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Ngwa Bertrand

27.Apr.2015

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(Reuters) - Togo's President Faure Gnassingbe won re-election to a third term based on provisional results with more than 1.2 million votes or 58.75 percent of the total, the West African country's election commission head said on Tuesday.

His nearest rival was opposition leader Jean-Pierre Fabre with 34.95 percent of the vote, the provisional results showed.

"In light of these results, the election commission deems that Faure Gnassingbe won the election provided that they are confirmed by the constitutional court," commission head Issoufou Taffa Tabiouon said on state television.

Gnassingbe was widely tipped to win the Saturday vote, and early results suggested he had secured a comfortable margin. If confirmed, the results will extend the grip of Gnassingbe's family on the country beyond 50 years.

But Togo's opposition complained of widespread irregularities and called for the announcement of results to be halted.

A mediation team led by John Dramani Mahama, Ghana's president and current head of the West African ECOWAS bloc, arrived in Togo on Tuesday.

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

27.Apr.2015

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At least three people have been reported killed and two more injured in Egypt’s volatile Sinai Peninsula as the nation’s president extended a seven-month-old curfew imposed on parts of North Sinai for another three months.

Medical sources in al-Arish stated on Saturday that the casualties came as the result of armed clashes between Egyptian security forces and militants in the area on a day that coincided with what the government in Cairo referred to as the 33rd anniversary of Sinai liberation day.

The day marks the anniversary of the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers occupying the Egyptian territory following the US-sponsored Camp David Accord between then-Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and the Tel Aviv regime.

Meanwhile, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s former army chief, issued a decree on Saturday renewing the state of emergency imposed on parts of the restive North Sinai since October 25, 2014, when a car bomb attack perpetrated by ISIL-linked Takfiri terrorists killed 31 Egyptian army troops and wounded 30 others.

The presidential decree is to go into effect on Sunday, further extending a night-time curfew that was being enforced.

Since the ouster of Egypt’s first freely elected president Mohamed Morsi in a military coup in July 2013, militants have launched terrorist attacks in Sinai, killing hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and police officers.

The Egyptian army is conducting a wide scale operation targeting ISIL-linked terrorists there.

 

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

26.Apr.2015

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The United Nations peacekeeping chief in Mali has expressed confidence that rebels operating in the north will sign a peace deal aimed at restoring stability to the country. Mongi Hamdi, who serves as the head of the United Nations' Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), said Thursday that he is confident that Tuareg rebels will sign a deal reached earlier in March in the Algerian capital, Algiers. “We remain hopeful and confident that the Algiers process will be successful with the signing of the agreement on May 15 by all stakeholders in Mali because there is no other choice but to follow the logic of peace,” Hamdi said after a meeting with Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita.

The UN has already urged the rebels, officially known as Coordination for the Movements of Azawad (CMA), to recognize the historic opportunity for joining the agreement or face international sanctions. The rebels, however, have reportedly declared their refusal to sign the accord, saying that the document has not recognized the Azawad in northern Mali as a “geographic, political and juridical entity.” Hamdi said that implementing the deal reached in Algiers would be only the beginning to “a long road to peace, security, reconciliation and development that assumes the continuation of dialogue.” Under the deal, a raft of powers will be transferred from the capital Bamako to the country`s violence-hit north. The agreement also suggests the establishment of elected local assemblies led by a directly-elected president, as well as “greater representation of the northern populations in national institutions.”

As of 2018, Mali’s government will allocate 30 percent of its revenues to local authorities, especially in the north, according to the document.  Moreover, an internationally funded Northern Development Zone will be set up to raise the living standards of the northern population to the level of the rest of the country within 10-15 years. Based on the draft, the militants will be integrated into the Malian army and will be stationed in the northern areas of the country. Chaos broke out in Mali after President Amadou Toumani Toure was toppled in a military coup on March 22, 2012, which was described by coup leaders as a response to the government’s inability to contain the rebellion in the country’s north, where the rebels are fighting to gain autonomy.

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Ngwa Bertrand

24.Apr.2015

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The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in a new report last week noted that world military expenditure totalled $1.8 trillion in 2014 (2.3 per cent of global gross domestic product), a fall of 0.4 per cent in real terms since 2013. This is the third consecutive year that total global military expenditure has decreased. However, the falls during the previous two years have been comparatively small; world military expenditure is still only 1.7 per cent below its 2011 peak, and it remains significantly above the levels of the late 1980s, according to SIPRI, which noted that, “World military spending, while falling for the third year in a row, has levelled off as reductions in the United States and Western Europe were largely matched by increases in Asia and Oceania, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa. Spending in Latin America was virtually level.”

According to SIPRI’s Trends in World Military Expenditure 2014, Africa once again saw the largest year-on-year increase in military expenditure of any region, at 5.9 per cent, reaching $50.2 billion in. Military spending in the region has increased by 91 per cent since 2005. “Africa’s two biggest spenders, Algeria and Angola, continued their rapid military spending increases financed by high oil revenues, with Algeria increasing by 12 per cent to reach $11.9 billion, and Angola by 6.7 per cent to hit $6.8 billion. These countries have respectively trebled and doubled their spending in real terms since 2005, and both now spend more than 5 per cent of their GDP on the military. It remains to be seen whether the crash in oil prices in late 2014 will halt this trend. “Nigeria’s budgeted military expenditure fell in 2014 for the third year running, by 9.3 per cent, to $2.3 billion. Nonetheless, the total is still 79 per cent higher than in 2005, and the budgeted figure does not include a $1 billion loan approved by the Nigerian Congress in October 2014 for military hardware and training to fight the militant group Boko Haram. However, it is debatable whether extra funding for the military on its own will prove effective, given the rampant corruption in the Nigerian armed forces and alleged human rights abuses by Nigerian soldiers that have alienated much of the local population. Such factors have severely impeded the fight against Boko Haram so far,” SIRPI noted.In its analysis the Institute reported that US military spending fell by 6.5 per cent in 2014 as part of ongoing budget deficit reduction measures; spending has now fallen by 20 per cent since its peak in 2010. However, current US military spending is still 45 per cent higher than in 2001, just before the 11 September terrorist attacks on the USA.

The next three highest spenders—China, Russia and Saudi Arabia—have all substantially increased their military expenditures, with Saudi Arabia’s increase of 17 per cent making it the largest increase of any of the top 15 spenders worldwide. “While total world military spending is mostly unchanged, some regions, such as the Middle East and much of Africa, are continuing to see rapid build-ups that are placing an increasingly high burden on many economies”, said Dr Sam Perlo-Freeman, Head of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure project. ‘These increases partly reflect worsening security situations, but in many cases they are also the product of corruption, vested interests and autocratic governance.” The conflict in Ukraine is prompting many European countries near Russia, in Central Europe, the Baltics and the Nordic countries, to increase military spending, often revising previous plans and reversing falling trends. However, there is less sign of a similar trend in the rest of Western Europe, despite the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) asking its member states to spend 2 per cent of GDP on military spending. The five biggest spenders in Western Europe—France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain—have all budgeted for further cuts, albeit mostly small, in 2015. However, Germany has announced the intention to increase spending in the medium term, SIPRI said.

Ukraine increased spending by over 20 per cent in 2014 and plans to more than double spending on the armed forces in 2015. Russia is also budgeting for increased spending in 2015, but this was planned before the Ukraine conflict. In fact, the original Russian military budget for 2015 has been reduced by 5 per cent due to decreased revenues from the fall in oil prices in late 2014. Still, the revised budget is a significant increase on spending in 2014. “The Ukraine crisis has fundamentally altered the security situation in Europe, but so far the impact on military spending is mostly apparent in countries bordering Russia. Elsewhere, austerity remains the main driver of downward spending trends”, said Dr Perlo-Freeman. Military expenditure in Asia and Oceania rose by 5 per cent in 2014, reaching $439 billion. The increase is mostly accounted for by a 9.7 per cent increase by China, which spent an estimated $216 billion. Among the other major spenders, Australia increased its spending by 6.7 per cent, with smaller increases by South Korea and India of 2.3 and 1.8 per cent, respectively, while Japan’s spending remained steady. Vietnam, which has had tensions with China over territorial disputes in the South China Sea, increased its spending by 9.6 per cent. Conversely, Indonesia, a fellow South China Sea-littoral state, broke its trend of several years of increases with a 10 per cent cut in 2014, according to SIPRI.

Meanwhile in Latin America, Brazil’s spending fell slightly due to economic difficulties, while crisis-hit Venezuela had the largest fall in the region of 34 per cent. Meanwhile, Mexico increased its spending by 11 per cent due to the ongoing war with drug cartels. SIPRI noted that the economic burden of military spending has increased in some regions, with the number of countries spending more than 4 per cent of their GDP on the military increasing from 15 to 20 in 2014. Only three of these countries have functioning democratic systems of government. Regarding the sharp fall in the price of oil in late 2014, SIPRI said it is unclear what impact this may have on the large rises in military spending that have taken place in many oil producing countries in the Middle East, parts of Africa and Asia, and Russia among others. While some producers, such as Saudi Arabia, have built up large financial reserves that will enable them to withstand lower prices for some time, others may be more affected, and indeed Russia has already cut its military spending plans for 2015 as a result.

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Ngwa Bertrand

23.Apr.2015

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(Reuters) - A Nigerian group called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday to investigate Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini for "hate speech" blamed for a wave of violence against immigrants in South Africa.

South Africa this week deployed soldiers to try to quell anti-immigrant unrest that has killed at least seven foreigners, after being criticized by China, Zimbabwe and Nigeria for failing to protect their citizens against armed mobs.

Zwelithini was accused of sparking the trouble with comments in which he urged South Africans to "pop our head lice".

"We must remove ticks and place them outside in the sun. We ask foreign nationals to pack their belongings and be sent back," he told supporters at a stadium in Durban a month ago.

Nigeria's Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project in a statement called on the ICC to "investigate allegations of hate speech by the Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini, which has resulted in killing, violence and discrimination against Nigerians and other African citizens."

Zwelithini has since defended his speech as having been taken out of context, saying attacks on immigrants are "vile".

Nigerians are furious, and the foreign ministry summoned South Africa's high commissioner this week..

"Nigeria ... spent a lot of money to fund the anti-apartheid struggle, ensuring that many South African students enjoyed scholarships in Nigerian universities," The Punch newspaper wrote in an editorial on Thursday.

"Yet, the relationship between South Africa and Nigeria since the end of apartheid ... has been that of contempt by the former toward the latter."

Isolated counter-protests involving a few dozen people have occurred in Nigeria, including one outside the South African embassy in Nigeria on Wednesday. South African firms such as mobile phone giant MTN and supermarket chain Shoprite have significant interests in Africa's biggest economy.

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

22.Apr.2015

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