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Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - What does President Obama "know" about Ethiopia's "election"? - 0 views

www.pambazuka.net/...93094

africa development international governance pambazuka democratization ethiopia

shared by Arabica Robusta on 11 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • In the foregoing few words, Hailemariam Desalegn actually revealed his (I mean the TPLF’s) entire three-pronged strategy on how they plan to organize the theft of the 2015 election and repeat the 2010 crushing victory: 1) use state media and all other resources to hoodwink the people of Ethiopia that the 2015 election process will be democratic, free, fair and credible; 2) implement “our institutional process and our laws and regulations [that] are perfect” by 3) imposing on all political parties “the code of conduct” that his party has “put in place”. The TPLF's three-pronged strategy is actually the perfect game plan for the perfectly rigged election. The late Meles Zenawi wrote the perfect election rigging rulebook and “implemented” it in 2010. As a result, his party won the perfect election with 99.6 percent of the parliamentary seats.
  • Prof. Hagmann’s observations also point to the total absurdity and futility of any “elections” in Ethiopia in light of the dogmatic belief of the leaders of the TPLF (and its handmaiden the “EPDRF”) in their birthright to rule: This is visible in the way EPDRF sees itself – namely as a vanguard party that has earned the right to lead the state, to determine what development is and how democracy is to be organized. Therefore, whoever is against the EPDRF is ‘anti-development’ or ‘anti-peace’ and whoever opposes its policies is anti-state.
  • It is a known known to me that President Obama gave his implicit blessings in 2010 when the TPLF regime declared victory by 99.6 percent. He turned a blind eye and deaf ears. (Not so when he lectured Robert Mugabe for winning the presidential "election" in Zimbabwe in 2013 by 61 percent: “Zimbabweans have a new constitution. The economy is beginning to recover. So there is an opportunity to move forward but only if there is an election that is free and fair and peaceful so that Zimbabweans can determine their future without fear of intimidation and retribution.”) An election that was won by 61 percent is not "free and fair" and deserves public condemnation but an election won by 99.6 percent is free and fair and deserves private accolades?!
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Meles Zenawi ripped the final EU EOM election report as “trash that deserves to be thrown in the garbage”. He said, “The report is not about our election. It is just the view of some Western neo-liberals who are unhappy about the strength of the ruling party. Anybody who has paper and ink can scribble whatever they want.” Of course, Meles was legendary for his mastery and exquisite delivery of gutter language in political discourse. He could out-tongue-lash, out-mudsling, out-bully, out-vilify and out-smear any politician on the African continent. Meles also called the 2005 EU EOM Report a “pack of lies and innuendoes”.
  • Since he believes civil society is the core of a democratic process, President Obama should use his leverage to ensure civil society institutions function freely in Ethiopia before the 2015 "election". What is President Obama’s leverage? Aid money. The hard earned tax dollars of the American people. American tax dollars given to African dictators in the name of helping Africans but end up in African dictators’ offshore accounts. Aid money talks and is heard loud and clear by the tone deaf TPLF bosses. As Dambissa Moyo documented in her book Dead Aid, the TPLF regime got a whopping 97 percent of its budget from foreign aid. Simply stated, the TPLF regime will not survive a single day without aid transfusion from the pockets of hardworking America taxpayers into its blood stream. President Obama needs to wag the annual welfare aid check in the faces of the salivating TPLF panhandlers and tell them what he told Africans in Accra Ghana in 2009:
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - Abyei: A brief annotated chronology - 0 views

pambazuka.org/...89430

pambazuka sudan us intervention abyei

shared by Arabica Robusta on 07 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • African Union dithering has likely lost all opportunity to create a "soft border" of Abyei, possibly serving as a model for the entire North/South border. But the idea has much support in many quarters, and is perhaps best articulated by Jérôme Tubiana: "This [a referendum determined purely by numbers] puts Abyei at risk of becoming an encysted problem like Western Sahara," he said, adding that crisis-easing options such as power-sharing were almost impossible to invoke now because a referendum had been promised to the Ngok Dinka and even, via the CPA, agreed to by Khartoum.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka News - Ghana: Why the North Matters - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...48821

adjustment colonialism development ghana hipc international news structural

shared by Arabica Robusta on 03 Jul 08 - Cached
  • With the introduction of structural adjustment, projects and activities depending on the government were scaled down. While the idea of privatisation could somehow work in the South, as there was an elite and foreign companies to take over these activities, such conditions did not apply in the North. The factories ground one by one to a halt. Commercial farms went into receivership. Employment and income collapsed. The market players, who were to exploit the opportunities afforded by the withdrawal of the government, simply were not ready for it. Whatever economic elite had started to develop either sank back into obscurity or joined their brethren in the south.
  • National policies, ostensibly designed so as not to favour specific parts of the country, end up disadvantaging the North. The Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP) was originally conceived as a programme focusing on ‘Hunger Hotspots’, and was therefore targeted at the North. For obvious political reasons, the government decided instead to make it a national policy benefiting all districts equally. But with programme management using its discretionary powers, individual districts were able to lobby for additional schools. Inevitably, such districts were politically well connected and close to the physical and political centre. With as end result that Greater Accra, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo Regions receive a whopping 70 % of the total funding for school feeding (leaving the other 7 Regions to fight over the remaining 30 % of the funds). The three northern Regions, home to 30 % of the total poor in Ghana, receive a paltry 7 % of the funding!
  • The distribution of HIPC funding tells a similar story. The Highly Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative was an attempt by the World Bank and IMF to reduce the debt burden of the world poorest countries. One of the first major policy initiatives of the new NPP government when it attained power in 2001 was to apply for HIPC status. A special account was opened, whereby the money which otherwise would have been used for debt re-payment would be channelled to special spending targeted at the poor. But once again the reality was different. While the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy 2003-2005 planned that almost half of the HIPC funds would be used in northern Ghana, in reality this was only 17 %, just about one third of what was planned! The remaining 83 % of the projects went to southern Ghana, for which only 52 % had been planned.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • It cannot be denied that northern Ghana has recorded considerable progress since independence.
  • Arabica Robusta on 03 Jul 08
     
    Unequal and uneven development inherited from British colonialism by present day Ghana continues to divide the North from the South. For Samuel Zan Akologo and Rinus van Klinken "Sierra Leone, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and Togo are gory reminders" should serve as warning to the Ghanian leadership that it must change course.
Arabica Robusta

Pambazuka - System change not climate change - 0 views

www.pambazuka.org/...61235

shared by Arabica Robusta on 27 Dec 09 - Cached
brian R liked it
  • Similarly, should we not consider the implication of toxic waste dumping in Africa by companies such as Trafigura, which dumped truck loads of sulphuric sludge in Ivory Coast in 2006, and the damaging consequences it has for Africa, or the ecological damage caused by Anglo-Dutch Shell in the extraction of oil in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria? Surely any deal at Copenhagen should ensure that richer nations are made to dispose of toxic waste safely? Equally important should be fair compensation for the victims of environmental degradation and not the paltry £100 million paid by Trafigura to the Ivorian government in 2007.
    • Arabica Robusta
      Arabica Robusta on 27 Dec 09
       
      On a partially unrelated note, why have not Western countries pledged to stop illegal international fishing and dumping of waste off of Somalia, as part of their anti-piracy measures?
  • African NGOs such as the Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance and Northern NGOs genuinely committed to climate justice in an egalitarian global community need to consistently mobilise post-Copenhagen to ensure that the movement for climate change does not become a business opportunity for the corporate world to profit from. There is a need for all of us to be aware of the smokescreen that will be presented by the elaborate carbon emissions accounting.
  • The challenge of progressive forces both in the South and North is to demand the realisation of the slogan on one placard hoisted at Copenhagen: ‘System Change Not Climate Change!’
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