Society

The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, is no longer a goodwill Ambassador; a role which the World Health Organisation gave him hoping he would use it to influence other leaders in Africa, to take the healthcare of their Nations serious.

 

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23.Oct.2017

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Since leaving office in 2009, he has kept a relatively low profile. But on Thursday, the former president took to the stage to heavily criticize the current trajectory of US politics.

Former US President George W. Bush on Thursday condemned bigotry and isolationism in a rare speech that many have interpreted as an implicit rebuke of the politics and policies of President Donald Trump.

"Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children. The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them," Bush said at the George W. Bush Institute in New York City. 

Without naming names

Bush, who was president between 2001 and 2009, did not mention Trump by name. But Bush's comments appeared to be aimed at the current president who faces frequent criticism for his perceived denigration of minority groups and coarse presidential style.

"Discontent deepened and sharpened partisan conflicts. Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication," Bush said. "We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty."

The 71-year-old Bush had refused to endorse Trump after he beat Bush's brother, Jeb, to be elected the Republish party's candidate during the 2016 presidential election.

The former president also implicitly criticized Trump's aversion to traditional US policies on free trade and global leadership.

"We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade, forgetting that conflict, instability, and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism," he said, adding that globalization could not be wished away "any more than we could wish away the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution."

Former US presidents tend to shy away from criticizing their successors directly.

Russia turning Americans against each other

Bush also used the speech to denounce Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election, an accusation Trump had brushed off as a "hoax."

"According to our intelligence services, the Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other. This effort is broad, systematic and stealthy," Bush said.

Despite the clear undertones targeting Trump, Bush spokesman Freddy Ford did not say it was intended to target the current president.

"The themes President Bush spoke about today are really the same themes he has spoken about for the last two decades," he said.

Obama denounces 'politics of division'

Former President Barack Obama also criticized politics under Trump's presidency at a campaign rally in the US state of New Jersey on Thursday.

"What we can't have is the same old politics of division that we have seen so many times before, that dates back centuries," Obama said at an event for Phil Murphy, the Democratic Party's candidate for the upcoming election for the state's governor.

The speech also marked a departure for Obama, who was president between 2009 and 2017, after months of remaining relatively silent on political debates in the US.

"Some of the politics we see now, we thought we put that to bed. That's folks looking 50 years back," Obama said. "It's the 21st century, not the 19th century."

amp/msh (AP, AFP, Reuters)

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Rita Akana

20.Oct.2017

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The state Police and the French foreign legion detonated a hand grenade in another show piece of drama this morning at the Azire New Church Junction,where the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon is running two Schools,viz,The Presbyterian Comprehensive High School and the Presbyterian Primary School. It happened in the early hours of the morning when Police had condoned the area and the suspects are the state propaganda and smearing campaign in their futile struggle to tag the Southern Cameroon's struggle as a terrorist group. 

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Rita Akana

20.Oct.2017

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UNITED NATIONS — 

The United Nations Secretary-General said Wednesday that the Central African Republic is at a critical moment and everything must be done to ease growing communal tensions and preserve gains to keep the fragile nation on the right path.

Antonio Guterres will travel to the Central African Republic next week, to meet with the country’s leaders and visit the nearly 12,000-member U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The country has been struggling with sometimes deadly inter-communal tensions for the past five years between two armed groups -- the mostly Muslim Seleka and largely Christian anti-Balaka.

Another serious outbreak of violence between the two groups erupted in May, and Guterres warned that the situation remains very troubling.

“Across the country, communal tensions are growing, violence is spreading, and the humanitarian situation is deteriorating," he said.

The numbers of people in need of humanitarian aid is surging, with almost 600,000 internally displaced and more than half-a-million driven to seek refuge in neighboring countries. The violence has been deadly for peacekeepers and aid workers, as well as civilians.

Guterres said he has asked the Security Council for an increase in peacekeepers to calm the situation.

The U.N. peacekeeping mission in the C.A.R. has been the epicenter of sexual abuse and exploitation allegations against the United Nations. One mission chief has been fired and peacekeepers from accused countries have been repatriated.

Guterres will be accompanied on his visit by his recently appointed victims’ rights advocate.

“We are determined to ensure that the voices of victims are heard – I will myself be ready to meet with victims and their families – in and beyond the Central African Republic. Victims must be at the center of our response if we want our zero-tolerance policy to be successful,” he said.

Guterres said despite challenges, fragile gains such as the election of a president and government and the establishment of a special criminal court must be preserved and strengthened.

VOA

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Rita Akana

19.Oct.2017

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LOME (Reuters) - Four people were killed in Togo on Wednesday in clashes between security forces and demonstrators calling for an end to a half century of Gnassingbe family rule, the security minister said.

Opposition activists have been demonstrating since August against Gnassingbe’s administration and say a constitutional reform he has proposed would allow him to rule the West African country until 2030.

Colonel Damehame Yark, the security and civil protection minister, told a news conference that one person was shot dead and around sixty others arrested in the capital, Lome. Another three died of gunshot wounds in the second-biggest city, Sokode.

“These are too many deaths. We’d be wise to preserve the peace,” he said.

The latest bout of protests followed the arrest in Sokode on Monday of a Muslim imam accused of urging his followers to murder soldiers.

Clashes erupted after the arrest. A crowd killed two soldiers and one other person died in unspecified circumstances, the government said in a statement. About 20 other people were injured, it added.

The deaths reignited a mass protest movement against President Faure Gnassingbe, who succeeded his late father Gnassingbe Eyadema in 2005.

The protesters are calling for his resignation.

“We deplore this toll and we say that backing down is out of the question. Despite what we have suffered, we will maintain our call for protests tomorrow,” said Brigitte Adjamagbo, one of the leaders of the opposition movement.

She said the coalition was aware of two people killed, including an 11-year-old child, as well as twenty others who were seriously injured and dozens of arrests.

In a bid to curb demonstrations, the government has banned marches and mass protests on weekdays.

But young protesters in Be, a working-class neighbourhood in eastern Lome, defied the ban on Wednesday. They erected barricades with bricks and burning tyres and threw stones at security forces, who responded with volleys of tear gas.

“This is our last bastion,” shouted one demonstrator, Ayi Koffi. “We have no arms, no gas. We do not have cars to pick up people. We have come out barehanded to say, enough!”

In a statement, the International Organisation of La Francophonie, a group comprised mainly of French-speaking countries including Paris’s former colonies, said that nothing justified the violence.

“Dialogue must be prioritised in all circumstances,” it said.

The controversial constitutional reform will be decided by popular referendum after the bill failed to win approval from parliament following a boycott by opposition lawmakers last month.

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Rita Akana

19.Oct.2017

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Cletus, the co-host of a Canal 2 program Jambo, has been asked to be seen no where near any of the media organs's TV sets or studios. This is because he announced on 9 October, Akere Muna's candidature for the 2018 elections, something the President Director General of Canal 2, Emmanuel Chatue, was not in accordance with.

 

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17.Oct.2017

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