Global News Journal
Beyond the World news headlines
from Africa News blog:
Africa still crying for freedom?
“Sub-Saharan Africa: Year of Regression”. That was the heading used by U.S.-based rights group Freedom House in its survey of political freedom in the world published this week.
Of course the Freedom House survey pointed to the coups in Guinea and Mauritania as well as the situation in Zimbabwe, whose elections were condemned by many countries and where the crisis shows no sign of lessening, but there were plenty of other names on the list too:
Senegal - long held up as an example of democracy in Africa - dropped from "free to partly free" because of “a growing authoritarian trend”.
Nigeria suffered a drop “because of the ruling party’s increasing consolidation of power and marginalization of the opposition”.
How well can African elections work?
By the standards of other recent African elections, the aftermath of Angola’s parliamentary ballot at the weekend has been fairly tame.
But polling station chaos that led to an extra day of voting and accusations of cheating from the opposition badly undermined Angola’s hope that the ballot would set a example for the continent after elections in Kenya and Zimbabwe.
