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from Global News Journal:
UN tells Mbeki he got it wrong on Ivory Coast
This week U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, defended the United Nations' record on Ivory Coast. In a highly unusual public rebuttal, Nambiar told former South African President and African Union mediator for the Ivory Coast conflict, Thabo Mbeki, that it was he -- not the international community -- who got it wrong in the world's top cocoa producer.
In April, Ivory Coast's long-time President Laurent Gbagbo was ousted from power by forces loyal to his rival Alassane Ouattara, who won the second round of a U.N.-certified election in November 2010, with the aid of French and U.N. troops. According to Mbeki -- who has also attempted to mediate in conflicts in Sudan and Zimbabwe -- there never should have been an election last fall in the country that was once the economic powerhouse of West Africa.
Mbeki wrote in an article published by Foreign Policy magazine at the end of April: "The objective reality is that the Ivorian presidential elections should not have been held when they were held. It was perfectly foreseeable that they would further entrench the very conflict it was suggested they would end."
Ivory Coast was split in two by the 2002-3 civil war and the failure to disarm the northern rebels meant the country held an election last year with two rival armies in place, leading to a new outbreak of hostilities when Gbagbo rejected the internationally-accepted election results.
The solution to the conflict, Mbeki wrote, was not to insist that Ouattara take office as president, as the United Nations, France and others did at the time, but a political solution that would have satisfied everybody in the francophone nation. "The African Union understood that a lasting solution of the Ivorian crisis necessitated a negotiated agreement between the two belligerent Ivorian factions, focused on the interdependent issues of democracy, peace, national reconciliation and unity."
The United Nations took nearly four months to come up with a public response to Mbeki. It finally appeared this week in an article in Foreign Policy by Nambiar entitled "Dear President Mbeki: The United Nations Helped Save the Ivory Coast." In his rebuttal, Nambiar vehemently rejects the idea that that the world should have pushed Ouattara to negotiate a power-sharing deal with election-loser Gbagbo.
Statue casts shadow over Senegal Renaissance
Far from being a shining beacon of hope for the world’s poorest continent, Dakar’s monument to the African Renaissance has sparked a storm of criticism over Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and his handling of the project.
Declaring himself to be the “intellectual owner” of the bronze family of man, woman and infant – at 50 metres tall just higher than New York’s Statue of Liberty – Wade has decided that he should take a 35 percent cut in the revenues of a site which is expected to be one of Dakar’s top tourist draws when it is completed in December.
Its just the manifestation of the megalomania of most African heads of state and those around at least he did not demand 90%. When will we be rid us of these buffoons. Wish it is before judgement day
Overdose of trouble in West Africa
That political stability is vital for investment and development goes without saying, but it seems as though too much instability can be bad for criminal enterprises too.
The cocaine cartels that used West Africa, and Guinea-Bissau in particular, as a conduit to Europe were long accused of worsening the chaos in one of the region’s poorest and most troubled states by buying off some factions of the security forces and political leaders.
But if so, things may have gone too far.
In less than a year, Guinea-Bissau has lost President Joao Bernardo “Nino” Vieira (dead), the head of the army (dead), the head of the navy (fled), a former defence minister (dead) and a candidate to replace the slain president in the June 28 election (dead). And those are just some of the figures at the top.
Whichever of Guinea-Bissau’s leaders might have been involved in the drugs trade and which were trying to fight it, the removal of such a swathe of the leadership appears for now at least to have knocked the traffickers off balance too.
Drug smuggling through West Africa has plummeted, according to the U.N., despite the fact that its geography also makes it an ideal bridge between Latin America and Europe.
“The fact that big traffickers do not any longer have certain partners in power clearly have disrupted the routes,” said Antonio Mazzitelli, regional head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. “A trafficker would never bring 2 tonnes of drugs to a country where he is not sure he can operate,” he told Reuters.
from Global News Journal:
Cheers for Africa’s new military ruler. For now.
Fifteen years ago this month, Guinea’s late ruler Lansana Conte made clear what form democracy would take under his rule.
We answered a summons to a late night news conference to hear the result of his first multiparty election, speeding through silent streets where armoured vehicles waited in the shadows. The interior minister announced that ballots from the east, the opposition’s stronghold, had been cancelled because of irregularities. Conte had therefore won 50.93 percent of the vote. There was no need for a run-off because he had an absolute majority.
The show was over.
We rushed off to file our stories at the press centre, set up helpfully by a government under pressure to show the world it was ready for fair elections. The press centre was gone, the lines cut. In the morning, fighter jets swept over Conakry in case the message had not been clear already.
There were more elections, there was occasional turmoil on the streets, sometimes bloodshed. At one point Conte was almost overthrown, but he managed to hold on until his death from illness on Monday.
In a matter of hours, the army - Conte’s real constituency – made clear he would be succeeded by one of his own instead of any of the civilian politicians who prospered under the system over which he kept such strong control.
Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, the head of the junta, was the first soldier to announce the coup on state radio. A Guinean website said the choice was made by drawing lots. Camara's promises - heard many before times in Africa - are to fight corruption, to hold elections in a set period – in this case two years - and not to stand himself.
I doubt that election was kosher. It would be interesting to find out if the complaints against the UN election observers were credible… but I guess we’ll never know given what’s transpired.
The chocolate money must be considerable.