Africa News blog

Bashir’s magic number 68

On the face of it, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir got the perfect election result.

His victory with 68 percent was not too high that it would spark concerns of fraud but high enough above the 50 percent needed for a win for him to be able fly in the face of the disapproving West.

Bashir is now the only elected sitting head of state wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.    

But the path to victory was far from smooth.

Three weeks before what was promising to be an exciting electoral race, irregularities including a government printing press winning the contract to print ballot papers, sparked a wave of boycotts effectively ending any hope of a competitive presidential poll.

But given the late notice all the candidates’ names remained on the ballot papers. So despite opposition leaders urging their supporters not to go to vote — if they wanted to, they could in theory still vote for their man (or woman).

Delays prompted the National Elections Commission to abandon the computerised results system and move to a manual paper trail, allowing the results to come flooding in but leaving the door open to error or even possible manipulation.

Sudan’s “foolproof” elections

It all started so well… the lines of voters sheltering patiently in the shade from the sweltering heat to vote in Sudan’s first open polls in 24 years.

Many criticised the opposition for boycotting the vote, saying it was missing out on a national event.

But as the votes began to pour into the ballot boxes, the cracks began to show.

In one centre, ballot papers began to run out and after 3-1/2 hours waiting, an impatient woman shouted in through the window: “Please people can’t you hurry it up – we’ve got young children out here.”

While a desperate elections official was shouting requests down his mobile phone for more ballot papers, another discovery came to light. The hundreds of votes already cast were made on the wrong ballots.

And it all began to unravel.

As the sun rose in the desert sky, it was revealed that dozens of voting centres had received incorrect ballot papers and that the nameor symbols of many independent and opposition candidates were either missing or incorrect.

Sudan’s elections brinkmanship – can the opposition unite?

In a shock unilateral announcement, the leading south Sudanese party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), withdrew its presidential candidate, Yasir Arman, and said it would also boycott elections on all levels in  Darfur.

It paved the way for incumbent President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to win the April 11-18 polls. Arman was viewed as his main challenger, with much of south Sudan’s support – about 25 percent of the 16-million strong electorate.

Some in the opposition initially reacted with anger or surprise, because the SPLM had agreed to form a joint position on a likely full boycott of elections in the north with them a day later. But as the decision sank in, the realization is that the ball is now firmly in their court.

The credibility of the elections is hanging in the balance.

But the big question on everyone’s lips is: Will the opposition be able to unite on a joint position ahead of the polls, which are due to begin in just 10 days?

Many Sudanese complain the weak and divided opposition offer little alternative to Bashir’s party.

Sudan leaders scuffle as time runs out for peace deal

It started with a small scuffle over a confiscated bag of protest banners outside Sudan’s parliament. And it ended in confrontations between baton-wielding police and protesters on the dusty streets of Omdurman.

At the finish, once the tear gas and protests leaflets had settled, just one victor emerged — in the propaganda stakes at least — the protesters from a loose alliance between south Sudan’s dominant Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and mostly northern opposition parties.

The SPLM and opposition groups called Monday’s protest to urge north Sudan’s dominant National Congress Party (NCP) to push through a raft of reforms they see as essential to elections, now just months away in April.

The Khartoum authorities played their part perfectly, first by banning the rally, then by starting the day detaining two prominent SPLM leaders.

Tear gas was fired, protesters beaten and at least one reporter detained. Opposition supporters sent round text messages saying Yasir Arman, the SPLM’s deputy Secretary General, had been hospitalised after rough treatment in a police cell.

International groups from the United Nations to Amnesty International released statements of outrage and criticism.

A couple of hours later Arman, apparently none the worse for wear, was being carried on his supporters’ shoulders into a packed, back-slapping victory rally at an SPLM base in Khartoum.

Unwinnable battles for West African political opposition?

Will democracy work in Ethiopia?

Six Ethiopian opposition parties have joined forces to go up against the government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in next year’s parliamentary elections, but their chances of bringing change look slim at best and they complain of heavy-handed tactics by the ruling party.

The foremost opposition figure in Africa’s second most populous country, Birtukan Mideksa, a 34-year-old former judge, has been in solitary confinement since December. She was jailed after the first democratic poll in 2005, which ended in rioting that was bloodily suppressed, was pardoned in 2007 and rearrested last year after renouncing the terms of her pardon.

Bekele Jirata, a top official from another party, recently spent four months in prison after being accused of working with rebels from the Oromo region, though he is now out on bail.

The government dismisses as “baseless” opposition accusations that political activity is restricted.

“The political space is continually widening,” Bereket Simon, the government’s head of information, told me recently.

Meles points to achievements such as a reduction in infant mortality to 123 deaths for every 1,000 births from 166 in just five years. A programme to help seven million Ethiopians who regularly suffer from food shortages is meant to ensure the catastrophic famine of the mid-1980s is never repeated. Meles is a key regional friend of Washington and sent forces into Somalia to fight Islamists in late 2006, only withdrawing this year.

But Western allies and donors are frustrated by what they see as the restrictions on democracy. Human rights groups have lambasted  a new law that restricts groups that get outside funding from working on issues of democracy, human rights or criminal justice. The government says only Ethiopians should be involved in Ethiopian politics.

Will Zimbabwe power-share work?

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai became the new prime minister on Wednesday, sworn in by President Robert Mugabe — his old political rival.

Tsvangirai vowed to rescue the stricken economy and called on the international community to help salvage the economy of Zimbabwe where unemployment is above 90 percent, prices double every day and half the 12 million population need food aid.

The new unity government will also have to grapple with a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 3,500 people, the worst outbreak of the disease in Africa in 15 years. Millions of Zimbabweans who fled the country will be cautious about coming back until they see results.

Foreign investors and Western donors have made it clear money will come only when a new democratic government is formed and bold economic reforms are taken – such as reversing nationalisation policies.

What are the prospects for the unity government given the historic animosity between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, the shear scale of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse and the ongoing detention of opposition activists?

Are talks going Mugabe’s way?

Is it just me, or is Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe starting to look more confident again? At the start of power sharing talks a few weeks back he appeared distinctly grim when he and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had their historic handshake.

In the past few days he has been much more his old self, lambasting the West at a speech to commemorate the dead in the liberation war, giving a national honour to George Chiweshe, who organised elections that were condemned by much of the world, and generally upbeat during three days of talks that in the end delivered no result.

Exactly what’s going on behind the closed doors is hard to fathom.

A top official from Mugabe’s ZANU-PF told Reuters a deal had already been done between Mugabe and Arthur Mutambara, leader of a breakaway opposition faction. “Deal sealed” read the headline from the state-owned Herald. Mutambara has come out to say that no such deal has been signed but tellingly noted that “should talks fail” any party was entitled to enter bilateral negotiations.

What a deal with Mutambara might give Mugabe is the parliamentary majority that ZANU-PF lost in the elections. What it is very unlikely to give him is hope of resolving the crisis that is destroying Zimbabwe or of persuading the rest of the world that change is underway.

Zimbabwe election rage

President Robert Mugabe’s re-election has sparked cries of outrage from Zimbabwean bloggers and demands for international intervention.

Mugabe’s victory in Friday’s one-candidate poll was condemned in the West and by all three African monitoring groups who said the vote was deeply flawed.

“Now we wait for the Old Man (Mugabe) to swear himself in to a power that he does not have. We wait for him to claim a throne that he stole one-dark-night-that-is-our-country. We wait for real international pressure and solidarity to force a transition,” Zimbabwean protest poet Samm Farai Monro, better known as Comrade Fatso, wrote.

Official results of the June 27 election, from which opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew a few days before the poll, showed Mugabe, 84, received 85.51 percent of the vote.

Many bloggers said the figure was rigged.

“They are cooked results and unfortunately or fortunately rather, they are not valid to the world and around us,” wrote one blogger who called himself Nice-Shona-Guy on www.newzimbabwe.com

Zimbabwe’s crisis has ruined a once prosperous country, saddling it with the world’s worst hyper-inflation and straining neighbouring nations, especially South Africa, with a flood of millions of economic refugees.