and 2007 elections.

    IBK has campaigned on pledges to restore Mali’s ‘honor’ and, having stood up to trade unions when he was prime minister, has a reputation for firmness that many Malians believe is needed to restore the rule of law across the divided nation.

    {{- Soumaila Cisse}}

    A native of Timbuktu region and a software engineer by training, Cisse was a top presidency official and served as a minister for much of the 1990s, including a stint in charge of the finance portfolio.

    Having failed to secure the ADEMA party candidacy in a 2002 election, he set up his own party, the URD. But he subsequently spent seven years in charge of the West African monetary union, based in neighboring Burkina Faso.

    Cisse has earned respect as an economist although he has not escaped accusations of mismanagement and was accused of corruption by the military junta that seized power in the March 2012 coup.

    {{- Modibo Sidibe}}

    A former senior policeman and ex-minister for health and foreign affairs, Sidibe was also a long-serving prime minister under President Amadou Toumani Toure, who was ousted in the coup.

    Sidibe’s experience in government could be as much of a burden as a bonus as members of the elite surrounding the ousted president have been accused of widespread corruption.

    {{- Dramane Dembele}}

    ADEMA, historically Mali’s best established party, has picked Dembele, a geologist with little political experience, as its candidate for the vote.

    The choice of the 46-year-old is likely aimed at appealing to the youth vote.

    But the clout of Mali’s biggest party could be weakened by internal divisions over his candidacy and frustrations among many Malians that ADEMA was central to years of misrule that led to the crisis.

    {compiled by reuters}

  • Tunisian union Calls for Strike After MP Assassinated

    Tunisia was facing a possible general strike Friday following the assassination of leading leftist opposition figure Mohamed Brahmi on Thursday, the second political assassination this year of a politician opposed to the country’s Islamist government.

    The country’s leading union called for action after this latest death sparked protests in Tunisia.

    Mohamed Brahmi, 58, of the leftist Popular Movement, was gunned down outside his home in Ariana, near Tunis.

    “He was riddled with bullets in front of his wife and children,” Mohsen Nabti, a fellow member of the small leftist movement, said in an emotional account aired on Tunisian radio.

    The radio station said Brahmi had been struck by 11 bullets fired at point-blank range.

    The assassination bore all the hallmarks of the February 6 killing of Chokri Belaid, another leftist opposition figure, which sparked a political crisis in Tunisia and charges of government connivance.

    It was not clear who carried out Thursday’s killing, but the ruling Ennahda party, a moderate Islamist group, was forced to deny accusations from his family that it had been involved.

    “I accuse Ennahda. It was them who killed him,” Brahmi’s sister Chhiba Brahmi told reporters at the family home in Sidi Bouzid, without providing any evidence.

    “Our family had the feeling that Mohamed would suffer the same fate as Chokri Belaid,” whose family also blamed the authorities, she said.

    france24

  • Togo Votes in Long-Delayed Elections

    {{People in Togo are going to the polls in long-delayed parliamentary elections.

    The vote is seen as an indication of what will happen in the presidential elections next year.}}

    Experts say it could expose weaknesses in the grip of the Gnassingbe family. which has ruled the West African country for more than four decades.

    Opposition groups have held mass protests over the government’s last-minute changes to the electoral code.

    They say constituency boundaries were manipulated to benefit the ruling party.

    Angry demonstrations caused the parliamentary vote to be postponed from October 2012.

    {{Fires}}

    The polls have been rescheduled twice since then, as mediators struggled to bring government and opposition into agreement.

    President Faure Gnassingbe took power in 2005 following the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled Togo for 38 years. He was re-elected in 2010, though there was deadly street violence in the run-up to the poll and complaints of vote rigging.

    Veteran opposition leader Gilchrist Olympio has joined Mr Gnassingbe in a government of national unity and says Togo is now in a “democratic system”.

    He is the son of Togo’s first President, Sylvanus Olympio, who was assassinated in 1963, four years before Mr Eyadema seized power.

    Two opposition blocs, the Rainbow Coalition and the Let’s Save Togo Movement, are running against President Gnassingbe’s Unir (Unite) party.

    A total of 1,174 candidates are standing in Thursday’s elections, with 159 women among them.

    Tensions in the run up to the elections have been raised by a number of mysterious fires. The opposition has accused the government of using the fires as a pretext to arrest its activists.

    Togo is among the world’s poorest countries. Its last parliamentary elections in 2007 were deemed by international observers to be relatively fair.

    BBC

  • Myanmar Frees 78 Political Prisoners

    {{The Burmese authorities say they are releasing another 73 political prisoners, after a promise by President Thein Sein to free all dissidents by the end of the year.}}

    Some are from the Kachin ethnic group, which has signed a peace deal after years of fighting for autonomy.

    Burma, also known as Myanmar, has freed hundreds of political detainees since steps towards democracy began in 2010.

    There are thought to be about 100 such prisoners remaining in Burmese jails.

    “Political prisoners are released today under a presidential amnesty,” government minister Aung Min told media. The detainees had been held at various jails around the country.

    The minister said 26 Kachin nationals were among those freed. “Thirteen of them were released from Myit Kyee Nar prison, where I met them myself,” he said.

    Earlier this month President Thein Sein said there would be no prisoners of conscience in the country’s jails by the end of the year.

    Speaking on a visit to London, he said a special committee was reviewing every political inmate’s case.

    President Thein Sein has introduced major reforms since the elections of November 2010, which saw military rule replaced by a military-backed civilian government.

    Many political prisoners have been freed and media restrictions have been relaxed, while the opposition has rejoined the political process.

    In response, most international sanctions against Burma have been relaxed.

    wirestory

  • President Kiir Sacks Cabinet Amid Party Power Struggle

    {{South Sudanese President Salva Kiir sacked his cabinet, the deputy president and suspended his top negotiator at talks to defuse tensions with Sudan on Tuesday, state media said, amid talk of a succession struggle in the African oil producer.}}

    Analysts said Kiir was trying to stem dissent and divisions inside his ruling party over an economic crisis, largely the result of disputes with Sudan that have prevented it exporting its lifeblood crude oil, and endemic corruption.

    But the timing for the biggest shake-up since winning independence two years ago could not be worse as South Sudan grapples with multiple challenges – the confrontation over oil flows with its former civil war foe to the north, as well as escalating rebel and tribal violence.

    State television cited a presidential decree saying Vice President Riek Machar had been sacked, and Machar’s spokesman James Gatdet Dak confirmed this.

    The decree also said Kiir had suspended Pagan Amum, Secretary General of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and South Sudan’s top negotiator at talks with Sudan.

    Machar had recently hinted in an interview that he might challenge Kiir for the SPLM leadership before the 2015 national elections, and Kiir had already stripped Machar of some his duties in April in what seemed to be a move to curb his profile.

    The men were on opposing sides of a split within the SPLM during much of the 1983-2005 civil war with Khartoum.

    Political analyst Andrea Mabior said Kiir had dismissed his cabinet to remove Kiir. “It’s a way to fire the vice president. He can say, ‘I have fired the whole cabinet’ – not just the vice president,” Mabior said.

    Since the SPLM has no political rivals of any standing, the battle for leadership of the SPLM is effectively the race to be president.

    Amum, for his part, had recently criticized Kiir for suspending two ministers in a fraud probe, according to local media. The decree said a party committee would investigate him.

    No more details were immediately available. It was also not clear when Kiir would appoint a new cabinet. The ministries would be run for now by their under-secretaries, the decree said.

    Barnaba Marial Benjamin, until now information minister, said he had only learned about his sacking from the evening television news. Amum, one of the most prominent officials abroad, also said he had been caught by surprise when Reuters reached him on his mobile phone.

    “I don’t have all elements at hand,” he said, giving no more details of the evening’s dramatic events.

    Kiir also removed 17 police brigadiers. There were no signs of increased military presence in the capital Juba after the announcement. The army, an umbrella of former civil war militias, is the power broker in the African country.

    Still, the United Nations and aid groups told their staff to stay indoors until further notice, U.N. sources said.

    {agencies}

  • President Mugabe Tells Zuma to Silence his Advisors

    {{Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has made an impassioned plea to his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma to silence a diplomat who has been vocal about the chaotic preparations for the country’s July 31 elections.}}

    President Mugabe told a campaign rally Saturday that President Zuma must emulate his predecessor Thabo Mbeki who never criticised Zimbabwe in public during his tenure as a facilitator in talks between the country’s three major political parties.

    The 89-year-old leader was angered by President Zuma’s international affairs advisor Lindiwe Zulu’s remarks last week that Zimbabwe’s election preparations were in disarray.

    “May South Africa stop its negative voice; I appeal to Zuma to stop this woman from speaking on Zimbabwe,” President Mugabe said.

    “We were given one facilitator with one mouth and that is President Zuma himself; that’s the voice, the only voice we want to hear.

    “Yesterday, it was Thabo Mbeki who was facilitator and only his voice spoke, no other voice spoke.”

    At the launch of his Zanu-PF party’s election manifesto a fortnight ago, President Mugabe described Ms Zulu as a loud mouthed street woman.

    President Zuma is the Southern African Development Community (SADC) facilitator on Zimbabwe and he has been pushing an election roadmap for the country that was rejected by Zanu-PF.

    {agencies}

  • Schaeuble says Germany does not want a ‘German Europe’

    {{Germany does not want a “German Europe” and believes no single country can take a leading role, yet Berlin does have a special responsibility for the path to exiting the euro zone crisis, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wrote in an editorial.}}

    “It is a completely absurd idea, to think that the Germans want to play the role of leader in Europe… We do not want a ‘German Europe’,” Schaeuble wrote in a piece to be published in five European newspapers on Saturday, and made available in German on Friday.

    But he added, “at the same time Germany believes it has a special responsibility for the mutually agreed pathway for solving the euro zone crisis. We assume this leadership responsibility above all in conjunction with our French friends.”

    Much discussion about Germany during the euro zone crisis has been contradictory, he noted, with some criticizing Berlin for doing too much, others too little.

    “It is a misconception to think that in Europe one country should or could lead. Germany’s reserve isn’t only because of our guilt-laden history. The particular political composition of Europe simply does not lend itself to the notion of one nation leading and others following,” he added.

    “Germans least of all could tolerate a ‘German Europe’. We want rather to see a Germany helping economic recovery in Europe, without itself becoming weak in the process,” he said.

    Sound financing and creating the right conditions to keep pace with global competition were not German ideas, Schaeuble said, but rather the necessary steps for a secure future.

    Schaeuble visited Athens on Thursday in a trip presented by the Greek government as a show of support by one of its biggest creditors. But he also bluntly told Greeks to stop asking for a second debt write-down following a restructuring last year that imposed massive losses on private holders of Greek bonds.

    {agencies}

  • You are Insane, Mugabe Tells U.S.

    {{President Robert Mugabe on Thursday rebuked the “insane” US for criticising his push for elections without key reforms and told it to keep its “pink nose” out of Zimbabwe’s affairs.}}

    “America must be mad, absolutely insane,” President Mugabe, who is seeking to extend his 33-year rule, told an election campaign rally in the northern town of Chinhoyi.

    US President Barack Obama during his visit to South Africa last month called on Zimbabwe’s government to apply key reforms ahead of the landmark elections.

    “For anyone to suggest that our elections must not be held even after the expiry of the term of parliament, because some party is arguing for reforms of our security forces, is a mad argument, completely.”

    President Mugabe declared July 31 polling date to choose a successor to the wobbly power-sharing government.

    His main rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai had wanted a delay to allow time to implement a battery of reforms including an overhaul of the security forces headed by Mugabe’s allies.

    During his visit to neighbouring South Africa, President Obama said “harassment of citizens and groups needs to stop and reform needs to move forward so people can cast their votes in elections that are fair and free and credible.”

    Mr Mugabe said Zimbabwe would determine its own future and that the US has no moral ground to chastise his regime.

    “Keep your pink nose out of our affairs, please.”

    “Where do you get that audacity to open your mouth and try to sermonise us,” questioned Mr Mugabe, alleging racism was rife in the US.

    “Your prisons are still full of blacks. Where is your democracy? There is lots of racism in your country.”

    He reiterated his decision to bar the US and the European Union from observing the Zimbabwe vote.

    “We have already invited well meaning friends. Ill-intentioned friends, we never can invite.”

    Observers from the Southern African Development Community and the African Union will watch the vote.

    The EU Thursday wrapped up a summit with South Africa, urging Zimbabwean political players to take all the necessary steps “to create and ensure a conducive environment for the holding of peaceful, credible, free and fair elections.”

    AFP

  • African Union warns of Civil War in Egypt

    {{ Egypt’s interim President Adli Mansour promised on Thursday to fight those driving the nation towards chaos, hours before the Muslim Brotherhood plans mass protests to demand the return of ousted Islamist leader Mohamed Mursi.}}

    Brotherhood supporters will take to the streets on Friday in their campaign to reverse the military overthrow of Egypt’s first freely-elected president, but the movement also gave a first sign of willingness to negotiate with its opponents.

    Mansour pledged in his first public address since he was sworn in on July 4 to restore stability and security.

    “We are going through a critical stage and some want us to move towards chaos and we want to move towards stability. Some want a bloody path,” he said in a televised address. “We will fight a battle for security until the end.”

    The rallies aim to show that Mursi’s supporters are not ready to accept the new military-backed government. However, a Brotherhood official also told Reuters on Thursday that the movement had proposed a framework for talks mediated by the EU.

    Sworn into office on Tuesday, the cabinet of interim premier Hazem el-Beblawy busied itself with tackling Egypt’s many crises, buying foreign wheat to replenish stocks and banking $3 billion in badly needed aid from the United Arab Emirates.

    Still stunned by the July 3 toppling of Mursi, his Muslim Brotherhood, and allies grouped in what it calls the National Alliance for Legitimacy, urged the nationwide rallies on Friday, predicting millions would take to the streets.

    “To every free Egyptian man and woman: Come out against the bloody military coup,” the alliance said in a statement.

    Brotherhood official Gehad el-Haddad, who represented the movement in previous EU-facilitated talks with other political groups, told Reuters that the organization would not retreat from its demand for the reinstatement of Mursi.

    However, signaling for the first time a formal readiness for negotiations, he said the Brotherhood had proposed through an EU envoy a framework for talks to resolve Egypt’s crisis. “We never close the door to dialogue,” Haddad said.

    The EU envoy, Bernardino Leon, said the two sides remained far apart. It is hard to imagine the army letting Mursi return to power. The military has denied orchestrating a coup, saying it intervened to prevent chaos following mammoth protests on June 30 against Mursi’s much-criticized, year-long rule.

    Egypt, the most populous nation in the Arab world, is a strategic hinge between the Middle East and North Africa and has long been a vital U.S. ally in the region.

    The African Union warned on Thursday that Egypt risked being engulfed by civil war unless its government embraced Islamists, none of whom were included in the 33-strong cabinet.

    Wirestory

  • Venezuela Slams U.S. Over ‘Repressive Regimes’ Remarks

    {{Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro demanded the United States apologize on Thursday after the Obama administration’s nominee for envoy to the United Nations said there was a crackdown on civil society in the South American country.}}

    Maduro has often clashed with Washington since winning an April election following the death of his mentor, socialist leader Hugo Chavez. He said Samantha Power’s comments to a Senate confirmation hearing had been aggressive and unfair.

    “I want an immediate correction by the U.S. government,” Maduro said in comments broadcast live on state television.

    “Power says she’ll fight repression in Venezuela? What repression? There is repression in the United States, where they kill African-Americans with impunity, and where they hunt the youngster Edward Snowden just for telling the truth.”

    His comment was an apparent reference to the not-guilty verdict handed down in the Florida murder trial of George Zimmerman on Saturday for the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

    Maduro has been the most vocal of three Latin American leaders who offered asylum to Snowden, the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor wanted by Washington for leaking details of secret surveillance programs.

    Since taking office, Venezuela’s leader has veered between appearing to want better ties with Washington and denouncing alleged U.S. plots to assassinate him and trigger a coup d’etat.

    During her Senate conformation hearing on Wednesday, Power vowed to stand up against “repressive regimes”, and said that meant “contesting the crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela.”

    Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader who became Chavez’s foreign minister and vice president, said the “fascist right” in Venezuela were gleefully applauding her comments.

    “And the U.S. government says they want to have good relations? What tremendous relations they want,” he scoffed.

    In June, Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Elias Jaua met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a regional summit. That meeting was seen as a sign of improving ties after years of hostility during Chavez’s 14-year rule.

    But the latest collision came when Maduro became the first foreign leader to say explicitly that he was offering asylum to Snowden, the NSA leaker who has been trapped in the transit zone of a Moscow airport for more than three weeks.

    Bolivia and Nicaragua also subsequently offered him sanctuary, but Venezuela’s government has said it can do little to help him as long as he remains stuck at the airport.

    {reuters}