The Commonwealth’s team of observers began their assessment of the electoral process in Zimbabwe, leading up to general elections on Jul. 30. Courtesy: The Commonwealth/CC By 2.0

By Busani Bafana
BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe, Jul 31 2018 (IPS)

Counting is underway today across Zimbabwe as the country voted in an historic election on Jul. 30, which many expect will bring political and economic transformation. It is a long-awaited change for many after autocratic leader, Robert Mugabe, was ousted in a soft coup in November 2017 after 37 years in power.

A post-Mugabe future has provided a kindling of hope among citizens that a new Zimbabwe, which can offer a better life for all is still possible.

The country has survived a myriad of crises that have traumatised its citizens, scared investors and left this resource-rich country isolated internationally. It was an election pregnant with expectations for change and transformation. Economic restoration, jobs, unity, peace and prosperity have been key election expectations. “A non-violent election is a big step but of course at the end of the day the real crisis is still here, the economic crisis." -- David Moore, researcher and political economist.

On election morning in the Bulawayo suburb of Famona, the lines where short and it took most people less then 10 minutes to cast their votes. But people were trickling in. And soon most of the 10,000 polling stations across the country had long queues.

No reports of violence have been reported so far. Though the Zimbabwe Republic Police told a local radio station yesterday that a few voters had been nabbed for sloganeering outside voting stations in direct violation of election rules.

Political analysts told IPS that while Zimbabwe has all the potential to turn around its fortunes, it is a tall ask that this election needs to deliver on. The voter turnout yesterday was high as more than 75 percent of the five million Zimbabweans registered to vote went to the polls to choose a president, members of parliament and local government councillors. There were 23 presidential candidates and more than 100 political parties with registered candidates to contest the 210 seats in the House Assembly.

The presidential contest – the most important of all – appears a largely two horse race pitting current Zimbabwean president, Emmerson Mngangwa (75) of the ruling Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) against president of the Movement for Democratic Alliance (MDC), Nelson Chamisa (40).

Mnangagwa is a lawyer and was Mugabe’s point man for many years, having served in government since independence where he held the portfolios of minister of state security and minister of justice. He was the vice president until he was fired by Mugabe in 2017.

Chamisa, also a lawyer and firebrand activist, is a founding member of the MDC under the late Morgan Tsvangirai. He succeeded Tsvangirai in March 2018 in a controversial manner that split the party and which saw Thokozani Khupe lead a breakaway faction. Khupe is one of four female candidates vying for the presidency.

Calling the presidential race a “male” race, pitting men from the privileged classes against each other, Professor Rudo Gaidzanwa, a lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and social commentator, told IPS this contest excluded even elite men who are perceived to be competent but “alien” because they do not exhibit the earthy, violent and killer characteristics that can win a party the election and appeal to the grassroots.

“Men of violence and force are admired and accepted because they are perceived as being able to fight for their constituents and followers. This is a legacy of Zimbabwe’s struggle for independence that extolled the virtues and legitimacy of violence as a means of achieving political ends. That legacy continues to haunt us,” said Gaidzanwa.

He said that Zimbabwe needed to transcend the values and politics of the past that focused “on colonists as the enemy and accept that even the elites amongst the former oppressed people are not angels.”

“They have shown us what they are capable of doing to their own people! If you look at Zimbabwe’s political and nationalist elites that pillaged diamonds, agricultural and land you will realise that in Africa, we are yet to embark on a class war that attempts to restore to the working people the wealth of their countries.

“The nationalists continue to use nationalism to justify their pillaging of national resources and they use nationalism to dupe the peasants and workers to think that it is ok for their clansmen, tribesmen to loot “on their behalf” when in fact the clansmen and some women get crumbs.”

A vote for change

Zimbabwe has a harsh history of violence, dating back to before this southern Africa nation became independent in 1980. The price of that violent past has been dear—deep divisions and polarisation along ethnic, and political lines, economic ruin and palpable corruption. These are some of the legacies blamed on Mugabe who led Zimbabwe for 37 years before a coup forced him into permanent retirement.

“Zimbabweans have to break with the violent past, because that will be a real symbol of something that is new no matter who wins,” David Moore, researcher and political economist at the University of Johannesburg, told IPS. “A non-violent election is a big step but of course at the end of the day the real crisis is still here, the economic crisis. What took Zimbabwe out of the 2008 crisis was the Americanisation of the crisis you cannot do that now. How long does it take for a dream of floods of billions of dollars in investment that remains to be seen?”

In 2008 Zimbabwe’s economy had been on the brink of collapse, experiencing hyperinflation of unprecedented levels. The country was forced to abandon its currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, and replaced it with the United States dollar, to stabilise the economy.

Moore said the 2018 elections were different for many reasons. There was no Mugabe—at least on the ballot paper—and neither was there his erstwhile political foe, Tsvangirai.

Former president Mugabe, in an election eve press conference at his home in the capital Harare, on Jul. 29, said he would not be voting for the Zanu PF because it still harboured his tormentors and the reason he was out of power.

“Neighbours have been fooled into believing this was not a coup d’état. Nonsense, it was a coup d’état.. ….I cannot vote for a party and those in power who have caused me to be in this situation.”

Legitimacy and credibility are at stake for political contenders

Chamisa is seeking legitimacy. He is a young contender for the highest political office in the country and has made his own blunders along the way. But he is seeking to prove he can lead and change the future for Zimbabwe. For Mnangagwa, who has been at the helm for seven months, the key is to legitimise his rule and to cement international relations. ‘Zimbabwe is open for business’, has been his campaign mantra.

“Usually processes like an election after a coup are not that successful because a coup has its characteristics of using force and not wanting to give up but when you look at the effort of the coup makers to legitimise this coup by having free and fair elections you have a certain amount of pressure from the donors and the investors,” Moore told IPS.

“It is actually been a pretty peaceful election given Zimbabwe’s history, the Gukurahundi, the 1980s election has a lot of violence and the British were debating whether to let it go. In 2008, there is intimidation but its minor. I think there is a real appetite and hope for serious change. There could be a turning point whoever wins if the elections are seen as credible and the people accept them as credible. It could perhaps be the most important election since 1980.”

A compromise of sorts like a semi-government of national unity could be in the office, Moore believes.

“If Mnangagwa wins, he could bring in a few people inside, people who can interface with capital and people with money. But it’s a volatile situation too and Zanu PF will have to work very hard to make it acceptable to the main opposition,” said Moore. “The MDC has really fired up a lot of people especially young people, who are really hoping for something and if they feel this election has not been credible one could possible expect some pretty tense situations. If it is a victory for the MDC, there will have to be a lot of bridge building and lot of horse trading as well.”

The jury is out still about the choice Zimbabweans made at the ballot this week, and whether that choice will take the country out of its conundrum and raise it to a new level.

The wife of former president Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast will serve jail time for inciting election violence in the 2011 post-election crisis.

Simone Gbagbo was found guilty this week of “disturbing the peace, forming and organising armed gangs and undermining state security,” according to her defence lawyer, Rodrigue Dadje. The sentence of 20 years was twice as long as prosecutors had sought.

Earlier, it appeared that she would receive a lesser sentence than she would have at the International Criminal Court (ICC) where her husband is now on trial for similar crimes. The Alassane Ouattara government refused to send her to The Hague, saying she would get a fair trial at home.

Mrs Gbagbo, 65, who may also be called by the ICC for suspected crimes against humanity, was tried along with 82 other allies of ex-President Laurent Gbagbo.

“I don’t know exactly what the concrete actions are that I am being accused of,” Mrs. Gbagbo said when the hearing began, insisting also that her husband Laurent Gbagbo was the legitimate winner of a 2010 presidential election that sparked five months of violence.

Scuffles broke out outside the courtroom with her opponents shouting “Murderers!” and her supporters shouting back “Liars!”

The court also ruled that her civil rights will be suspended for a period of 10 years. The former president’s son, Michel Gbagbo, was also convicted and sentenced to five years in jail.

Pascal Affi-N’Guessan, President of Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party, and one-time prime minister, received an 18-month suspended sentence. Last month his name was officially removed from the U.N.’s sanctions list despite his “obstruction of the peace and reconciliation process, and incitement to hatred and violence.”

Ivory Coast’s brief 2011 civil war was sparked by Laurent Gbagbo’s refusal to step down after a disputed election backed by the international community. Violence erupted between supporters of the former president and Alassane Ouattara, now president. Some 3,000 people died in the melee which reached up into rural areas on the north.

The ex-first lady said she had been insulted and humiliated by the prosecution, which, she said, had failed to prove her guilt.

Still, “I’m prepared to forgive. I forgive because, if we don’t forgive, this country will burn, she said.

Mr Gbagbo is currently awaiting trial at the ICC, accused of crimes against humanity for his suspected role in orchestrating the violence.

By Fernando J. Cardim de Carvalho
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 30 2014 (IPS)

The tight race between incumbent President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil’s Workers’ Party and her opponent, Aecio Neves from the centre-right Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) party, ended on Sunday, Oct. 26 with the re-election of Rousseff.

As happens in cases of re-election, the new government is, for all purposes, inaugurated immediately, because there is no need to wait until the legal date of January 1 to begin forming the new government and making necessary decisions.

Fernando Cardim de Carvalho

Neither is there a honeymoon in a re-election: voters expect work to begin and some results to show right away.

There is no doubt that Rousseff faces a difficult period ahead. The economy has ground to a halt during 2014 and the perspectives for 2015 are not much better. During practically the whole of the first semester, inflation remained near or above the ceiling of 6.5 percent that was set by the government itself, and the perspectives for next year are not good either.

Balance of payments positions are not comfortable, marked by very high deficits in current transactions and dependence on capital inflows. Social inclusion programmes that were very successful in the recent past may be near exhaustion and will need an upgrade.

Finally, a huge deal was made during the electoral campaign of corruption cases in the administration and in state enterprises, notably Petrobrás, the Brazilian oil company, raising issues that will have to be dealt with by the incoming administration.“There is no doubt that Rousseff faces a difficult period ahead. The economy has ground to a halt during 2014 and the perspectives for 2015 are not much better”

This does not address, of course, another set of difficulties related to the formation of governments in the Brazilian political system, requiring coalitions to be formed with political parties that look like being for rent rather than available for political debates around principles or programmes.

Let us be clear: the situation is uncomfortable on many fronts but is far from catastrophic, no matter how dramatic opposition speeches have tried to suggest.

Things are far better than in Western Europe, for example, where a second recession is very likely to happen in the near future in economies already devastated by the irrational adherence to austerity policies imposed by some governments led by Germany. But the problems the new government will have to face cannot be underestimated either.

Focusing only on the economic challenges, Rousseff’s first task is to try to escape the curse the Brazilian economy has been facing since it achieved control of inflation twenty years ago.

The Real Plan, named after the new currency that was introduced in 1994, was based on the access to cheap imports obtained by liberalising foreign trade and an overvalued currency. To maintain overvaluation it was necessary to attract foreign capital inflows, which required high interest rates (higher than that paid in other countries). High interest rates were also necessary to control domestic demand so that no significant pressure would be applied on domestic prices.

However, exchange rate overvaluation and high interest rates reduced the competitiveness of local producers, particularly in the manufacturing sector, which are very sensitive to exchange rate behaviour.

As a result, the Brazilian economy has lived on a see-saw in these twenty years, alternating periods where devalued exchange rates have allowed some industrial expansion at the cost of accelerating inflation with periods of controlled inflation at the cost of industrial stagnation.

Fernando H. Cardoso was imprisoned by this dilemma, as was Lula da Silva. So was Rousseff in her first term, when she, to her credit, realised that the country had to escape the trap but was unsuccessful in finding the way to do so.

With the international economy in a weak condition, and which is forecast to last, Rousseff has to find a way to promote growth without fuelling higher inflation and increasing external vulnerability, that is, without raising the volume of imports when exports are stagnating.

Bringing the inflation rate down is also needed. Societies tend to have long memories (see how the Germans still react to the hyperinflation they experienced a century ago). A large number of Brazilians still remember how unbearable life was when inflation was in the two-digit figures a month.

We are not anywhere close to repeating that experience, but it has made Brazilians alert and sensitive to any signs that government may be lax in fighting inflation. Besides, 6.5 percent a year for more than three years in a row does add to significant loss of purchasing power for fixed incomes and for those wages and salaries that are not compensated by more generous increases.

Even the greatest triumph of the Workers’ Party administration – social programmes – may be near exhaustion.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has announced that hunger is no longer an issue for Brazil. Of course, this is great news but it also means that social policies will now have to be designed with higher aims, to improve the quality of life for the populations that were upgraded by past programmes.

Jobs, education and health are much more difficult to address than extreme poverty, the reduction of which could be dealt with cash transfers. Even if no other important problem was on the agenda, this is a tall order for any political leader, but it is even more so for a re-elected president.

Brazilian citizens are impatient to see how Rousseff will meet the challenge. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

South Africa’s ‘born frees’, children born after the country’s 1994 elections, make their way to vote for the first time in the community of Mabheleni in Kwazulu-Natal. Credit: GCIS/CC by 2.0

By Rebekah Funk
CAPE TOWN, May 15 2014 (IPS)

On Tuesday international ratings agency, Moody’s, rated South Africa a credit positive, saying that the results of last week’s general election ensured a continuity of the country’s macroeconomic policy. But the success of the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) tells a different story of the country’s economic inequalities.

Often seen in a trademark red beret, the EFF’s founder Julius Malema has emerged as a left-wing revolutionary, promising the nationalisation of mines and banks, expropriation of land to black South Africans, job creation through protected industrial development, and free education, healthcare, housing and sanitation.“ Julius Malema tapped into a niche constituency of disgruntled ANC voters, young people struggling to get jobs and workers battling to make ends meet." -- political scientist, Professor Adam Habib

At only eight months old, the EFF were able to secure 25 seats in parliament, ranking third overall with about 1.2 million votes in the May 7 general election.

Malema is a former  African National Congress (ANC) Youth League leader who was expelled from its ranks in 2012 amid accusations of hate speech against white South Africans, causing division with the party, money laundering, fraud, racketeering and tax evasion.

South Africa’s government adopted the National Development Plan in 2012, which was meant to be a blueprint for economic development. According to a report by tralac, an organisation developing trade-related capacity, the plan “has become the cornerstone of the government’s policy in addressing objectives such as increasing employment, reducing poverty and inequality …”

However, an ongoing strike by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union members, has highlighted the income disparity on South Africa’s mines. The strike for higher wages has been characterised by violence, intimidation and killings. Tensions were visible at Lonmin’s North West platinum mine this week as miners wielding traditional weapons reportedly barricaded roads to prevent fellow strikes from returning to work. On Thursday, local media reported that many of the miners appeared to be apparent EFF supporters as they were dressed in T-shirts emblazoned with Malema’s face.

But Malema’s EFF is a platform that appeals to those falling through the cracks under the current system, says Professor Adam Habib, a political scientist from Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand.

“Malema tapped into a niche constituency of disgruntled ANC voters, young people struggling to get jobs and workers battling to make ends meet,” he tells IPS.

But Habib argues the EFF’s respectable showing was little more than a protest vote in many cases.

“Many citizens do not take Malema seriously. EFF voters do not vote for him because they think he’s a credible president; they vote for him to spite the ANC, and to send a message to the ruling political elite.”

The ruling ANC could face some serious trouble if the party fails to look forward — and inward.

Jacob Zuma’s ruling party has been marred by scandal and crippled by its failure to deliver on many of its promises.

It’s left many — the young, poor, marginalised and long-time ANC supporters — deeply dissatisfied and disillusioned. Many didn’t vote, or defected from the ANC to parties that are vocal in offering radical change.

Habib says if the ANC hopes to regain trust and mobilise the millions of young “born frees” who have grown up in an age of democracy, politicians will need to stress its commitment to the future rather than its part in overthrowing the old apartheid regime.

“We have to appeal to them and their interests,” Habib says of the untapped youth electorate.

“The vast majority of them are poor and marginalised. A party has to have a message that provides them with a future … a message of inclusion, of addressing inequality, and of providing people with a job and a decent living standard — but it must also be a message of modernity, of being citizens of the 21^st century,” he says.

“Until they do, they will not galvanise this generation.”

The community of Mabheleni in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, make their way to vote on May 7, 2014, after 20 years of democracy. Credit: GCIS/CC by 2.0

Banking on its apartheid struggle credentials and the legacy of former president Nelson Mandela, the ANC has been the preferred party of much of the electorate since the beginnings of democracy in 1994.

It clinched 62 percent of the vote but lost key ground in former ANC strongholds such as Gauteng province.

It’s time politicians looked long and hard at their current behaviour, argues Habib, since support for the ANC is at a historical low.

“The ANC’s four percent decline should be a wake-up call for the ruling elite, especially after the four percent decline in 2009. If this is not enough, the scare … should shake it from its complacency.”

This complacency was no more apparent than during the lead up to elections, when Zuma was quoted as saying only the “clever” middle classes cared about the scandals surrounding multi-million dollar “security upgrades” to his Nkandla retirement homestead.

Habib calls the 2014 elections a mere “curtain raiser for the real game” for what’s to come in five years. It’s a sentiment reflected by political commentators like Professor Steven Friedman, who acts as director of the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg.

“The ANC acknowledged that many of its supporters were unhappy with leaders who … seemed more interested in looking after themselves than voters,” Friedman says, adding the party has lost key support among unionists at the Congress of South African Trade Unions and its once-energetic youth league.

“This election did not challenge the ANC’s dominance at the polls. But if the result convinces its leaders that they no longer have to worry about the problems caused by politicians who put themselves before the country, it may open the way for far more competition in the next election than we have seen in this one,” Friedman tells IPS.

Nhlalala Rithatso, a third-year student from Limpopo at the University of Cape Town campus. Credit: Rebekah Funk/IPS.

By Rebekah Funk
CAPE TOWN , May 5 2014 (IPS)

South Africa’s May 7 elections mark the first time in democratic history that those born into Nelson Mandela’s post-apartheid ‘Rainbow Nation’ can vote.

While these so-called “born frees” make up about two million of the country’s 31.4 million eligible voters, dismal registration numbers have both politicians and analysts puzzled at the youths’ seeming lack of political interest.The 18 to 20-year-olds have no living memory of the country’s anti-apartheid struggle but face mammoth struggles of their own.

The 18 to 20-year-olds have no living memory of the country’s anti-apartheid struggle but face mammoth struggles of their own: crippling unemployment, institutional corruption, gangs, violent crime, HIV/Aids, income inequality and a lack of access to education.

Yet only a third (about 683,000) of eligible born-frees have registered to cast their ballot, according to South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission.

Experts say it’s unclear whether this lack of interest stems from apathy, a seemingly international trend among young people, or something else entirely.

“Youth likely see their political activities and social responsibilities in a fundamentally different way than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations did,” says University of the Witwatersrand vice-chancellor and principal Prof Adam Habib.

“Apathy…is a global trend. South Africa’s youth are no different than American, British, European or Indian youth. It would be unfair to call them apolitical as a whole.”

Young people do not often view voting or political activism as a duty, Habib adds, partly because they’re disappointed in the lack of progress made during the past 20 years of democracy.

“People feel dislocated. They feel politicians do not speak to their interests. They feel [voting] doesn’t make a difference.”

He calls South Africa’s current rates of youth unemployment and income inequality “precarious” and cautions that politicians need to deal with these issues if they hope to woo a seemingly apathetic youth vote.

With more than 40 percent of South Africa’s total population under the age of 20, Habib says it’s crucial for political parties to re-evaluate their platforms and address the needs of young people.

Born-frees, he notes, will make up about a third of voters when the next general election is due in 2019.

“[The Born Frees’] impact is going to be fundamentally changing the way society thinks, the way society behaves, the way society reflects its challenges, the way society protests against its atrocities,” Habib says.

“Do you know what they’re thinking? Do you know what they want? Do you know if the system you’re putting forward can address their concerns?”

He notes it will take more than text messages, Youtube ads and social media campaigns to reach young voters — particularly when a recent survey by independent researchers at FutureFact revealed 64 percent of respondents had “little or no interest” in politics (based on a survey of 262 born-frees from urban and rural areas).

Twenty-year-old Xolisa Ngcwabe is one of the born-frees who won’t be voting come Wednesday.

Currently completing his Grade 12 education at a college in Cape Town, Ngcwabe says the current political system has failed young people.

“I don’t really care about voting because I don’t think my vote makes a difference,” he says.

“The government has to deliver and it hasn’t been doing that,” Ngcwabe says of the ANC’s failure to provide basic necessities like running water, school textbooks and functioning toilets to impoverished informal settlements and townships.

It seems Ngcwabe is one of many growing disillusioned with President Jacob Zuma and the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

FutureFact statistics show that about 70 percent of respondents felt the ANC was moving away from the democratic principles it fought so hard to implement, while 75 percent were pessimistic about South Africa’s future due to the government’s lack of accountability and its ability to implement policy decisions.

Struggle credentials — often stressed among political parties vying for support — hold little pull for born-free voters, according to political expert Prof Susan Booysen.

“Focus group conversations amongst the youth — and particularly the black-African youth — rarely raised the liberation struggle and a need to reward the ANC for the freedom gained,” writes Booysen in a report entitled ‘Twenty years of South African democracy: Citizen views of human rights, governance and the political system’.

Political parties should take note, she says: born-frees like 20-year-old Alexandra Goldberg aren’t interested in the past.

“I feel like the government generally doesn’t know what it’s doing and blaming apartheid is a defence mechanism,” the University of Cape Town student says.

“It’s very frustrating. Let’s move on from it and actually have a goal here.”

It’s this frustration that’s pushed Goldberg to the polls, along with some advice from her father.

“My dad made a good point — that if you don’t vote then you can’t complain. With the history of South Africa and voting, it seems like a bit of a slap in the face if you don’t vote. There was so much fighting for it.”

Nineteen-year-old Victor Hlatshwayo from Vereeniging, Gauteng agrees.

“I want a choice. I heard not voting is a vote for the ANC. I’m checking out all the parties, seeing what they’re saying and what they’re actually doing.”

A widely circulated picture on Afghan social media networks shows women voters lining up under heavy rain outside a polling station in Kabul. The picture was circulated with the caption: ‘Afghan women: What else to prove?’

By Abdullah Omeed
KABUL, May 2 2014 (IPS)

About a third of the voters in the Afghanistan presidential election were women. That still gives Afghan women a say in running the country, as never before.

The voting Apr. 5 saw a high turnout with seven million people, 60 percent of the voters, casting their vote. Afghan civil society organisations and international bodies such as the United Nations hailed the success – even if there were widespread irregularities.Saima remembers the tears that dropped on her blue veil when she cast her vote.

Afghans are now waiting to witness the first-ever peaceful power transition in the history of their country, from incumbent President Hamid Karzai who has been at the helm since late 2001.

Women defied significant security threats, strict traditions and inclement weather by going to polling stations in droves across the country. Militant groups had threatened to target voters and the election process. Women would be particularly vulnerable, given the expectations of extremists that they should stay at home.

In a well-planned attack, four election observers were killed in the run-up to the elections after militants breached security measures at a five-star hotel in the heart of Kabul, only metres away from the presidential palace. The headquarters of the Afghanistan Independent Election Commission (AIEC) in Kabul also came under attack.

Saima, 19, who like some Afghans goes with one name, cast the first vote of her life. She told IPS that she sneaked out of her home in the volatile eastern province Khost with her two cousins to vote.

The province borders the restive tribal areas of Pakistan, and has witnessed some of the most brazen militant attacks. “I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I have to vote on behalf of every Afghan woman who cannot vote for whatever reason,” Saima said.

Afghan women have been increasingly anxious about the possibility that the few rights and little recognition they have achieved over the past 13 years could be threatened by the government’s peace talks with the Taliban, who are known for their strict interpretation of Islam and their anti-women policies.

Saima said that she had voted in a country where the prevailing mentality condemns a woman “to be either at home or in the grave.”

That culture leads many women to commit suicide, she said. “Voting became a slogan among young women who wanted to challenge old customs that believe women are weak and should be protected by men.”

Saima remembers the tears that dropped on her blue veil when she cast her vote.

Laal Bibi, 57, from Mandozay village in Khost province, said many women voted in the hope of electing a president who would consider women “human beings”.

Laal Bibi is a mother of five daughters. Because she did not give birth to a son, her husband who is a taxi driver married for a second time. By religious tradition a man can marry up to four women to have a son.

Laal Bibi covered her hands with henna after going to vote secretly, to cover an ink spot – applied on the fingers of everyone who votes.

“I want a better life for my daughters and their children,” she said. “By casting my vote I stood against my husband and the society that considers women weak and incapable of doing anything. I am proud that I took part in the elections.”

No woman ran for president, but hundreds stood in the provincial council elections held simultaneously with the presidential elections.

Currently, 27.6 percent of Afghan members of parliament are women, compared to 11.4 percent women in both houses of parliament in India, and 18.5 percent in the Pakistan legislature.

The northern provinces of Afghanistan are relatively calm but rape and kidnappings are frequent.

Adila lives in the northern province of Baghlan. She has never been to school, and was married off at a very young age. Now she wants a divorce but her family thinks it would bring disgrace to them. “I voted to elect a wise president, a person who would put an end to forced marriages,” she says. Adila and several other women from her village voted despite security threats.

Rahima, 29, who teaches in a private high school in Kabul said, “I thought my one vote would make a difference. I accepted all the threats because I cannot tolerate the return of the Taliban.”

Not everyone could be so defiant. Parween, 32, said she had no option but to follow her husband’s orders. “Afghan women have no individual presence in this society, they are known as daughters of someone, sisters of someone and wives of someone, therefore they must do what the male members of their family expect them to do.”

And very large numbers of women did not vote. “None of the women in the family were allowed to vote because my father considers elections un-Islamic,” said Fatima from Kabul, who had just turned voting age.

But candidates have been promising more attention to women’s rights. “Unfortunately, the issue of violence against women did not get much attention in this government and we will make sure that serious steps should be taken to tackle the increasing violence against women,” candidate Abdullah Abdullah said in a debate on the local Tolo television channel.

Candidate Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai said in the course of the debate: “My government will make sure that we fully implement what is enshrined in our constitution when it comes to the freedom of speech and women’s rights. We cannot have a democratic society if we do not have full and equal participation of women in all sectors. The laws that are made to protect women against all sorts of violence and discrimination will be fully implemented.”

A lot of women are waiting for action in line with such promises.

The final results are scheduled to be announced May 14. Preliminary results indicate that none of the candidates got more than 50 percent of the vote. A runoff is expected between the two frontrunners, Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.

Abdullah was foreign minister and Ghani finance minster in President Hamid Karzai’s government earlier. The anticipated runoff will be held May 28.

A policeman on guard at the entrance of the Turkmen district in Tuz Khormato. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Karlos Zurutuza
TUZ KHORMATO, Iraq, Apr 22 2014 (IPS)

“I don’t dare tell you who the murderers are but their target is just us, Turkmens,” says Ahmed Abdulla Muhtaroglu, sitting by the portrait of his brother who was killed last year.

IPS met Muhtaroglu in Tuz Khormato, a predominantly Turkmen district 170 km north of Baghdad. Iraqi Turkmens are descendants of waves of Turkic migration to the ancient Mesopotamia region where Iraq now lies."We have been forced to build our own prison for ourselves as a mean to survive." -- Hanna Muhamed, a candidate for the election

The population of Turkmens in Iraq, who include both Shia and Sunni Muslims, is estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 by international sources, and 2.5 to three million by local Turkmens.

“There is no worse place in the world for Turkmens than Tuz,” says Muhtaroglu, local leader of the Turkmen Front, their main political party. “We have turned into victims of a plot to wipe us out. Some 500 Turkmen families left the district only last year.”

Population displacements are common in this country torn by sectarian violence. But displacement has taken on a new dimension in this town of 60,000.

According to the Iraq Body Count database, Tuz witnessed the latest attack Apr. 8, when four residents were killed by a car bomb. There have been more brutal attacks; in January last year, 42 members of the community were killed in a suicide attack during a funeral.

Former Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein took Tuz Khormato away from Kirkuk, 230 km north of Baghdad, in 1976, and attached it to Salahadin province as part of a process to change the demographics of oil-rich Kirkuk in favour of Arabs. Today, both Kirkuk and Tuz are among “disputed territories” whose status is to be defined in a referendum – which is being postponed since 2007.

The “disputed territories” are one of the main lines of fracture in Iraq. Both Arabs and Kurds, the government in Baghdad and the Kurdish government in Erbil, are vying to take control of these territories. Turkmens have been caught in the quagmire.

Hanna Muhamed, 40, a candidate for the election to the 328-seat parliament in Iraq due Apr. 30, tells IPS that an independent region for Turkmens would be the best solution. She says she is contesting from Tuz because “it may be easier for a woman to get elected.” She is counting on the fact that it is still rare for a woman to contest in Iraq.

“We have been forced to build our own prison for ourselves as a mean to survive,” she says while campaigning on the outskirts of the city.

Tuz is easy to get to – just look for the concrete walls erected opposite the central bazaar area.

The makeshift fortress is accessible only through checkpoints. Local policeman Samir – he didn’t want his full name disclosed – posted at one such checkpoint tells IPS that the community started building it two years ago to avoid attacks. But it’s still not protection enough.

A few metres away, Mohamed Hamid points to the spot where he lost his daughter in September last year. Ten-year-old Hanna Hamid was buried under the wall that surrounds the Hamids’ house.

The bomb was meant to destroy the opposite building belonging to a Turkmen family. Two of the members of this family were wounded in the bomb attack.

And, there are more everyday problems. The streets here are not paved, so it’s not difficult for Ahmed, a local resident, to dig a trench. Once he’s done he will lay a tube to channel the putrid waters outside the wall, as drainage problems add to the more severe security ones. He wants to prevent his two nephews from getting sick from the stench when they play outside. They are the sons of his brother killed in an explosion six months ago.

“We offered Ahmed to his widow to take of her and the kids but she didn’t accept,” says Ahmed’s mother Zohaila, still in mourning clothes. “I can hardly support them with the 150,000 dinars a month [about 90 euros] I get for searching women at the entrance to the mosque.”

Deep in the heart of the walled area, Shia icons are ubiquitous around the Imam Ahmed mosque – from the portraits of Imam Ali, a descendant of prophet Muhammad according to the Shias, to those of Moqtada al-Sadr, a political and religious Shia leader and a key player in post-Saddam Iraq. By the side of these portraits stands a billboard with names and pictures of those killed in the several attacks in Tuz.

“Terrorists have no religion or race,” says local policeman Massoud. That’s something local residents seem to make a point of saying.

In its May 2013 report, the Institute for International Law and Human Rights says Iraqi Turkmen have been “intimidated by Kurdish and central government authorities for their presence in the disputed territories.”

The organisation based in Baghdad, Washington and Brussels says Turkmen have been targeted on religious grounds “by both Shia and Sunni extrajudicial militant groups,” and that community women are “particularly vulnerable to violence.”

“We are sandwiched between Arabs and Kurds: reaching an agreement with one implies confronting the other,” Arsad Salihi, one of seven Turkmen MPs, tells IPS from his home in Kirkuk.

The Turkmen senior leader says he would not rule out eventual integration with the Kurdish Autonomous Region. But, he says, Kurds must cease their “continuous and arbitrary harassment” of his community.

Khalid Schwani, Kurdish MP in Baghdad for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a leading party headed by President Jalal Talabani, strongly refutes such allegations. He says the government in Baghdad has been deliberately delaying a settlement on the areas in dispute, and that his party will come to “direct agreements” with both Arabs and Turkmens. Both Tuz and Kirkuk are among the disputed territories.

“Tuz would come back to Kirkuk (from Salahadin province) and in return Salahadin could keep control over Hawija –a predominantly Arab majority city southwest of Kirkuk.”

Whatever the future may bring, bricklayer Ihmat Altun says he will not be there to see it. “I’m moving to Istanbul with my family. I won’t wait until we get killed in this slaughterhouse,” he says as the guard at the checkpoint lifts the barrier for him.

A protest against a proposed nuclear plant in the Indian state Gujarat. Women are asking for stronger representation in Parliament to voice their views. Credit: Krishnakant/IPS.

By Manipadma Jena
NEW DELHI, Apr 21 2014 (IPS)

“Men just do not want to give up their seats, it’s as simple as that,” says 67-year-old candidate in the Indian election Subhhasini Ali, voicing a gloomy view across women’s groups in India.

Ali, a two-time member of Parliament and key functionary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), an arm of the Communist Party of India-Marxists (CPI-M), is contesting from Barrackpore, a constituency in the eastern Indian state West Bengal.“This election, we get the feeling that we have lost. Women are getting more and more sidelined." -- Jyotsna Chatterji, the Joint Women’s Programme

She is among a few women contesting. Political parties, even those vociferously supporting reservation for women in Parliament, have failed to put up on average even one woman for every 10 males contesting India’s 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.

Women candidates are only seven percent among 3,355 candidates in the first five phases of the nine-stage election, says the Delhi-based public interest organisation, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), that is campaigning for greater transparency and more inclusive representation in Indian elections.

Women activists looking at state-wise trends expect no improvement by way of inclusion of women in the final phases of the election.

Women constitute 388 million, or 47.6 percent of the 814.5 million voters eligible to vote in the election running from Apr. 7 to May 12.

“When our presence is not considered important in the Parliament, when decisions about our future are taken without consulting us, why should we cast our votes to elect another group of politicians who do not believe in the cause of women empowerment in this country,” says Ranjana Kumari from the Delhi-based Centre for Social Research.

“This election, we get the feeling that we have lost. Women are getting more and more sidelined,” Jyotsna Chatterji from the non-profit Joint Women’s Programme (JWP) tells IPS.

In the 15^th general election in 2009, 556 women out of 8,070 contestants from 363 political parties  were given tickets to contest, according to data from the Election Commission. That was just 6.9 percent of the candidates, making representation in this election hardly better. Fifty-nine women – 10.9 percent – won. This was the highest number of women contestants and winners since 1957.

A 1996 Women Reservation Bill (WRB) proposing reservation of a third of the seats to women in the lower house of Parliament and in state legislatures has been stymied by various political parties for more than 18 years now. Women groups pushing for greater representation, for whom the failure to pass the WRB has remained a political raw nerve since, blame this on the entrenched patriarchal mindset of male politicians.

If enacted, 180 berths in the Lok Sabha would be reserved for women. Political parties opposing the WRB say a quota within the quota should be given to women from backward communities. Dalits and tribal communities already have 120 seats reserved in the Lok Sabha. In 2009, 17 women got elected under this quota.

“Many political parties had agreed to the WRB’s stipulation about voluntarily giving 33 percent tickets to women members, legal quota aside,” says Chatterji, who spearheaded the reservation movement in the late1990s with a group of other activists. Political parties have fallen far short of this.

Given women’s visibly increased participation in professional spheres, public debates, and also increased voting in elections, women groups say they had hoped political parties would walk the gender talk and give at least 15 to 20 percent tickets to women, recognising the major socio-political changes under way.

“Nothing is going to change in women’s representation unless the [Women’s Reservation] Bill is passed,” says Ali.

The three main political parties – the ruling Congress party, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) widely expected to form the new government, and the few months old Aam Aadmi Party (Common Man’s Party) have all promised in their manifestos to pass the Women’s Reservation Bill if voted to power.

“Unless certain attitudes are overcome it is useless to expect individual parties to put up more women candidates, and moreover where no party is obliged to do it,” Malini Bhattacharya, 70, twice member of Parliament and former member of the National Commission for Women, tells IPS.

Ruth Manorama, 62, Dalit women’s rights activist, who heads the National Alliance of Women, and is contesting from the Bangalore South constituency on a Janata Dal (Secular) party ticket, is more optimistic. “To give a bigger role to women in political decision making, we need to go step by step,” Manorama tells IPS.

Others argue for bolder change. “Political party structures and the election process itself need drastic change if women are to participate in large numbers,” says Tapashi Praharaj of AIDWA. “Women’s winning ability is consistently under question, without however attempting to build them up.”

“The huge funds required to fight an election today is another obstacle for women to contest elections,” says Chatterji. The government raised spending limits for a candidate in this election to seven million rupees (116,000 dollars).

Chatterji says while male leaders argue they cannot find suitable women candidates, there are many eligible women who have not caught the eye of political parties.

More than two million women have served in decision-making bodies in India’s local governments, or panchayat raj, under the 33 percent seat reservation since 1993. In some states that quota has been raised to 50 percent. Urban local bodies too have reserved seats for women. These quotas have created a significant mass of grassroots women leaders.

India, the world’s largest democracy, has a mere 11.4 percent women in both houses of Parliament, compared to the world average of 21.8 percent. Afghanistan has 27.6 percent women in Parliament and Pakistan 18.5 percent, according to 2014 data from the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

Young voters in Jalalabad show off the ink on their fingers as a mark that they voted. Credit: Giuliano Battiston/IPS.

By Giuliano Battiston
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Apr 17 2014 (IPS)

The Afghanistan presidential election is turning out to be a tale of two narratives. The more positive and democratic one could be winning the day.

By one narrative, Afghans voted in numbers and with fairness as never before. The second is the older and possibly weakening one of corruption and threats.

For the moment, many Afghans are proud just that they voted, and that going by official figures, they did so in large numbers. Seven million voted in the presidential elections, a big jump from the 2009 turnout.“When the final results will be announced, there might be some complaints, nothing more."

The turnout was 58 percent of an estimated 12 million eligible voters, marking a 20 percent increase over the 5.6 million votes in the election in 2009.

“We’ve sent a clear message with our vote: Afghan people want radical change, it has to be positive, and it’s going to be made by ourselves,” professor of international criminal law Wahidullah Amiri tells IPS.

Amiri teaches at Nangarhar University. Founded in 1963, this is the second largest university in the country, with around 8,000 students, including 1,200 female students, enrolled in 13 faculties. The campus is spread over 160 hectares in Daroonta, a village 10 km from Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan.

The enthusiasm here over the polling, which went far better than expected, is evident: “The turnout was beyond any expectations,” Prof. Abdul Nabi Basirat, who heads the department of international relations at the political science facultym tells IPS. “The international community did not expect that, we Afghans did not expect it, and even I did not.

“It’s a landmark, showing that Afghans are taking charge of their own future, selecting the successor to [outgoing president Hamid] Karzai. We bravely confronted the Taliban threats without the help of NATO or other external players.”

The Afghan government deployed more than 350,000 soldiers and policemen to protect the vote, with the International Security Assistance Force playing only a marginal role, much smaller than in 2009. The Taliban did not manage to carry out a single large-scale assault in any major city.

“Substantially, the Taliban failed to disrupt the election process,” the dean of the political science faculty at Nangarhar University, Naqibullah Saqeb, tells IPS. “Their failure is a success for the Afghan government. Many were saying it would have been challenging, if not impossible, for the government to run the elections, due to its weakness and due to Taliban strength. We have done it.”

The Taliban movement – deeply divided over this year’s election – claimed to have carried out “nearly 1088 attacks” nationwide at “polling centres and the vehicles and convoys carrying votes, election material and ballot boxes.”

The Afghan interior minister announced the ministry had counted 690 security incidents. The figures do not match, but they still indicate that the Taliban are far from being a spent force, depicting the emergence of two different electoral narratives.

One narrative took place in Afghanistan’s cities and urban areas, which enjoy relative security and a higher turnout, and the other in the insecure rural areas, especially in the volatile south-east of the country, with very different patterns of voter participation.

Koshal Jawad belongs to one of the areas contested between the government and the Taliban. “I wanted to vote, but I couldn’t,” Jawad, a student of political science planning to present his final dissertation in two months, tells IPS.

“I live in Haska Mena [also called Dih Bala] district, bordering Pakistan. In the past 12 months it has become unsafe. We now have hundreds of Taliban there, mainly Pakistani people. They did not allow us to vote: they stopped the cars, and checked the fingers, to see if anyone had a finger dipped in ink, which shows you’d voted.”

“Nobody really knows how many voters there are, how many of them hold a voter card, or how many of the ballots cast will turn out to have really been linked to voters,” writes Martine Van Bijlert, co-director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network.

In the more insecure areas, elections were neither transparent nor accountable, says Van Bijlert. “Alongside a robust, genuine and determined vote, there are indications of significant irregularities: old patterns of intimidation, ballot-stuffing, and ‘ghost polling stations’ in remote and insecure areas.”

The Independent Election Commission (IEC) is verifying all the ballot boxes received from about 6,400 polling centres and 20,000 polling stations across 34 provinces. The Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) has registered more than 3,000 complaints, and the independent Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan has registered 10,000 cases of alleged irregularities.

“Fraud is still part of the electoral process, this is clear,” says Amiri. “But to such a limited extent in comparison to 2009 that it will not affect the overall legitimacy of the process to Afghan eyes.”

Preliminary results are expected Apr. 24, with the final result due on May 14, but many believe no candidate will win more than 50 percent of the vote. That could lead to a runoff between the two leading candidates, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an academic and former World Bank official and former minister of finance, and Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister and a prominent leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

The first results covering 10 percent of the overall vote give Abdullah Abdullah 41.9 percent and Ashraf Ghani 37.6 percent.

Meanwhile, campaign officials have been carrying out their own counts, claiming victory for their candidates.

“It’s part of the game. Politics is competition, where one player wins and the other loses. Usually losers are not eager to admit they are losers, so everyone claims to be the winner,” Muhtarama Amin, a member of the Nangarhar provincial council, tells IPS.

“When the final results will be announced, there might be some complaints, nothing more,” she says. “We are a maturing political system: any candidate knows that massive fraud would undermine his legitimacy, leading soon to the collapse of his government.”

A Bharatiya Janata Party rally in Bhubaneswar. Much campaigning, particularly among the youth, is increasingly over the internet. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS.

By Manipadma Jena
BHUBANESWAR, India, Apr 6 2014 (IPS)

As India votes in its 16^th general election Apr. 7-May 12, the youth, comprising nearly half the country’s 814 million voters, could prove decisive. And the internet is being used increasingly to target youth in the world’s largest democratic exercise.

India has 383 million voters in the 18-35 age group. Underscoring their importance, pollsters have named this huge segment ‘Youngistan’, or the nation of the youth.

Not only have election promises been tailored to woo this segment, but for the first time campaign engagement with voters is taking the internet route, especially over social media platforms."Politicians are listening as well as responding to young voters through social media."

“There’s more participation and what’s more, politicians are listening as well as responding to young voters through social media,” Sunil Abraham of the Bangalore-based non-profit Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) told IPS.

Mobile phone texting, which was used to reach out to voters in the last election in 2009, has made way for a tech-basket of mobile phones, e-mail campaigns, know-your-leader and political party websites, messages via smart phones, interactive Facebook and Twitter accounts, Google hangouts and YouTube videos.

Social media practitioners say at least 10 percent of the 664 million dollars projected to be spent on advertisements and publicity by political parties is likely to go to social media companies.

India’s internet user base has been estimated at 205 million, Facebook users number 65 million, Google+ 36 million, and Twitter 16 million.

In a document titled ‘Social Media and Law Enforcement’, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) projects user strength galloping to 243 million by June 2014, of which 192 million would be active users, 56 million of them rural. Active users are categorised as those who use the internet at least once a month.

Fifty to sixty percent of current internet users are in the 18-35 age group, according to Abraham. Politicians are tapping into this huge and growing youth voter base not only to boost their reach but also to monitor engagement and run more effective campaigns.

“Politicians contract us to find out what ‘influencers’ on Twitter are saying about them, and we segregate the positive and negative tweets for a sentiment analysis,” Jwalant Patel, 30-year-old co-founder of social media analytics startup Meruki Analytics and Reporting Services told IPS. ‘Influencers’ are those with at least 10,000 Twitter followers, Patel said.

Of the 70,000 ‘influencers’ that the tech company has identified for its 11 clients within weeks of starting operations, 90 percent are in the 18-40 age group.

Patel claims that 160 of the 543 constituencies that go to the polls will be ‘social media constituencies’ where results will be impacted by politicians’ internet engagement.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, 63, has a Twitter following of 3.66 million, while Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal, 45, whose anti-corruption plank is widely believed to have got Indian youth interested in politics, has 1.58 million. The Congress party’s Rahul Gandhi, 43, does not have an official Twitter account.

Sustained youth participation in protests in the Delhi rape case of December 2012 and in favour of the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill are other major catalysts in the politically proactive approach of youth in these elections, say analysts.

The dynamics of electioneering has changed in India, with its 1.2 billion people.

Abraham agrees that the internet in general and social media in particular have had a democratising effect on the voter-voted relationship, but he warns that once the competition gets tougher, political leaders may resort to ‘astro-turf’ battles where they manipulate e-campaigns, as opposed to the more transparent, physical ‘grass turf’ campaigns.

“How can you bet that all the Facebook ‘likes’ are from genuine supporters?” said Abraham.

Many of the youth seem clear on issues of concern to them.

“Most leading parties are promising jobs for graduates, but when a party that has been in power for several years says ‘we will give jobs’, we ask what were you doing all these years? If a new party makes the same promise, give them a chance, we say,” 20-year-old student Siddhant Sadangi told IPS in Bhubaneswar, capital of Odisha state in eastern India.

According to India’s National Sample Survey, one in four graduates is unemployed. The figures are worse for women.

More and more village men are preferring higher education to agricultural work, and this means there will be more demand for higher quality jobs in the near future.

In conflict-hit states, cynicism is apparent among the youth.

Manipur Talks, a vibrant internet forum that connects the widespread diaspora of northeast India’s Manipur state, lampoons pre-election promises. The site calls the election ‘Magic Wand Expo 2014 – the biggest expo for wiz-crafts in the world’ – a spoof on Harry Potter.

Northeastern communities have been protesting discrimination against them in the rest of India. “Politicians have lost credibility here and what’s more, nothing is done to help the Manipur youth diaspora vote,” Manipur-based social activist Chitra Ahanthem told IPS.

Campaigns by India’s Election Commission to enlist young voters through online registration have succeeded in a nationally high 70 percent turnout expectation, according to Election Commissioner Harishankar Brahma. But many of the 30 percent who will not exercise their franchise will be the young from troubled states.

“The youth of Jammu and Kashmir are isolated, alienated, angry,” Bashir Ahmad Dabla, heading the University of Kashmir’s sociology and social work department told IPS from Srinagar.

“Here, unlike elsewhere, the need for political stability takes precedence over economic issues,” said Dabla. “Jobs, education, water, electricity, roads are important but not the priority in Kashmir.”

The last elections in Kashmir saw only 31 percent voting. Around 50 percent of voters in Kashmir are in the 18-35 age group.

Saba Firdous, a 25-year-old graduate in the state, is not voting this time, and it’s not because of a poll boycott campaign by Kashmiri separatists.

“The major issues for youth here are repealing the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in Kashmir valley, stopping civilian harassment and killings, resolving the unending conflict,” Firdous told IPS. “Mainstream political parties who go to Parliament will do nothing about these issues, we know.”

Young girls prepare to sing a song in support of presidential candidate Gul Agha Sherzai in Kunduz city in North Afghanistan. Credit: Giuliano Battiston/IPS.

By Giuliano Battiston
KABUL, Apr 2 2014 (IPS)

Ethnicities will come to the fore in the Afghan elections due Saturday this week, even though it appears that the young are beginning to break away from such loyalties.

On Apr. 5, around 12 million voters will have the chance to elect a new president to replace President Hamid Karzai, constitutionally barred from a third mandate."What is more important is that the people – particularly the civil society – have pushed the candidates to present articulated platforms.” -- Aziz Rafiee, director of the Afghan Civil Society Forum Organisation

Officially opened on Feb. 2, the race remains open and it’s still hard to predict who will get the chair at the Arg, the presidential palace in Kabul where Karzai has been since 2001 – just after the overthrow of the Taliban regime.

The political and economic power Karzai has accumulated is likely to be inherited by his replacement – whatever the ethnicity.

Pashtuns form the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, about 40 to 60 percent, followed by Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks. Precise numbers are disputed, and ethnicities often overlap.

There are three in the lead among the eight candidates: Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, an academic and former World Bank official and former minister of finance; Abdullah Abdullah, former foreign minister and a prominent leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and Karzai’s main rival in the disputed 2009 elections; and Zalmai Rassoul, national security adviser to President Karzai for eight years and foreign minister 2010-2013. He is seen as the contender backed by the outgoing president.

Many promises are being made – reconstructing the fragile economy, relaunching the peace process with armed opposition groups, and bringing security to the war-torn country – but the contenders seem to focus above all on ethnicity.

“The candidates are relying on ethnic, linguistic, or religious affiliation, because they do not have any political source of legitimacy,” Hamidullah Zazai, managing director of Mediothek Afghanistan, an organisation promoting pluralism in the media, tells IPS.

“One contender says ‘I’m the Tajik representative, you Tajik people should vote for me’, another says ‘I’m the Pashtun representative, you Pashtun people should vote for me’. The ethnic appeal occludes what is more important: programmes, ideas, plans for our future, which are still uncertain.”

Aziz Rafiee, director of the Afghan Civil Society Forum Organisation, tells IPS “there are five important factors in the voting process: ethnicity, regional location, language, branch of religion and political affiliation. Amongst these five dividing and sometimes overlapping lines, ethnicity is still considered the most important by many voters.”

To ensure broader constituencies, candidates have drawn the political chessboard also along ethnic lines: Zalmai Rassoul, considered a weak candidate without the support of Karzai’s pervasive power system, has chosen as his running mate the Tajik Ahmad Zia Massoud, brother of Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was the iconic commander of the Northern Alliance before he was killed in 2001. For second vice-president he has proposed Habiba Sarabi, a Hazara, former governor of Bamiyan province.

Rassoul does not speak Pashtu fluently and is not regarded by many Afghans as a “real Pashtun”. He enthusiastically announced the support of both Qayum Karzai, President Karzai’s elder brother (with a huge constituency in Pashtun-dominated south Afghanistan), and Nader Naeem, son of Mohammed Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan from 1933 until 1973.

Abdullah is a mixed Tajik and Pashtun, but he is seen as a Tajik due to his prominent role within the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance. “By choosing for vice-president the Pashtun Mohammad Khan, he made an interesting choice,” Fabrizio Foschini, researcher with the Afghanistan Analysts Network, tells IPS. “Mohammad Khan is a member of the political branch of the Hezb-e-Islami party, and thanks to him Abdullah can compensate his weakness in the south-south east of the country.”

However, according to Foschini, Abdullah’s real strength is his second vice-presidential candidate, Mohammed Mohaqeq, a Hazara who could secure a large number of votes in the central areas.

Some believe that Abdullah is losing ground while Ahmadzai is gaining. “Ghani [Ahmadzai] had a stroke of genius selecting for vice-president General [Abdul Rashid] Dostum,” says Foschini. “While the Hazara and Tajik vote is highly fragmented, the Uzbek vote will go almost completely to Dostum. Prior to Ghani’s choice, nobody would ever have guessed that an Uzbek might aspire to the second chair.”

To be accepted as running mate, the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum – a powerful northern warlord in the 1990s and founder of the Jombesh party, National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan – “was asked by Ghani to apologise for his past crimes, and this is something revolutionary,” Mir Ahmad Joyenda, former parliamentarian and now deputy director of the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit, an NGO based in Kabul, tells IPS.

Joyenda say ethnicities still play a role in the Afghan political landscape but believes that things are changing. “In the past 12 years we have seen changes, mostly in the main cities. There are people – especially the young – who are interested in voting for a candidate offering effective programmes.”

Rafiee of the Afghan Civil Society Forum Organisation agrees. “We can say that Afghans are acting more politically compared to the 2005 and 2009 elections. People will not vote 100 percent along ethnic lines. What is more important is that the people – particularly the civil society – have pushed the candidates to present articulated platforms.”

The next Afghan president will be elected mostly on the ethnic balance of the vote “but ethnic/religious walls are going to be slowly demolished,” says Zazai of Mediothek Afghanistan.

Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi remains jailed as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) starts a landmark case charging Myanmar with committing genocide against its Rohingya. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS.

By Amantha Perera
YANGON, Mar 31 2014 (IPS)

For over a quarter of a century Uhla Min has lived under the spell of “The Lady”, the popular nickname for Nobel Peace Laureate Aung Sung Suu Kyi.

His involvement with Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party dates back to the days when Suu Kyi launched a campaign in the late eighties to rid Myanmar of military rule.

Min, now 75, has vivid memories of listening to Suu Kyi speak at the famed Shwedagon Pagoda in capital Yangon, and of running from soldiers chasing down street protestors. He lost his government job because of his support for the NLD.She has now had to plunge into the world of realpolitik.

Min was jailed in July 1989 when Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest. The next 25 years their lives took parallel paths. Suu Kyi would be confined to her house in Yangon under house arrest, Min would be in and out of jail. He was tortured, like many other NLD activists.

“Jail was an endless horror, we were beaten till we fainted,” Min, now chairman of the organising committee at the NLD headquarters in Yangon tells IPS.

Like many others in jail facing a bleak future, Min had one hope. “We all new that The Lady was with us, she was like that small beacon of hope in that very dark place we found ourselves in.”

The allure of The Lady has not diminished for him, and for many others. Earlier this month, Zaw Linn Oo, programme director for the Sopyay Myanmar Development Organisation, a non-governmental organisation working on development issues, sat transfixed in a hotel lobby where Suu Kyi launched her new Suu Foundation.

He had not heard her speak in person for more than a decade. “I am so excited,” Oo said after listening to the icon of democracy in the country.

Oo’s associations with the NLD were peripheral. He remembers the big meetings in 1988 and then again in 2008. “I was never a full time activist,” says Oo. But, he said, he knows that “she is the only one who has been true to us.”

At the NLD office U Thein, a young woman in her late twenties, shares the same sentiment. She became an NLD volunteer 10 years back, soon after she left school. Her family was against the move. “They felt it was dangerous, and it was. People were being arrested and put in jail just for speaking her name in public,” U Thein tells IPS.

She said that Suu Kyi appealed to her because she was taking on a corrupt and violent leadership without resorting to violence herself. “Every time I saw her picture or heard her voice, I felt so much peace.”

She joined Suu Kyi’s then underground party, and dropped earlier thoughts of seeking a government job.

This enduring image of The Lady, as the champion of rights in the Gandhian mold, is  now being challenged by the more practical image of Suu Kyi the politician.

After she was released from house arrest in November 2011, and Myanmar opened up under the leadership of President Thein Sein, Suu Kyi has embarked on a campaign to wrest control from the Sein government that is backed by the army. The challenge will be the next elections due in 2015.

She has now had to plunge into the world of realpolitik.

“She is faced with a tough decision here,” says a western diplomat. “There is no one as charismatic as her who can lead the party, there is no one with her star power. But by getting into street politics she has allowed her image of the unsullied democracy icon to be open to attack.”

Suu Kyi has been criticised for not taking a tougher stance on raging racial violence in Myanmar. And some of her party supporters now say that years of isolation have made her uncompromising.

She also faces constitutional challenges that prevent her from assuming leadership of the country. Article 59 of the 2008 Constitution states that national leadership is not permitted to anyone whose spouse or children are citizens of another country. This effectively bars Suu Kyi from the presidency.

Suu Kyi has called for amendments to the constitution. But she has been ambiguous whether she would push for an all-out campaign ahead of the next elections.

“A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman thinks of the next generation,” she said at the launch of her foundation. “We all have to remember that the 2015 election is just a stepping stone, and a long journey lies ahead of this country.”

Reacting to criticism that she has been too quiet on racial violence, Suu Kyi said the answer to most problems facing Myanmar would be establishment of the rule of law.

Min has no doubt that Suu Kyi, if elected president, would inherit a monumental mess. “This is a divided country ruled by the military for over 50 years, she cannot make it right overnight.”

The next few months will be pivotal to how future generations remember her, he says.

“No matter what happens, for us she has always been and will always be pure.”

Cloud forest in Costa Rica. Credit: Germán Miranda/IPS

By Diego Arguedas Ortiz
SAN JOSÉ, Feb 5 2014 (IPS)

Meeting Costa Rica’s self-imposed goal of being the first country in the world to achieve carbon neutrality by 2021 will depend on the priority given this aim by the winner of the second round of the presidential elections in April.

To be carbon neutral means removing as much carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere as is emitted.

But experts are doubtful about the future of the carbon neutrality plan, which was notable by its absence from the election campaign that ended Sunday Feb. 2, when none of the candidates received the 40 percent of votes needed for a first-round win.“According to calculations we performed nine months ago, we will have an excess of 5.2 million tonnes to absorb." -- William Alpízar, head of Climate Change for MINAE

On Apr. 6, over three million voters will choose between Luis Guillermo Solís, of the opposition centre-left Citizen Action Party (PAC), who took 31 percent of the vote, and Johnny Araya of the governing centre-right National Liberation Party (PLN), who received 29 percent, according to provisional official figures.

“Studies show that the 2021 goal is not realistic. We have to take steps towards that target, but realistically we are probably talking about 2025,” Patricia Madrigal, the PAC’s environmental adviser, told IPS.

In her view, carbon neutrality should not be seen as an isolated issue, but as a guiding force for all public policies in future four-year government terms.

In 2007, Costa Rica decided to become the world pioneer in carbon neutrality, and set itself the goal of fixing as much CO2 as it emits by 2021, to commemorate the bicentennial of its independence that year.

Experts and officials consulted by IPS acknowledged that the government that takes office May 8 will face complex challenges in transport, energy, institutional organisation and agriculture in order to meet that deadline.

Besides, they say, links must be developed between the national economy and the struggle to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

“As long as the goal of carbon neutrality remains unrelated to the transport sector, which generates most CO2 emissions, it is just a slogan to raise international funding,” complained Mónica Araya, the head of Clean Costa Rica, an NGO, who was a government negotiator on climate change until mid-2013.

René Castro, the environment and energy (MINAE) minister, told IPS that plans for carbon neutrality have gone forward “75 to 80 percent.” But he also recognised that the transport sector was “notorious” for producing 42 percent of national CO2 emissions.

One priority in the move towards carbon neutrality is reduction of dependence on fossil fuels and modernising the obsolete public transport system, made up of hundreds of bus lines and a recently restored railway, linking the four major cities.

The parties of the two presidential candidates still in the race are proposing an electric railway for the capital city as well as renewing the bus and taxi fleets.

This Central American country with an area of 51,100 sq km and 4.4 million people has its strong points, too, such as a remarkable increase in forest cover, from 21 percent of its territory in 1983 to 52 percent in 2012.

This achievement was due mainly to the state programme of payment for environmental services, a local precursor to the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD).

However, according to “State of the Nation 2013: Challenges for 2014-2018”, a study commissioned by the National Council of Rectors of public universities, the country’s ecological footprint grew by 43 percent between 2002 and 2012, when CO2 emissions reached 16 million tonnes.

The ecological footprint represents the biologically productive land and sea area necessary to supply the resources a human population consumes, and to absorb its waste products, including CO2.

Both parties with a chance of governing from May onward plan to reform the institutions in charge of environmental management. Currently the environmental authority is the Directorate of Climate Change, part of MINAE.

The PAC wants a supraministerial body to direct climate change action, while the PLN is proposing a national environmental strategy.

Some people within the state apparatus are also urging for renewal of institutional structures, which they say have been eroded by the imbalance between the task they are charged with and their real powers to carry it out.

“The climate change agenda must become a development agenda; it cannot be the exclusive responsibility of MINAE, which is weak and has limited resources,” William Alpízar, head of Climate Change for the ministry, told IPS.

To become carbon neutral, Costa Rica must reduce its CO2 emissions as much as possible and compensate for the remaining emissions by the CO2 absorption capacity of the new forests.

The private sector is participating in the drive through carbon neutrality certification. The Climate Change directorate has already certified eight companies and another four are being processed.

During the Warsaw Climate Change Conference or COP19 in November, Costa Rica presented a proposal for the first CO2 bank, designed to trade carbon credits between CO2-emitting companies and owners of forested lands that act as carbon sinks.

According to official estimates, Costa Rica will emit close to 21 million tonnes of carbon in 2021, and it hopes to compensate for 75 percent of this total by carbon capture in its forests, an amount practically equivalent to its current emissions.

“According to calculations we performed nine months ago, we will have an excess of 5.2 million tonnes to absorb. That is our target for reduction, and it is divided between transport, agriculture and waste,” Alpízar said.

This model has been criticised because the burden of lowering emissions is assigned to local forest cover, without proposing a real change of policy for a form of development that is fully adapted to climate change.

“In the name of carbon neutrality we have set aside everything else we need to do about climate change,” Jorge Polimeni, an environmental auditor with the Ecological Flag Foundation, which advocates a more comprehensive adaptation to the hazards of climate change, told IPS.

The study “Economic Impact of Hydrometeorological Phenomena in Costa Rica”, coordinated by researcher Roberto Flores, reported last year that between 2005 and 2011, climate change effects cost the country 710 million dollars.

Women’s political representation in the Pacific Islands region is globally the lowest at 3.65 percent, compared to the world average of 18 percent. Leadership is still widely perceived as ‘men’s business’ and voting is heavily influenced by nepotism and money politics. However, Rhoda Sikilabu, minister for community affairs in Isabel Province in the Solomon Islands is demonstrating that women leaders can drive development progress and win voter support.

Sikilabu did not have the same campaign funds as male candidates when she stood in the 2006 provincial election. But her unwavering commitment for more than a decade to bringing tangible improvements to rural lives that were blighted by hardship and lack of development paved the way for her landslide victory against six male candidates.

“To me, politics is helping a family to a better life, helping the family who are hungry, the elderly, the disabled, assisting communities to build toilets, providing access to solar energy,” Sikilabu told IPS in the Solomon Islands. “It is about really touching people’s lives.”

In a nation of more than 900 islands covered in dense tropical rainforest with few roads and widely scattered villages, the challenges of campaigning were enormous. Touring communities involved sleeping in the bush, swimming across flooded rivers and travelling by canoe in stormy weather.

It was the first time that remote communities in Isabel Province, which has a population of about 30,000, witnessed women bidding for election. Although society in Isabel is matrilineal, Sikilabu explained that habitually “boys are sent to school and that’s the beginning of this idea that women are not important in decision-making committees or meetings.”

While equality is enshrined in the constitution, broad acceptance of women in political power is yet to become a reality.

The World Bank reports there has been little progress in increasing women’s political representation in the Pacific region over the past decade. In the Solomon Islands only two women have been elected to the national parliament since Independence in 1978, Hilda Kari in the 1980s and recently Vika Lusibaea. In the 2010 national election, women contested 21 of 50 seats, but only received 4 percent of the vote.

On entering the provincial assembly with one other woman, Beverley Dick, Sikilabu perceived a public “desperate for change” and knew it was vital to achieve real outcomes during her first term in office.

“I said to the people, when I’m elected I will improve the things you are facing as problems in the communities,” Sikilabu said.

Water, energy, sanitation and health are some of the basic service needs in the province. Sikilabu strove first to provide electricity to the estimated 1,500 people in 16 remote communities in her ward or electorate.

“After my first four years, I had supplied solar energy systems to every family in every household in every village,” she said. “The children have light, so they can sit in the evening and do their homework. Now their pass marks are getting higher.”

Building and repairing rural health clinics that will serve more than 4,000 people is another achievement.

“Women have babies in their canoe, on the beach and children die from malaria,” Sikilabu said. “In the past we have had men leaders who haven’t done anything to address this problem.”

From the capital, Honiara, she coordinated the shipping of building materials, plumbing equipment, toilets, solar panels and water tanks to the Isabel islands to expedite work on the new clinic in Sigana ward and one under repair in Japuana ward.

“When the new clinic is open, most women will be within walking distance,” Sikilabu said. “Currently they have to paddle their canoes for up to three hours.”

Helen and Patlyn from Gurena village on the main Santa Isabel Island claimed that the efforts of local women leaders had also improved sanitation, housing and agricultural livelihoods through access to farm tools and more productive crops.

Today Isabel is home to two of the total six women in provincial governments in the country.

Through their leadership, “more social problems have been addressed and our voice is being heard on important issues, such as mining and logging,” Judy Tabiru, president of the Isabel Provincial Council of Women in Buala added.

Sikilabu has announced her candidature for the 2014 national election, and her achievements have attracted the attention of four political parties that are keen to have her join them.

However she is adamant that more elected women are needed to influence government policies and social change in a nation ranked 143 out of 187 for human development. For this to happen, addressing persistent gender inequality, in a country where female literacy is an estimated 14 percent, and increasing women’s economic and leadership capacity is critical.

“If we choose women who are educated, automatically they will have the confidence if they are elected to parliament,” Tabiru emphasised. “But for women in the provinces, they have to be trained in public speaking; they have to get more confidence.”

Isabel’s Ministry of Community Affairs conducts village training to develop female participation in decision-making and encourage their public advocacy on important community issues.

National Councils of Women, intergovernmental organisations and international donors also support women’s political aspirations in the region. In August Sikilabu spent time with the deputy speaker of the Victorian State Parliament, Christine Fyffe, as part of a regional mentoring exchange programme organised by the Australian Government’s Pacific Women’s Parliamentary Partnerships Project.

Temporary special measures, in the form of 10 reserved parliamentary seats for women, were proposed in 2008 in the Solomon Islands, but did not gain cabinet approval. Yet Sikilabu believes they are required.

“There are men and women who do not support temporary special measures. They feel it is giving special treatment to women, but in Malaita Province the women’s situation is different to mine in Isabel, so we are not all the same,” she said.

She emphasised it was also a responsibility of currently elected women to ensure that others followed in the future.

“We have to impact more women coming into government by being passionate, coming out in public and talking more and being seen to be addressing issues.”

A demonstration in Kathmandu to demand rights. Credit: Sudeshna Sarkar/IPS.

By Sudeshna Sarkar
KOLKATA, Nov 22 2013 (IPS)

In Nepal, where a quarter of the population is steeped in poverty, a man who once led a 10-year Maoist insurgency before joining the political mainstream has been splurging on helicopters for his election campaign.

The extravagance by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former school teacher and guerrilla leader who went on to become prime minister after the monarchy was abolished in the Himalayan nation, has come under scathing criticism.

Prominent Nepali citizens, rival parties and even former Maoist comrades say it has brought into sharp focus the socio-economic inequalities in this country of 27 million people.

Bhagirath Basnet, a former foreign secretary of Nepal, makes a wry observation.“The Maoists came to power promising to end inequality and poverty. But they have betrayed the war that saw over 15,000 people die.”

“It is difficult to fathom how a proletariat leader and self-touted messiah of the poor could find the resources and moral justification to do so, day in, day out,” Basnet tells IPS.

“This, in a country where 25 percent of people languish in poverty and millions of children are deprived of minimum nutrition and primary education.”

Ironically, the Maoists’ main opponent, the Nepali Congress, had a far more low-key campaign for the Nov. 19 elections.

Its veteran leaders, including a septuagenarian cancer survivor, rode on cycle and horseback to woo voters.

The election results coming in are being disputed by the Maoist leader.

As Nepalis berate the Maoist extravagance on social media, they are joined by former comrades who accuse the party of selling out.

“The Maoists came to power promising to end inequality and poverty,” says Matrika Prasad Yadav, once the most senior Maoist leader in the southern Terai plains. “But they have betrayed the war that saw over 15,000 people die.”

The Maoist insurrection started in 1996 with the avowed aim of ending monarchy, the feudal rule of a nearly 250-year-old dynasty that appropriated national resources for the royal family and nobles.

Though the Maoist war ended in 2006 and Dahal’s Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) came to power through elections, the social and economic inequalities that had triggered their movement remain. Nepal, which lies between the two Asian giants, India and China, has an annual per capita income of 742 dollars.

“I feel embarrassed when I go abroad,” says Binod Chaudhary, head of a Nepali business group and the first billionaire from Nepal to make it to Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest.

“Every day, a thousand Nepalis go abroad in search of jobs because there are no jobs here. We have 16-hour power cuts daily though Nepal has tremendous hydropower potential,” he tells IPS. “We don’t even have enough drinking water in Kathmandu [the capital], let alone in villages.

“People ask me, you are a billionaire, yet Nepal is so poor. What is the reason?”

Emboldened by the Maoists’ success, new groups are mushrooming, seizing their unfulfilled promise of equality and opportunity.

Matrika Yadav, a former Maoist minister, is now an adversary. His grievance is an old one. “The Maoists have exploited Madhes [the Terai region],” he says.

Terai, the food bowl of Nepal, suffered from neglect by a succession of governments because its residents were regarded as immigrants from India and inferior to the hill people.

“Terai people still don’t have citizenship,” Yadav says. “They are still not represented in the army, bureaucracy and judiciary in the numbers the government promised. They lack education, healthcare and opportunities.”

Yadav’s Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) boycotted the election, and he warns the party could go underground.

Another former comrade, Mohan Vaidya, is not just opposing the election but called a 10-day transport strike to prevent people from casting their votes.

Vaidya, once among the top three Maoist leaders, is a hardliner who feels it was a mistake to agree to peace. The reedy, bespectacled Vaidya has his own separate Maoist party now – the Nepal Communist Party (Maoist) – and together with splinter groups was adamant about the strike despite the hardship it caused people.

Buses have been set on fire, including one carrying passengers. Improvised explosive devices – the main weapon of the Maoists during their People’s War – were left in public places, creating an atmosphere of fear.

The international community believed the election was a necessity in Nepal. Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was present to monitor it, along with European and Indian observers.

Shoko Noda, the United Nations Development Programme country director in Nepal, says it was crucial that elections took place and the political process was normalised so that the focus could return to the economy and jobs.

“Since the 1990s, Nepal has made significant progress in the human development index,” she says.

“Still, historically and spatially, marginalised groups such as Dalits, women, indigenous nationalities and those living in geographically remote places continue to be at the bottom of the pyramid,” Noda tells IPS.

“As a result Nepal has high income and consumption inequality.”

She hopes once politics stabilises, the development process will accelerate, leading to more opportunities for even the poorest of the poor.

“Better infrastructure coupled with an improved business environment can boost the entrepreneurship that can create jobs to accommodate them,” Noda says.

Five former prime ministers from across party lines, including Dahal, have vowed to push the development agenda and collaborate for the common good. But Nepalis themselves remain sceptical.

Political and economic analysts say that a new government under the Movement for Democratic Change led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T) is the best solution for Zimbabwe’s economic future. Credit: Trevor Davies/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 1 2013 (IPS)

Zimbabwean analysts say that it will be historical if President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled this country for 33 years, loses the country’s presidential election to his long-time rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and relinquishes power.

A day before the election, Mugabe had told reporters at State House that if he loses he would concede defeat.

On Wednesday, Jul. 31, Zimbabweans in Harare, the capital, woke up at midnight eager to cast their ballots in the general election. In most towns across Zimbabwe, voters began queuing very early on Wednesday morning, enduring the chilly weather in order to vote.

Many, like 32-year-old Loveness Mbiza, a fruit and vegetable vendor from Harare’s Machipisa high-density suburb, feel this election will bring an improved economic environment.“There has never been such voting excitement here save perhaps for 1980 at independence and this means something much bigger is set to happen here and people want development to kick-start under a new regime.” -- voter and local businessman Jabulani Gumbo

“I have lived under constant surveillance from brutal police in Mugabe’s government who have always chased me from one point to the other, often accusing me of selling my wares at undesignated points in the city, but without providing me with alternatives,” Mbiza told IPS.

“I woke up soon after midnight to be on the queue here so that I could cast my vote early and go back to attend to my vending business. My wish is to see my vote being respected because I know most people are suffering just like me and wish to see President Mugabe shown the door when the results are announced,” added Mbiza.

But Claris Madhuku, a political analyst and director for Platform for Youth Development, a democracy lobby group in Zimbabwe, told IPS that voters should not put their full trust in the new political dispensation that may emerge after this election.

“There is excessive excitement from voters and too much optimism is being invested in a [Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai] MDC-T government that they think will be born out of the elections. But they should allow any dispensation to settle down and gradually manoeuvre its way to rescue this country from its long economic crisis,” Madhuku said.

Zimbabwe is still recovering from an economic meltdown, based largely on Mugabe’s controversial policies. There have also been allegations of widespread corruption and stealing from the state’s coffers by Mugabe and other high-ranking officials within his party.

Between 2003 and 2009, this southern African nation’s year on year inflation was reported as 231 percent. According to the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe, 85 companies closed down in Harare last year and over 100 shut down in Bulawayo between 2009 and 2013. Unemployment is high, with most people being forced to work in the informal sector.

Independent political analyst Rashwit Mkundu said he foresees the country becoming an economic “powerhouse” under Tsvangarai’s leadership, if he wins this election.

“There is certainly going to be rapid economic recovery in Zimbabwe if Tsvangirai is announced winner of this election. Zimbabwe will fast emerge as an economic powerhouse of the rest of the African continent, possibly overtaking South Africa in terms of economic growth,” Mkundu told IPS.

Mugabe and some of his party hardliners in Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu–PF) are under economic sanctions from Western nations for violating human rights. However, in March the European Union suspended most of its sanctions, though Mugabe and a number of his followers remain on the list.

Analysts think this election could be the Zanu-PF leader’s last race before Mugabe disappears from the political scene, as he turns 90 years old in six months’ time.

Chairperson for the Council for Social Workers in Zimbabwe, Philip Bohwasi, told IPS that a victory by Tsvangirai would result in a stampede of investors to the country. A number pulled out after Mugabe implemented the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act of 2007. It states that foreign-owned companies are required to sell a 51 percent stake to locals to stimulate economic growth.

“Tsvangirai warms up very well to nations from the developed world from which most investors come. His victory in this election will spark a scramble for investment chances from investors abroad eager to put their investments here,” Bohwasi told IPS.

But Masimba Kuchera, an independent media analyst in Harare, told IPS that ordinary people should be careful not to build their hopes on impulsive policies pencilled in political party manifestos.

“Yes, I know most people who have voted in this election anticipate drastic changes from the MDC-T, which they widely believe will massively ride to victory when election results are announced. But what has convinced them to so overwhelmingly rally behind MDC-T are mere policies penned in the party’s campaign manifesto, which may be an exaggerated piece of paper designed to lure voters,” Kuchera said.

Although the Zanu-PF government, which entered a coalition arrangement with the two formations of the MDC, stands widely accused of being the architect of the country’s economic crisis, many, like 25-year-old Donemore Dziva, a jobless college graduate with a diploma in marketing, hopes for a Zanu-PF victory.

“I didn’t wake up so early in the morning to come and waste my vote on MDC-T because I didn’t see anything worthwhile it did for young jobless people like me during its tenure in the coalition government. I just hope we shall have President Mugabe back when the results shall be announced and let him finish the economic empowerment of locals here,” Dziva told IPS.

Other political analysts here say any win by Mugabe in this election would spell disaster for Zimbabwe.

“Any win that favours Mugabe in this election will be contestable and there is really nothing new that Mugabe has in store to warrant a justified return to the number one job in the land. His return will only further deepen the country’s economic crisis considering that Mugabe has not been successful in mending his dented relations with the rich European nations,” an independent political analyst, Blessing Vava, told IPS.

Harare businessman and owner of a fleet of trucks, Jabulani Gumbo, 56, thinks the large voter turnout is a signal of future great economic strides for Zimbabwe.

“There has never been such voting excitement here, save perhaps for 1980 at independence, and this means something much bigger is set to happen here. People want development to kick-start under a new regime,” Gumbo told IPS. There are no official figures yet available about the number of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots on Wednesday. Initial reports, however, show that the vote was largely a peaceful one.

Cambodia National Rescue Party supporters walk in support of opposition leader Sam Rainsy [left, holding flag] in Angkor Wa. Credit: Erika Pineros/IPS.

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Jul 27 2013 (IPS)

As Cambodia readies for general elections Sunday Jul. 28, the youth, who make up 36 percent of the country have signaled they are eager for ‘change.’

‘Change’ is their main slogan as they campaign for the opposition party on the streets of the capital every day. They are hoping to make a dent in the dominance of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which currently holds 90 out of 123 seats in parliament. The CPP government has been led by Premier Hun Sen for 28 years.

“Supporters for the [opposition] Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) totally outnumber the Cambodian People’s Party,” 23-year-old activist Sek Sokunroth told IPS in the capital Phnom Penh.

“They are more enthusiastic, louder and they are paying for their own gas and food. I saw a guy with CPP campaign stickers on his bike. I said something to my friend about it, like ‘there goes the CPP,’ and he heard me. He said ‘No, my friend, they are paying me five dollars a day to do this but I am not with them.’”

Half the country lives on two dollars a day, making five dollars a tidy sum of money to ‘work’ the campaign trail.

Srun Srorn, civil society election observer for the CAM ASEAN Youth Advocacy group, said times have been hard for youth, particularly for those who migrate from the countryside to the cities to work for monthly wages as low as 60 dollars. From this income many try to send remittances to parents who have lost out due to land grabs from dubious foreign investment.

The growing wave of evictions has left an estimated 20 percent of Cambodians landless. It is this disenfranchised group that is keen on change.

The rising discontent got an unexpected boost when opposition leader Sam Rainsy returned to the country Jul. 19. He was greeted in Phnom Penh by about 100,000 supporters and a royal pardon from the King. Self-exiled in France since 2009 to avoid charges levelled by the ruling party, Rainsy told supporters the country was at a “turning point” and that he was ready to risk his life to bring change.

“This is the biggest campaign that I have ever seen in my life. Rainsy’s presence has made a big difference. The town was packed,” said Sokunroth. “My parents called me three or four times a day asking me to quit, but I told them I can’t.”

Young CNRP supporters did not experience the Khmer Rouge years 1975 to 1979, but they saw the impact it had on their parents. “People that lived during that time have bad dreams and nightmares every night,” said Sokunroth.

Bill Herod, a retired NGO worker, said most Cambodians outside the capital are content with the way things are because they remember how bad it can get. “Things may change in time, but at this point the ‘average’ Cambodian is virtually basking in the best quality of life in the whole history of the Khmer people and is unlikely to want to rock the boat.”

The young and excitable population have faced unrest already as they struggle for a free and fair election. CNRP supporters were attacked with rocks in a spate of incidents this week, said Tola Moeun, head of the labour programme at the Community Legal Education Centre. “From what we see, the CPP group is trying to provoke violence from the youth, as they know they are very sensitive.”

“Compared to the last elections, this year is more exciting with many more supporters  prepared to stand up and say the things they want to say,” said Srun. He looks to the government, NGOs and international bodies to collaborate to reduce unrest.

The secretary general of the CNRP in North America, Pretty Ma, said they are working for a contingency plan in case of strife.

“We do not think that violence is the way to solve problems. We plan to appeal to the government [of Cambodia]. It is their responsibility to address that.” North American party representatives are also looking for support from U.S. congressional representatives.

Cambodians abroad like Pretty Ma, many of who migrated in the Khmer Rouge years, have been instrumental in garnering some international support for their homeland. Sam Rainsy grew up in France after fleeing Cambodia’s war with his family as a child.

Researcher Gea Wijers of the Netherlands has studied Khmer living abroad looking to return to help build their homeland.  She told IPS they struggle to reconcile their experiences of democracies with those of Khmer living in the homeland who have yet to know it.

The Failed State Index for 2012 declared the country at ‘warning’ level, ranked at 41 out of 178 countries, just five spaces below Congo (Republic) at 36. Cambodia earned particularly poor marks in the “rise of factionalised elite” and “legitimacy of the state”.

With these structural flaws, the country faces many obstacles that might be greater than its current youthful desire to transform the system. How Rainsy guides his supporters through the election outcome will be watched keenly.

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Chief of Army Staff of the Pakistan Army, and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, former Commander of NATO International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. Credit: U.S. Army

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 14 2013 (IPS)

With this weekend’s national election in Pakistan seeing historic high turnout resulting in an overwhelming vote for a single party, foreign policy observers here are suggesting that the United States will need to finally redefine its longstanding relationship with the Pakistan Army.

The electoral result is being hailed as a critical consolidation of democracy in Pakistan, constituting the first time in the country’s history that national leadership has been handed over from one civilian government to another.

“The United States stands with all Pakistanis in welcoming this historic peaceful and transparent transfer of civilian power, which is a significant milestone in Pakistan’s democratic progress,” President Barack Obama stated Sunday.

“By conducting competitive campaigns, freely exercising your democratic rights, and persevering despite intimidation by violent extremists, you have affirmed a commitment to democratic rule that will be critical to achieving peace and prosperity for all Pakistanis for years to come.”

Indeed, the majority received by three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Muslim League party could now allow it to form a new government on its own, a landslide result that has surprised many long-time Pakistan observers. Perhaps more surprising were turnout rates of around 60 percent, the highest in four decades.

“The United States should be very pleased that in an election where Pakistani militants told voters not to vote, and offered dire threats if they did, we have the highest turnout in a Pakistani election since 1970,” Andrew Wilder, head of the Pakistan programme at the United States Institute of Peace, a quasi-government think tank here, told IPS.

“That’s a strong endorsement that the vast majority of Pakistanis are rejecting the calls of the Taliban, and yet another important step towards consolidating democracy in Pakistan. The military will still be a very important force in Pakistani politics, but it’s a bit less powerful today than it was a week ago.”

Still, Wilder foresees relative continuity in U.S. relations with Pakistan. He notes that while the past two years were particularly rocky – bilateral tensions have spiked repeatedly – ties have remained strong of necessity, particularly due to Pakistan’s centrality in Washington’s attempts at stabilising Afghanistan ahead of an announced military withdrawal next year.

Yet others see the strengthening of the civilian government in Islamabad as an opportunity for a pivot in U.S. policy towards Pakistan.

A democratically elected government relinquishing power to another civilian government “marks a new phase in Pakistan’s democratic struggle, [and] indicates the need for a reassessment of U.S. policy toward the country,” Ishrat Saleem, a research associate at the Center for Pakistan Studies at the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, wrote recently.

“Washington has traditionally found a willing partner in the General Headquarters of the Pakistan Army … to aid its pursuit of strategic and tactical objectives in the region. Such an arrangement saw Pakistan’s generals making U.S.-friendly decisions on behalf of the state without being held accountable for their actions.”

But recent years have seen “a visible shift … in the country’s power dynamics”, Saleem notes – a shift topped by Saturday’s election.

Development over security

Since Pakistan’s creation in 1947, the country’s military has formally taken over power numerous times – Sharif himself was deposed in a coup in 1999. Yet the military has remained immensely powerful behind the scenes at all other times, as well, and in this role it has functioned as a central liaison with the United States.

Today, the United States is Pakistan’s largest bilateral donor, and Pakistan is the second-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, amounting to some 20 billion dollars over the past decade. While high-level legislation in 2009 authorised around 7.5 billion dollars in civilian aid over five years, U.S. support to the military has remained very significant.

In President Obama’s budget request for aid to Pakistan for the current fiscal year, around 58 percent was to be earmarked for “security assistance”, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the U.S. Congress’s main research arm. The new election may now have to lead to a rethink of that proportion.

“The U.S. has been relying for far too long on a uni-dimensional relationship with the Pakistani military, and we now need to focus on broadening the breadth of our relationship with the political leaders and the people,” Dan Twining, a senior fellow and Pakistan scholar at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a Washington think tank and foundation, told IPS.

“The United States wants to strengthen the hand of the civilian government, and Nawaz Sharif’s primary mandate is now economic development – that and taking on the governance issues that plagued the last government.”

Twining admits that the military will remain central in Pakistani policymaking. But he says that even as the country continues to reel from a strengthening insurgency (in turn exacerbating the U.S.-led military mission in Afghanistan), the roots of these problems are not necessarily security-related.

“These are not military problems, but rather those related to energy, infrastructure, water supply,” he says.

“So even if we concede that the military will continue to control foreign policy, the long view suggests that Pakistan’s most critical problems are in the civilian realm. These require good governance to get the economy going, to create jobs – issues the military won’t and simply can’t tackle.”

Significant security issues do remain in Pakistan, of course, with the days leading up to the election having been extraordinarily bloody. And Sharif has suggested that he, too, realises that a solely military strategy will not work to bring peace.

A week before the election, several Islamist groups said they would halt attacks on Sharif’s party, and the candidate stated his openness to negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban.

“The connection with the militants is significant, but it’s important to realise that Sharif made a tactical deal, not a governance deal – this was about getting through a very dangerous campaign,” Twining says.

“Interestingly, when Sharif said he would be open to dialogue, the head of the Pakistan Army, General [Ashfaq] Kayani, said his forces were not fighting the extremists because of the United States, but rather because they wanted to overthrow the government. Fundamentally, this is a core problem for Pakistan, and Pakistan will be on the one to deal with it.”

Pakistan People’s Party posters show pictures of candidates with three generations of the Bhutto family including former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, her father and former prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and the new chairperson Bilawal Zardari Bhutto. Credit: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS.

By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Apr 15 2013 (IPS)

Former parliamentarian Jamshed Dasti, known in his hometown of Muzaffargarh as Rescue 1122, Pakistan’s equivalent of an emergency number, is now a dubious hero. On Apr. 4, a district court served him a three-year prison sentence and a fine of 5,000 rupees (50 dollars) for presenting a fake degree to become eligible for a seat in parliament. He filed an appeal in the Lahore High Court which has overturned his conviction and acquitted him.

Many people sing his praises. “He was among the very rare breed of lawmakers who are genuinely loved by the people they serve. They didn’t care whether he possessed an academic degree or not,” Asma Shirazi, a popular television anchor, said.

Shirazi, who had visited Dasti’s constituency during the floods in 2010 and met the people who voted for him, said he never misused his position, continued living in a humble abode, had acquired no assets during his time in parliament and had never once been slapped with corruption charges.

Not everyone, however, is as forgiving as Shirazi. “Those who have cheated must be punished in some manner,” said Dr A.H. Nayyar, an Islamabad educationist.

Activist Naeem Sadiq, who was among the first to highlight the issue eight years ago and kept pressing for action on this matter, added, “More would have gone to jail had we had an active, alert and alive Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) in the last five years.”

The May 11 parliamentary elections may see several old lawmakers who have lied about their educational qualifications stay out of politics after the ban imposed upon them by the Supreme Court.

“Enough is enough. No corrupt elements will be allowed to go to parliament. Fake degree holders have not only deceived the nation but also made a mockery of their mandate. Such elements don’t deserve any leniency,” Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had said on Mar. 26, while hearing the fake degrees case.

Ever since, the ECP and the Higher Education Commission (HEC) have cranked into action and blacklisted lawmaker after lawmaker.

Talking to IPS, Mudassir Rizvi of the Free and Fair Elections Network (FAFEN), a coalition of 30 non-governmental organisations which observe the general elections and mobilise voters, said that, of a total of more than 1,170 legislators, less than 5 percent have had their degrees declared as ‘bogus’ by the HEC.

According to the ECP website, 80 candidates who had forged or produced fake university degrees back in the 2008 elections will not be contesting this time.

The apex court had tasked the HEC, which funds universities and recommends the award of a charter to a university, in 2010 to vet the degrees of all the lawmakers sitting in the federal and four provincial parliaments.

Under immense pressure from the parliamentarians, the HEC dragged its feet over the scrutiny for almost three years, and degrees of 189 people remained unverified.

However, with the elections less than a month away, the inquiry has suddenly gained momentum despite the fact that the law which required the legislators to prove that they are bona fide university graduates does not apply any more.

For the first time in Pakistan’s election history candidates are being screened to ascertain whether they have criminal records, defaulted on loans, evaded tax or been involved in other financial irregularities.

In 2002, former president General Pervez Musharraf had stipulated a graduate degree or its equivalent from a seminary as requirement for lawmakers to improve the standard of parliament.

However, as Nayyar pointed out, “the addition of a degree as prequalification has been shown to be of no value and seems to have failed in the last nine years. Cheaters know how to beat the system.”

The condition was struck down in April 2008 when the next government came into power, but most present legislators had been elected under the old rules.

“We fully support the stipulated screening process,” Zohair Ashir, secretary of the parliamentary board of cricketing star Imran Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) told IPS. “And PTI itself is undertaking stringent measures to verify each candidate’s credentials.” The party will be contesting elections for the first time.

“Every party worker’s life is an open book,” said Haider Abbas Rizvi, a prominent politician representing the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the leading political party in Karachi, and the previous government’s ally in Sindh province. It has not had any candidate rejected for possessing a fake or forged degree.

The MQM says it screens all its candidates on its own, but screening does not take place in every political party.

After Dasti, elected in 2008, was found to have misrepresented his qualification in 2010, he was forced to resign. However, his party, the ruling Pakistan People’s Party, instead of keeping him at a distance for shaming it, renamed him its candidate for the very seat he had relinquished. He won and was made special adviser to the prime minister on livestock affairs.

“No party leader asked his members to resign despite knowing that many of them held fake degrees,” said Sadiq.

“It is pathetic that political parties have nurtured and protected crooks who have plundered and looted, bringing the country to the verge of bankruptcy,” said Dr Atta ur Rahman, former head of HEC.

The elections will be historic in that it will be for the first time in 65 years of Pakistan’s history that power will be handed over from one democratically elected civilian government to another.

There are 85.73 million registered voters in a population of 180 million, according to the Election Commission of Pakistan. Of these 37.32 million are women voters.

In these 11th general elections, voting will be for the 342 seats for the National Assembly and 577 seats in the four provincial assemblies. There are 7,364 and 16,730 candidates running for office for the National Assembly and four provincial assemblies respectively.

The Election Commission of Pakistan has appointed more than 400 monitoring teams across the country to monitor political activities.

The mainstream parties include the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), the Pakistan Muslim League (Functional) allied with the Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistan Tehrik e Insaf (formed by former cricketing star Imran Khan), the Awami National Party, the MQM and the religious party Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam.

Badam Zari (right) campaigning ahead of the elections. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
BAJAUR AGENCY, Pakistan, Apr 9 2013 (IPS)

“My sole motive is to serve my people, especially women who have had no role in politics so far. I feel we can make progress only by bringing in women into mainstream politics.”

These are the words of Badam Zari, 40, who has filed her nomination papers with the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP). Zari is contesting from the militancy-hit Bajaur Agency, one of the seven districts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) near the Afghanistan border.

Zari’s tiny but lush green house in Arang village is buzzing with activity as women from the neighbourhood come in droves to congratulate her for the exemplary courage she has shown in standing for elections.

Forget standing for election, women in FATA do not vote. It was only in 1997 that the federal government gave the six million residents of FATA the right of adult franchise. Before that, only a few government-nominated elders called Maliks were entitled to cast votes or stand in election."Women here are suffering as none of the lawmakers in FATA have ever worked towards their development.”

In January this year, the Election Commission of Pakistan proposed an amendment to the Representation of People Act, 1976, making it compulsory for every polling station to have at least 10 percent of its total votes cast by women. It went so far as to suggest that results from polling stations not be taken into account till that provision was met. The government, however, paid no heed to the suggestion.

“I am extremely worried about tribal women, most of who stay in their houses, which has prevented them from making any progress,” Zari told IPS. “My only ambition is to struggle for the improvement of women’s conditions in Bajaur Agency. Women here are suffering as none of the lawmakers in FATA have ever worked towards their development.”

Her action, she is sure, will motivate women to come to the polling booths on polling day and vote in her favour.

However, the indications are that women will continue to stay disenfranchised not only in FATA but in the majority of the country, especially in rural areas where people are reluctant to allow them to cast their vote as it would constitute a break with tradition.

Free and Fair Election Network, a local NGO, says that women were barred from voting at 564 of the country’s 64,176 polling stations in the 2008 general elections. Political parties in Dir, Kohistan, Battagram and other districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province decided to bar women from voting citing local traditions.

Government data indicates that Pakistan has more than 48 million registered male voters and just more than 37 million female registered voters. For the 12 National Assembly seats that went to the polls in 2008, only 394,977 or 30.37 percent were polled out of the total registered votes of 1,280,897. Women, as usual, had stayed away.

Women have never voted in FATA either, which has a total population of 1,749,331. Of these, 1,153,073 are male registered voters, and 596,258, female. In Bajaur Agency, female voters make up 132,134 of the total 355,969 population.

This is the reason why Zari’s decision to take part in the election is both unprecedented in Pakistan’s history and a crucial step in the emancipation of women in the area. “No women have so far turned up at polling stations on voting day in FATA,” Prof. Zahra Shah of the sociology department at the University of Peshawar told IPS. “Zari’s decision to jump into the race is likely to be welcomed given the boldness and courage she has shown.”

Educated up to eighth grade, Zari has no children. Yet she is determined to work towards the education of the children in her region and help them play a part in development.

Zari told IPS she is undeterred by the presence of wealthy and influential people in the elections. She is determined to give women a voice in the National Assembly.

She has the full support of her husband Sultan Khan, a teacher in the government-run Bajaur Public School and College. Khan says he will strive for women’s development with her.

“Despite being poor, we are committed to running a full-scale campaign and seek victory. Zari’s win would mean a victory for all FATA women,” he says. “There is tremendous pressure on us to withdraw her from the election but there is no looking back and we will go to the polls with complete preparation.”

Zari has much support from other women in the area. “We will support her as she is the only woman to have mustered courage against all odds. She requires our unflinching support,” Jamila Bibi who hails from the National Assembly constituency NA-44 Bajaur-II from where Zari is contesting, told IPS.

“I also hope that men will throw their weight behind her,” she says. “We have planned to make door-to-door visits to canvass for Zari. She is our beacon of hope.”

Zari is not alone in her act of courage. The submission of nomination papers by another woman, Nusrat Begum from Lower Dir district NA-34 of adjacent KP province, is also being hailed by womenfolk.

Begum, 28, a graduate from the University of Peshawar, also happens to be the first woman in Lower Dir ever to have the courage to contest elections.

Both are contesting elections as independent candidates.

With just over two months before the Jun. 14 presidential election, Iranians remain unclear about which candidates will be approved by the Guardian Council to compete, let alone who has the best chance of winning.

Khatami’s candidacy increases the chance of disparate reformist factions coalescing behind one candidate. Credit: World Economic Forum/cc by 2.0

To date, nearly 20 former officials have either declared or expressed interest in running.

But talk of a possible run by former president Mohammad Khatami has sparked excitement and hope, at least among that part of the Iranian population that feels disenfranchised by the contested 2009 presidential election and the repression that followed.

At the same time, there has also been harsh criticism and angry reaction on the part of conservatives, as well as some reformists who see his potential candidacy as a betrayal of the two 2009 presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, who have spent most of the past four years under house arrest.

The campaign to recruit Khatami was confirmed in a public letter issued in mid-March and signed by 91 individuals, including a number of prominent reformists, calling on him to become a candidate. The following day, the Reformist Front’s Coordination Council, the most important collection of reformist parties and organisations, echoed the call.

These appeals are based on the belief that Khatami remains the most popular politician in Iran. His flaws, including his timidity in confronting unelected institutions and the state’s security apparatus during his tenure (1997-2005), are widely acknowledged.

But the hope is that a substantial part of the electorate will rally behind him given their fondness for his urbane and gracious demeanour and the possibility of returning the country to an environment which is more open politically and culturally less rigid — an environment where economic and foreign policy-making is less erratic and bombastic than under his successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Nonetheless, the call for Khatami’s candidacy has angered many radical reformers, particularly those now in exile who see him as an ineffective leader and his candidacy as detrimental to the larger necessity of fundamental change that they say the Islamic Republic requires.

But their call for an electoral boycott is not shared by most reformists inside the country. To them, the memory of Khatami’s presidency offers a sufficient alternative for participation in the electoral process.

According to a well-known novelist, speaking to IPS on condition of anonymity, “The civil, social, and cultural freedoms of the Khatami period are a nostalgic memory for all of us. He has left a defendable record of governing as an intellectual.”

In the words of another supporter who is also a renowned translator, “He makes us proud of our culture and civilisation.”

Similarly, many in the private sector remember his economic policies, despite weaknesses and setbacks, as having laid the basis of a sounder economic decision-making process.

“During the Khatami presidency,” a member of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Mines told IPS, “our path to trade with the world was opened, production and economic activities of the youth were given more attention, and most importantly the Oil Stabilisation Fund was established” to support the private sector during economic downturns.

But not all support for Khatami is based on nostalgia. There are also political and tactical considerations.

His candidacy increases the chance of disparate reformist factions coalescing behind one candidate. In addition, keeping him at the centre of attention maximises the impact of the support he may eventually give to another reformist candidate. This is what happened in 2009 when Khatami withdrew his candidacy and publicly supported Mussavi.

Khatami himself has remained non-committal. “You do not need to worry about my decision,” he told an audience of university students recently. “I am just one individual in the great reformist collective. I have my own opinion but in practice I also respect the collective decision.”

Khatami’s unwillingness to declare his plans is at least partly the result of uncertainty regarding the field in which he will potentially compete.

The current number of potential candidates could grow between now and the third week of May when the Guardian Council completes the vetting process and announces the names of those who are “qualified” by it to run.

In 2009, only four out 475 registrants – most of whom were not well-known enough to meet the constitutional requirement of being “among the religious and political elites” of the country – were approved by the Council, while in the open 2005 election eight out of more than 1,000 aspirants made the cut.

Khatami may be disqualified by the conservative Guardian Council for being too close to Mussavi and Karrubi and what the regime has identified as the “sedition current” in the country.

On Mar. 9, the hard-line Kayhan Daily, which is reportedly close to Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ran a harsh piece entitled “Who Said They Will Let You to Run?” The column cited Khatami’s “multiple crimes” during the “American-Israeli sedition” of the 2009 election, insisting that they disqualified him from “participation in the body-politic of the system” and called for his supporters to “forget about (his) candidacy for (the) presidency”.

The intelligence minister, Heydar Moslehi, went further and referred to Khatami as “shameless” and rebuked him for forgetting the harm he had done to country by questioning the results of the 2009 election and still wanting to run.

But the fact that Khatami may be disqualified has not deterred his supporters who believe that it is better to force the Guardian Council – and, ultimately, Khamenei himself who many believe would be the hidden hand behind Khatami’s disqualification – to bear the political costs of such a move.

Even if there is a threat of physical attack against Khatami, according to one political science professor, the former president should not seek Khamenei’s permission, or not enter the fray for fear of disqualification. Given the dire economic situation in the country and Iran’s difficult international predicament, “Khatami must feel a sense of duty and step forward,” he told IPS.

For such supporters the hope is that the country’s difficult predicament, as well as the former president’s continued popularity, will also influence Khamenei and ultimately persuade him to abandon any objection to Khatami’s candidacy.

Ironically, the desire for Khatami’s return, if it is indeed as widespread as his supporters believe, can also be seen as a reflection of the broader societal desire for cooperating with Khamenei to end the deepening economic and political crisis in the country.

In the words of one high-ranking state manager, who spoke to IPS on condition of anonymity, “It is only with Khatami that the dangers associated with any shift of power in Iran be avoided. With anyone else, such a shift may be like an electricity blackout, resulting in event greater popular disenchantment. We hope Ayatollah Khamenei understands this and welcomes it.”

Youthful Member of Kenya’s National Assembly elect Ndung'u Gethenji (holding red cap) of the National Alliance Party, Tetu Constituency in Central Kenya celebrates his win in the country’s elections. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI, Mar 12 2013 (IPS)

When a Mugumo fig tree fell down in President Mwai Kibaki’s backyard in Nyeri County, central Kenya just three weeks before the country’s presidential elections, the local elders said it carried a strong message of a change in leadership in favour of younger leaders.

In hindsight it seems an easy prediction. In the end, the 51-year-old Uhuru Kenyatta won the presidential race ahead of 68-year-old Ralia Odinga. Kenyatta won 50.07 percent of the vote and Odinga garnered 43.3 percent.

But before the country’s Mar. 4 vote, Titus Ngugi, a 60-year-old resident from Nyeri County was convinced that it predicted the election results.

“A Mugumo tree is sacred among the Kikuyu, our ancestors used to worship under it. When it falls, it communicates a strong message,” he had said, adding that among the Kikuyu ethnic group it symbolised the ascent of young leaders.

After the results were announced on Mar. 9, he said: “A margin of over (one million) votes is a validation that the fig tree did not fall for nothing. It was a sign that the time had come for younger politicians to take over.”

The elections, while characterised by tension and fears of a repeat of the post-election violence that rocked this East African nation in 2007-2008, was also a scramble for the youth vote.

Government statistics indicated that 60 percent of the 14 million registered voters were youths, and politicians realised that they could not afford to ignore them.

In fact, many of the candidates tried to adopt Sheng, a modified language spoken by young people in Kenya, in order to make inroads into this bloc of voters.

“Sheng is not just a language, it is an identity for youths, and politicians know that it is the easiest and quickest way to connect with them,” Kelvin Okoth, executive officer at Go Sheng, a social enterprise that uses Sheng to celebrate Kenya and build national unity, told IPS.

Among the slogans developed by the enterprise was “Kura Yangu Sura Yangu”, which means “My Vote, My Future”.

“Politicians were simply trying to create an emotional connection with youths. It’s just like the reggae culture – you may have to adopt certain things in order to identify with it,” Peter Otondo, a political analyst, told IPS.

Mike Mbuvi, popularly know as “Sonko”, Sheng for a rich man, joined the crop of young leaders when he became the Makadara Constituency’s member of parliament in the country’s 2010 by-elections. He was 35.

“Youths call him Sonko because of his wealth, and he saw the wisdom of running with the name,” Otondo said.

On a ballot, only people’s legal names are used. So Mbuvi legally changed his name.  He is now known as Mike Mbuvi Sonko.

But it is not merely his nickname that guaranteed his popularity. “You will never see Sonko without his trademark gold rings, necklace and trendy hairstyles, which include him shaving his head and having the word peace sprayed on it,” Otondo added.

Sonko was even kicked out of parliament in 2011 for wearing sunglasses and earrings. He was one of the front-runners for the Nairobi County Senate seat in the 2013 general elections and he won the post by a huge margin, many say, thanks to his youth appeal.

Member of parliament Rachel Shebesh also branded herself with a Sheng slogan. She opted for “Manzi wa Nai” – Sheng for a “Young woman from Nairobi.” A fashion and interior designer by profession, the 41-year-old has been labelled a sex symbol by the local media. Her adoption of the youth slang may have won her the Nairobi County Women’s Representative Seat in the recent election.

Even presidential candidate Peter Kenneth caused a buzz when he became the first politician to use a Sheng slogan “Tunawesmake” – “we can make it” – in his campaign. But while Kenneth may have focused his campaign around young people, it did not win him the election. He conceded defeat, placing fourth in the presidential poll.

Daniel Pius Kioko, a student of medicine and surgery at the University of Nairobi, and a first time voter, told IPS before the elections that he wanted to vote for those who identified with the youth.

“I will vote for a future that empowers the youth by providing capital and low-interest rates on loans,” he said.

He voted in Machakos County, Eastern Province, but said that it is still too soon to see if the candidates he voted for would empower youth like him.

“In terms of my expectations, I think it is still too early to call,” Kioko said, adding that he was waiting to see how politicians implemented their election promises.

Daniel Njoroge, 22, a first time voter in Nairobi County, Nairobi Province told IPS “the future looks much brighter than before.”

He too voted for those who identified with the youth. “I want to live in a country that empowers young people to be self-employed,” he said.

Young people played a considerable role in this election, according to Vincent Kimosop, chief executive office of local NGO International Institute of Legislative Affairs.

“Based on the demographics, this election was won by the youth vote. The youth understood that this country holds a brighter future for them because of the constitution,” he told IPS.

Kimosop based his assumption on the fact that voter turnout was 86 percent – the highest in Kenya’s democratic history – and that the youth accounted for a majority of those voters. However, detailed information on who voted will only be released in the coming months after an audit has been done.

“Based on the trends we have seen, we cannot ignore that the youth may have voted in large numbers but along ethnic lines,” he said.

Ethnic conflict surfaced in Kenya after the disputed presidential vote in December 2007, when an estimated 1,300 people were killed and at least 600,000 displaced. In the years since the violence, numerous NGOs and government organisations have attempted to bridge the country’s ethnic divide.

The country’s president elect also attempted to do so by choosing William Ruto as a running mate. Kenyatta is Kikuyu, and Ruto is Kalenjin. The two communities have shared a bitter, violent and painful past. However, both men are wanted for war crimes, perpetrated in the 2007-2008 post-election violence, by the International Criminal Court.

Otondo, the political analyst, said that young people, unlike the older generation, would support anyone who identified with them.

“Unlike the older generation, youths are not beholden to the bitter past that defines this country. They don’t know it, they don’t even care about it,” Otondo said.

*This story was produced in conjunction with the Heinrich Böll Foundation and appears in their Perspectives report.

Unknown to the Israeli government or the Israeli electorate, hundreds of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza took part in the recent Israeli elections by default thanks to an act of civil disobedience by Israeli peace activists.

Real Democracy, an initiative comprising thousands of Palestinians from the occupied Palestinian Territories and Israelis, decided that the undemocratic nature of Israel and its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory needed to be challenged.

One month prior to the elections the Real Democracy rebellion started on a Palestinian-Israeli Facebook page. Thousands of Palestinians and Israelis joined the initiative.

More than a thousand Israelis decided to give up their votes to Palestinians from the occupied territories in an act of protest against what the participants saw as the undemocratic nature of the Israeli elections and the United Nations system. Shimri Zamaret, 27, an Israeli researcher from Warwick University in the UK, was one of the founders of the Real Democracy movement.

“The idea started in the UK when people there decided to give up their votes to people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana to protest the stranglehold of Western powers in the UN over less powerful countries,” Zamaret told IPS.

“We decided to start a similar movement in Israel and Palestine. Palestinians live under a double apartheid system. The Israeli Parliament and the UN are based on inequality between citizens – and are therefore undemocratic. The UN Security Council is dominated by the five superpowers which won World War Two and is totally unrepresentative of the international community today,” Zamaret told IPS.

“Israeli citizens elect a government that controls Palestinians, but Palestinians cannot vote and do not have an independent state,” said Zamaret who was jailed for two years as a conscientious objector for refusing to serve in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

“Through the Israeli government (and the undemocratic Security Council), Israelis also have a de facto veto power over the UN Security Council system. Citizens do not have a direct voice in the United Nations, and the Palestinian government’s UN membership got vetoed,” said Zamaret.

“Palestinians therefore do not have any vote in the UN nor any control over their country. So undemocratic Israel’s monopoly of force is supported by undemocratic control over international institutions.”

Zamaret gave his vote to Omar Abu Rayan, a 19-year-old student from Hebron who ironically decided the best move was not to use the vote but to ‘boycott’ the Israeli elections altogether despite a long debate with Israelis over using ‘his’ vote to make a difference.

“I appreciate the move by the Israeli activists to give voteless Palestinians a voice in the Israeli elections but I don’t think this would have made any difference, it wouldn’t have changed anything on the street. The peace parties in Israel are too small and don’t have enough influence. The no vote was a protest vote,” Abu Rayan told IPS.

“We aren’t expecting the Real Democracy initiative to make a big difference. It’s a symbolic gesture and only relevant as part of a larger campaign to de-legitimise Israel on an international level,” said Israeli freelance translator Ofer Neiman, who also gave up his vote.

“What we wanted to do was make a noise about the occupation and the treatment of Palestinians. We have discrimination even within Israel against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Real Democracy is part of a broader international movement, specifically the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

“Most of the Israeli activists are involved in other activist movements and we all believe that only international pressure on Israel through sanctions will help bring about the end of the occupation,” Neiman, who was kicked out of the IDF for his left-wing political views and was monitored as a student at university for activism against the occupation, told IPS.

Neiman gave his vote to Bassam Aramin from the West Bank village of Anata. “I am a Palestinian citizen, I live in East Jerusalem. I am 44,” said Aramin.

“I am a bereaved father – my 10 year-old daughter Abir was killed by an Israeli soldier on the 16th Jan, 2007, but I have no control over the Israeli government who sent the soldier there. I live under occupation. We Palestinians have no vote or veto in the UN Security Council or the government that controls us. That’s undemocratic.”

Aramin asked Neiman to use his vote for the left-wing Israeli party Hadash even though he is not a supporter of the party.

Palestinian activist Musa Abu Maria, from Beit Omar in the southern West Bank, is also a member of Real Democracy. He used the vote he was given to vote for leftist Haneen Zoabi, one of the few Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset or parliament.

“Many of the Palestinians who took part in the initiative wanted to support the efforts of our Israeli colleagues,” Abu Maria told IPS. (END)

“He who believes doesn’t fear”…re-elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hums a popular tune played with great intensity by his supporters. Indeed, faith is what Netanyahu badly needs right now as people showed just how little faith they have in him. “We’ll have coalition problems,” confides a Likud lawmaker.

Support for Netanyahu got him just enough seats in Parliament for his Likud party to keep him in office while a surging centrist vote inflated support for Yair Lapid, only a year ago a TV celebrity freshly converted to politics, and now king-maker, power-broker and potential game-changer.

“Those who voted for us chose normalcy, mutual trust, education and housing, care for the weak,” declared Lapid when it became clear that his Yesh ‘Atid (There’s a Future) was Israel’s second largest party.

“The state of Israel faces the most complex challenges,” warned Lapid. “The economic crisis threatens our middle class; Israel is isolated because of the diplomatic impasse.”

Two years ago, ‘The people demand social justice’ became the rallying call for middle-class Israelis trying against all odds to find a way of life that fulfils their expectation – normalcy. The protest subsided, but social grievances lingered.

Attentive to people’s demands, Lapid campaigned for reduction of the cost of living, including affordable housing for young couples; a more equal sharing of the defence burden by proposing to draft the ultra-Orthodox currently exempt from military service; and a return to peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Netanyahu chose to ignore those demands; he recycled old ideas. His unbending, unforgiving motto was ‘A strong Prime Minister for a strong Israel’. But a budget deficit of 10.5 billion dollars (4.2 percent of GDP) betrayed Israel’s vulnerability.

Just as he stood twice already as prime minister (in 1996 and 2009) before the Western Wall, Judaism’s most revered site, Netanyahu stood there again after he voted – as if he himself was the last wall against a division of Jerusalem.

He thought he would uphold his political stature if only he maintained a status quo of occupation in the West Bank and buttressed Israel’s fences and stockade against Syria, Egypt, and the Gaza Strip.

He refused to make the most of progress made during the Annapolis peace process (2007-8) by his predecessor Ehud Olmert, instead preferring to argue for starting peace talks all over again from scratch.

At the beginning of his term in May 2009, during his only meaningful policy address at Bar Ilan University, he agreed to the principle of a “demilitarised state” in Palestine. Then he consented, albeit reluctantly as a result of “proximity talks”, to a ten-month moratorium on settlement construction.

But instead of following the U.S. advice that he prolongs the freeze for an additional three months, he initiated a surge in settlement expansion in occupied East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank.

During his re-election campaign, apart from a self-declared record on security, the sole course of action he bragged about was the steps his government promoted to create a competitive environment in the cellular market which led to a tangible decrease in telecommunication fees.

Re-elected yet barely surviving, Netanyahu belatedly rephrased his guiding principles after his more difficult than expected re-election. Though “preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons” is still “first priority”, “the pursuit of peace is now our third one,” he promised. And, he vowed to redress social iniquities.

Post-electoral pledges aside, Netanyahu is already at work cobbling together a centre-right governing coalition that would include Lapid. But whether he excludes some of his natural allies – the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home or the ultra-Orthodox – remains to be seen.

Either way, a unilateral strike on Iran’s nuclear sites seems reduced to making the usual empty threats if to listen to Likud legislator Tsahi Ha-Negbi: “Netanyahu has a strong understanding that unless the world prevents a nuclear Iran, we’ll have to take the initiative.”

Israel’s public television news editor Uri Levy believes “there’s no difference between Right, Centre and Left – everyone knows Iran’s threat. So Netanyahu enjoys a consensus on whatever he’ll do on Iran. Obviously, it depends on what Iran will do.”

Will Netanyahu continue to manage the conflict with the Palestinians or strive to resolve it? Ha-Negbi is cautious: “An overwhelming majority of Israelis are waiting for a big compromise – if it’ll be met by the same understanding and historical compromise by the Palestinians.”

U.S. President Barack Obama can now afford a smile. As both leaders start their respective new term, Netanyahu will want an improvement of their relationship – if he puts together a moderate coalition.

Ha-Negbi predicts that it will be more difficult for Netanyahu now to root Israel in more of the same status quo and vacuum of initiatives.

If his first term provides an indication of his second-term performance, it will be worth examining the kind of coalition Netanyahu intends to forge in the weeks ahead. Left with no choice but the people’s choice, he’s reaching out to the Centre.

If he stays true to himself (as in ‘keen to survive’), Netanyahu will split up with some of the pro-occupation annexationist and religious Right and move towards the Centre and, maybe, towards a modicum of two-state peace leverage that would eventually split the land roughly down the middle.

Meanwhile, between the old ‘much ado about nothing’ Netanyahu who did barely nothing meaningful during his first term and the new Netanyahu who, while putting up his coalition together, is at his best manoeuvring in order to survive, pundits already foresee early elections.

A Likud-Beitenu supporter. Credit Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Jan 23 2013 (IPS)

As expected, Benjamin Netanyahu has been ensured another term in office. Against all expectations, he could have been defeated. Now, he faces uncertainty over the kind of governing coalition he will lead and thus the kind of policies he will carry out. And he faces a lingering question: can any prospective coalition last?

The initial result was astounding – floating around a tie between Netanyahu’s right-wing camp with 61 seats and his centre-left opposition with 59 seats in the Knesset parliament’s 120 seats.

So, addressing the Israel voter, the self-designate new prime minister decidedly put on a brave face of his own.

“I’m proud to be your prime minister. Once again, you’ve proven that Israel is an exemplary vibrant and dynamic democracy,” Netanyahu harangued his supporters at the Likud-Beitenu headquarters located on the metropolitan’s Exhibition Ground.

Results show that support for the joint Likud-Beitenu list of candidates Netanyahu headed has dropped dramatically, from its previous 42 seats to as few as 31.

Former TV star Yair Lapid, a newcomer in politics, stole the show. His centrist party Yesh ‘Atid (There’s a Future) has become the second largest, with 19 seats.

Empowered with a strong social programme focusing on cheaper housing for young couples, compulsory draft of religious students exempted from serving in the military and, in general, with an uncompromising fight against social iniquities, Lapid has suddenly emerged as the king-maker of any future sustainable coalition.

“Our responsibility is to form the largest possible coalition,” Lapid pledged during his party’s celebration.

Lapid’s vow was echoed by the prime minister-designate. “We must forge the largest possible coalition and, I am in the process of fulfilling this mission,” promised Netanyahu barely two hours after the exit polls.

“It won’t be easy,” predicts Uri Levy, news editor at Israel’s public television. “He’ll have to compromise, change his way of thinking.” Netanyahu is known to be adverse to change.

Election Day seemed auspicious. Flanked by his two sons and his wife, the incumbent Netanyahu was one of the first Israelis to cast a ballot for his Likud-Beitenu list of candidates.

Since he had called for early elections, Israelis were made to believe by opinion polls what Netanyahu himself was made to believe – his re-election for another term at the helm was a certainty.

“He’s obviously not very happy with what happened,” is Levy’s understatement. “He expected a lot more mandates.”

The politically savvy Netanyahu made a beginner’s mistake.

First, by merging his right-wing Likud list with the more right-wing Israel-Beitenu party, he alienated supporters who dislike either one of the two parties.

Then, he harassed the further to-the-right Naphtali Bennett because polls, which he’s known to check compulsively, predicted that Bennett’s Jewish Home party which caters to settlers’ interests would enjoy unprecedented support – though it didn’t. There too the opinion polls were misleading.

Albeit a bright and sunny Election Day, it’s neither a bright future nor a sunny political horizon which got Netanyahu re-elected, but fear – fear of a third Palestinian Intifadah uprising; fear of fallouts from the bloody civil war raging in neighbouring Syria; fear of Iran’s nuclear programme.

Netanyahu is adept at playing those fears. Hence, his opening remarks at the start of the last cabinet meeting two days before Election Day. “The problem in the Middle East is Iran’s attempt to build nuclear weapons, and the chemical weapons in Syria,” he warned.

He added: “History won’t forgive those who allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. This was and remains the main mission facing not only myself and Israel, but the entire world.”

His campaign was as dull and dormant as the political status quo he has prudently maintained during his first term.

Except for a ten-month freeze on settlement construction and one brief encounter with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2010, he has made no peace moves towards the Palestinians.

He launched a brief military operation on Hamas in the Gaza Strip in November and suffered a stinging defeat at the UN ten days later when the General Assembly voted by overwhelming majority to upgrade Palestine to “non-member observer state”.

He sounded the alarm against Iran’s nuclear programme; threatened unilateral military action; yet refrained from committing himself to both his own red line and deadline.

Making national security and national strength the twin themes of his campaign, Netanyahu underestimated the lack of social security felt by a middle class weakened and pressured by his ultra-liberal economic policy.

Netanyahu ignored the fear shared by a majority of Israelis of a socio-economic downfall, an anxiety so apparent one-and-a-half years ago when half a million demonstrators descended to the street and demanded social justice.

“The election results provide an opportunity for change for the benefits of all our citizens,” now reluctantly retorts the champion of unbridled liberalism.

Netanyahu won and lost the elections at the same time. He won because Israelis fear change; he almost lost because they strongly feel for change. (END)

Belarusians will vote for a new, but still regime-controlled parliament on Sep. 23. At least those who do not respond to calls for boycotting the poll.

The opposition is far from united in their positions on the election: some are campaigning, some boycotting, others plan to pull out right before voting day. But all are agreed that the election process is being rigged.

The seats, dissidents believe, will again be distributed according to the will of president Alexander Lukashenko who has ruled the nation of 10 million since 1994, earning the title “Europe’s last dictator”. The parliament in Belarus, as in most autocracies, has in any case very little say.

The election campaign started Aug. 22. The registration process ended the same day. Every fourth contender has been denied the right to run.

The election commissions registered most opposition candidates, but banned the most popular – on the ground of alleged irregularities in their financial disclosure, or claims that some of the signatures on their supporters’ lists were forged.

“Registration has been denied to those who would run till the end with a fair chance to win,” analyst Valery Karbalevich tells IPS.

Among the excluded are Aleksander Milinkevich, leader of For Freedom movement, a former Lukashenko rival in the presidential race, Anatol Liaukovich, former leader of the Belarusian Social-Democratic Party and Mikhail Pashkevich from ‘Tell the Truth!’.

Some popular dissidents are still in jail, like Mikola Statkievich who was sentenced for six years for “driving riots” on Dec. 19 2010 – the day of the rigged presidential election. An estimated 20,000 protesters assembled in the main square of capital Minsk on that day, leading to a massive crackdown against opponents of the regime.

Some opposition members cannot run because of their suspended sentences. Others fled abroad, such as Ales Mikhalevich, another presidential candidate, who was arrested and charged for organising riots.

Mikhalevich was released after two months in jail and said he and other political prisoners had been tortured. He escaped the country soon after, and has been granted political asylum in the Czech Republic.

This has not deterred him from trying to run for parliament. Members of the civic initiative ‘Freedom for Mikalai Statkevich and other political prisoners’ put forward candidatures of Statkievich and Mikhalevich. But the concerned election commission derided the move as “PR action aimed at gaining them prominence,” and said “there is no legal ground” to nominate them.

IPS asked Ales Mikhalevich whether he believes the opposition will manage to enter parliament at all. “Probably not,” he said. “The mechanism of vote rigging is well oiled. To quote Joseph Stalin: ‘It’s not the people who vote that count; it’s the people who count the votes’.”

Among 68,945 members of the election commissions charged with vote counting less than 0.1 percent are from the opposition, fewer than in the last parliamentary election in 2008. The 279 registered candidates then included 70 critics of the regime – none of who gained a seat.

But Mikhalevich says boycotting would be a mistake. “The Opposition should run to show that our candidates are of better quality than those of the regime.” The Lukashenko administration has put forward mostly elderly officials and security apparatus members.

Independent opinion polls give the president 25-35 percent of support, mostly among villagers and pensioners. But that does not mean that the rest are ready to support opposition, let alone fight the regime.

Interest in the election is close to zero. “None of my friends plan to go to the ballot,” Alexei, a 26-year-old doctoral student from Minsk told IPS. “Not because we are boycotting; we just don’t care about politics. This election is not going to bring any change.”

Divisions in the opposition movement are playing further into the hands of the regime.

“By persecuting some opponents while offering preferential treatment to others, Lukashenko is skillfully playing his critics,” said Mikhalevich.

Although confident of victory, Lukashenko still seems to be nervous, mostly over the prospect of widespread boycott.

In a speech Sep. 1 he criticised those who shun electoral confrontation. “Had it been the actual opposition, they would have struggled to the very end for power, for the nation’s interests,” he said. “But this is the fifth column, they act for the benefit of certain powers, some of which are located outside our country.”

Another sign of the regime’s nervousness are recent arrests of administrators of political social media groups – especially those calling for boycott.

On Aug. 30 law enforcement officers in Minsk and Vitsebsk detained four moderators of two pro-opposition groups. One of them had said bluntly, “We’ve had enough of Lukashenko” – on the Russian social network VKontakte.ru.

Investigators physically abused the moderators in a bid to obtain the password of the group they administer. “I was taken to the living room and tortured for an hour for the password. They hit me in the head, chest and stomach,” Pavel Yeutsikhiyeu reported.

Among them, Yeutsikhiyeu and Andrey Tkachou got five and seven days in jail, respectively, on charges of petty hooliganism. Others were released after a few hours.

The human rights group Viasna reported on Aug. 31 that access to the pro-opposition news websites Charter97 and BelPartizan had been blocked. Much of the content was removed.

“As usual, the regime is preparing for the elections with an all-out crackdown,” Reporters Without Borders declared. “The judicial harassment of journalists and Internet users critical of the government has just one aim – to keep them under pressure and make them feel permanently threatened.”

The authorities are meanwhile engaged in building pro-government websites, some defaming opposition members. None has gained much popularity.

Many people believe Lukashenko will stay in power for the next two decades, then hand the government to his son Kola, now eight years old.

Mikhalevich predicts “a revolt inside the state apparatus which might open the doors of change.

“To me a Ceasusescu scenario seems probable,” he said, referring to Romanian head of state Nicolae Ceausescu who was overthrown and executed following a televised two-hour court session in 1989.

“I believe Belarusians have already grown to democracy,” he said. “They just don’t want to fight for it.”

The death of President John Atta Mills will have a sobering effect on national politics in the months leading up to Ghana’s December 2012 election, according to the Executive Secretary of the West Africa Network for Peace, Emmanuel Bombandey.

He said the event will likely quell the inter-party aggression characteristic of Ghanaian politics, and will not lead to instability or violence.

That, according to some experts, is a success story in itself.

“In the last couple of years, transitions have been a problem in many African countries, and they still are,” the executive director of Ghana’s Institute for Democratic Governance, Emmanual Akwetey, told IPS.

He noted examples from Rwanda, Malawi, and Nigeria, where the deaths of political leaders have lead to violence.

“For a country that has a past in military interventions and political instability … there is nothing like a power vacuum, especially at the very top,” he said.

“Somebody might act – out of nervousness or opportunism.”

Flags fly at half-mast in Kumasi. President John Dramani Mahama has declared one week of mourning to commemorate the death of President John Atta Mills. Credit: Portia Crowe/IPS

In Ghana, however, Vice President John Dramani Mahama was sworn in as president within several hours of Mills’ passing on Jul. 24.  While some questions have been raised as to who will become the flag bearer of the ruling party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), and how the selection will be made, Professor Kwame Ninsin, a political science lecturer at the University of Ghana, said this would not create a power vacuum.

“I don’t think it’s insurmountable… This is a situation which I’m sure the leadership of the party is capable of handling effectively,” he said.

He added that the party’s success rests on more than the face of its leadership.

“Elections are made or unmade also by the organisational capacity of the party concerned, and I would like to believe that the NDC is adequately prepared to support its presidential candidate to win an election.”

Stability Rooted in Successful Institutions

For the most part, said WANEP’s Bombandey, Ghana’s transition has been considered a success story, attributable mainly to the strength of its institutions.

“I do not expect any form of instability and this should attest to the governance of the country and constitution – that it is working and working very well,” he told IPS

“We are going to go on to peaceful presidential elections,” he added.

According to Ninsin, even the military has been “professionalised” in the years since Ghana’s 1981 uprising, and poses no threat to the nation’s stability.

“If there were to be any security threat, that would have come up in the early hours of the announcement of the death of the president. But, the transition process occurred smoothly.”

Akwetey also attributed the relatively smooth political transition to the stability of the country’s emerging democratic institutions.

“We have matured out of our struggles – the military, the authoritarian governments, the political fights,” he said.

“Solemn and sad as the occasion was, it was also gratifying to know that we… know how to go forward and get on with life.”

He added: “We were able to demonstrate to the world that we take our constitution seriously.”

According to Akwetey, the importance of procedure and order is deeply rooted in Ghanaian culture.

“Even in traditional systems, we are a people who procedure is deeply engrained in. It’s like a genetic code,” he told IPS.

Kofi Owusu, an award-winning journalist and head of Kumasi’s Ultimate Radio station, said that such traditional institutions, as well as more recent democratic ones, could contribute to a peaceful transition period.

“By custom, Ghanaians respect the dead. They want to pay homage to the dead person and that’s why Akufo Addo, the opposition (New Patriotic Party) leader, suspended his campaign to mourn along with Ghanaians,” he told IPS.

He said this has created a “lull” in the usual squabbling, and added, “Ghanaians being who they are, they’re going to observe that out of respect.”

He was unsure how long the lull would last.

A Hiatus from Hostilities

Owusu described the state of political discourse in Ghana prior to Mill’s demise.

“The debate was just vicious,” he said. “The stakes were so high, people seemed to hang their entire livelihood on who emerged as president.”

But Bombandey said that the president’s passing will serve as a reminder to Ghanaians of their common identity, and deter political parties from resuming their hostile discourse after the period of mourning.

“As the elections get closer, we will fall back into intense political activity, once the president is laid to rest. But my assessment is that people will be reminded that we need not go back to the high level of political rhetoric that we were experiencing previously,” he told IPS.

Owusu also predicted a shift in the nature of political discourse in the months following Mills’ death.

“Now the man who was at the receiving end of the political criticism is gone,” he said.

“Suddenly you can’t attack him anymore, so what do you do? It’s believed that it will tone down the hot exchanges; the acerbic tone will be considerably reduced towards elections,” he added.

He also noted that some leaders have begun to view the tragedy as an occasion to strengthen national unity.

“Some are even calling it an opportunity to unite the country ahead of elections,” he said.

Bombandey said members of parliament have already demonstrated a considerable sense of unity. Each party has expressed solidarity with the government and with the grieving family, and, he predicted, this unity could persist in the days leading up to the national election.

“I think there will be a new sense of decency in the political discourse and more concretely, this will be good in the sense that we might see more issues being talked about, and less political insults and bickering,” he told IPS.

He said he would welcome such a change of focus.

Emmanuel Biandjui Diffi, 40, stands outside Abidjan's main prison, where he was held for six months earlier this year. Credit: Robbie Corey-Boulet/IPS

By Robbie Corey-Boulet
ABIDJAN, Jul 26 2012 (IPS)

Eliane Negui knew just what to do when she got word that a group of inmates had escaped from Abidjan’s main prison, MACA, earlier this month. After all, the 24-year-old, who has lived across a dirt road from the facility for nine years, had witnessed the same scenario just two months before. 

“Whenever there is an escape we are always running into our rooms and closing the doors,” she said in a recent interview with IPS from her stand outside the prison’s main entrance where she sells fried bananas. “Whenever there is an escape the guards are shooting, so we enter our rooms so as not to be hurt or killed.

Twelve inmates escaped from the prison that day, eight of whom were soon caught. The total paled in comparison to the earlier escape, on May 4, when about 50 inmates broke free from the facility, prompting a statement of concern from Côte d’Ivoire’s United Nations mission.

This West African nation is still rebuilding after six months of post-election violence sparked by the November 2010 election, when former President Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after losing to current President Alassane Ouattara. During the violence, the country’s 33 prisons were emptied, and infrastructure and equipment was largely destroyed.

Prisons began re-opening in August 2011, and 31 are now operational. But the recovery has been marred by a rash of prison breaks. Since August, there have been 17 separate escapes involving about 250 prisoners, according to Francoise Simard, chief of the U.N.’s rule of law section.

The problems dogging the country’s prisons mirror larger problems with the security sector — especially when it comes to personnel. Complaints about prison conditions also highlight room for improvement in the country’s post-conflict recovery.

Prior to the violence, which claimed some 3,000 lives, prison guards alone provided security at the country’s penitentiaries. These guards were armed, but there was a shortage of weapons and not all were functional, Simard told IPS.

When prisons began reopening in August, the Republican Forces of Côte d’Ivoire (FRCI), the national army, was the only security force allowed to have weapons. Soldiers began to work alongside prison guards.

More than one year after the conflict ended, prison guards are still unarmed. “The current government is very reluctant to give weapons to prison guards,” Simard said.

This reluctance underscores the lack of trust among the different security forces. Because the number of prison guards nationwide nearly doubled during Gbagbo’s 10-year tenure, there is a perception — whether accurate or not — that most guards are loyal to the old regime.

“There is a suspicious atmosphere in the prison,” said Stephane Boko, a supervisor at MACA Prision in Abidjan, told IPS. “The power no longer rests with the prison guards because they are considered to be pro-Gbagbo.”

A similar division has been evident in the broader security sector. The FRCI is largely composed of forces loyal to Ouattara, including leaders of the Forces Nouvelles rebel group, which controlled northern Côte d’Ivoire when the country was partitioned from 2002 to 2010. The government has long been wary of police and gendarmes, and in some parts of the country — notably the volatile western region — the FRCI remains the only security force with access to weapons, meaning it has taken the lead on general policing.

Recently, though, police and gendarmes have been re-armed in some places, and they now have a permanent presence in the prisons. Under a policy established after the May escape, five police officers and five gendarmes are supposed to be posted in each facility, Simard told IPS.

The presence of multiple security forces in each facility can sometimes lead to a lack of coordination. Earlier this year, for instance, some 93 prisoners were able to escape from a facility in Agboville, a town located roughly 80 kilometres north of Abidjan. In the three days leading up to the escape, Simard said, no security forces showed up to guard the prison.

Boko and other staff at MACA said they believe responsibility for protecting Côte d’Ivoire’s prisons should be returned to the guards. But Serges Kouame, head of communications for the Justice Ministry, said after the prison break earlier this month that a central command center was being established to respond to prison escapes, and that it would involve the FRCI, guards, gendarmes and the police.

Conditions

Meanwhile, concerns persist about conditions facing Côte d’Ivoire’s inmates. The national prison system was dramatically overcrowded prior to the post-election violence, with more than 12,000 prisoners crammed into facilities that have a total capacity of about 5,500, according to the U.N.

The current prison population is much lower – 5,945 as of Jul. 20 — but it recently surpassed the total capacity and is rising by the week. Though Simard noted that “the situation is not as dramatic as it was before with overcrowding,” she said that certain aspects of detention conditions — among them access to food — remain problematic.

The U.S. State Department addressed poor prison conditions in its most recent Human Rights Report for Côte d’Ivoire. Though the report took note of some improvements under Ouattara, it said food provision remained “inadequate.”

This was the main complaint of Emmanuel Biandjui Diffi, a 40-year-old who was held in MACA for six months since January after he sold a plot of land to two different people.

“The conditions were OK, but the quality of the food was very poor,” he told IPS. “There was nothing in the soup – no meat and no fish.”

Diffi also complained about the prison’s policy of feeding inmates just once a day at around 2pm, something Simard said that the U.N. was pushing the government to remedy.

Diffi said the general atmosphere inside the prison was tolerable. “We were living normally,” he said. “We could play football. Some of us were working as tailors. Most of us were spending a lot of our time praying.”

But he singled out one problem that highlights just how far Côte d’Ivoire has yet to go in getting its institutions back on track: prolonged pretrial detention, something the Ouattara government has previously blamed on “a lack of judicial capacity,” according to the U.S. State Department.

More than anything, Diffi said, this issue, and the impression it left of a system that was broken, was fueling desperation within MACA’s walls.

“Most of the people in there have not been prosecuted,” he told IPS. “Some are charged, but many are not. They want to go out. They want to be released. And so they are asking for judgment.”

At prayer in Tripoli. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS.

By Mel Frykberg
TRIPOLI, Jul 10 2012 (IPS)

Libyans appear to be putting their hopes in Mahmoud Jibril’s liberal National Forces Alliance (NFA) to cement a coalition and build bridges between Libya’s fractious militias. Many believe the party can also unite other ideologically opposed political parties, and both opponents and supporters of former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Jibril’s relatively secular NFA, a coalition party comprising approximately 40 groups, appears poised for victory following a strong voter turnout Saturday and Sunday in Libya’s first democratic elections in nearly 50 years.

In all, 130 political parties and 2,500 individual candidates took part in the historic elections, with 80 seats of the National Conference set aside for party nominees and 120 for directly elected individuals in what will form the new 200-seat parliament.

Jibril’s victory has bucked a trend in the Arab spring in that his NFA coalition has surged ahead of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Justice and Reconstruction Party (JRP), which many analysts had thought, along with the Islamist Al Watan party, would follow a regional trend and put Islamists ahead.

But despite the NFA’s strong showing, Islamist candidates could still win ground when the 120 seats set aside for individual candidates are counted over the next few days.

Jibril has reached out to his opponents and called for a national coalition. Despite the grand mufti Sheikh Sadik Al-Ghariani issuing a fatwa against the NFA, and a public edict warning Libyans against voting for secularists, the JRP is reportedly considering Jibril’s offer.

Jibril also appears to have the respect of both former opponents of Gaddafi and those who fought against him.

“Jibril is well educated and has international experience. He is the best man to lead Libya at the moment,” Majdi Shatawi, 29, a teacher who was a supporter of Gaddafi, and who believes the revolution was a mistake, told IPS.

On the opposing end of the political spectrum, Khaled Hamsha, 21, a policeman in crutches from a bullet wound to the leg, who fought with rebels against Gaddafi, also believes Jibril’s NFA is the best choice.

“Jibril is an intelligent businessman. He is honest and politically experienced. He gave a lot of his own money to the revolutionaries to help them overthrow Gaddafi even though he used to be part of Gaddafi’s government.”

Jibril graduated in economics and political science from Cairo University in 1975, before earning a master’s degree in political science in 1980 and a doctorate in political science in 1985 from the University of Pittsburgh in the U.S. where he then taught strategic planning for several years.

From 2007 to early 2011, he served in Gaddafi’s government as head of the National Planning Council and of the National Economic Development Board, but swapped sides during the civil war and was appointed head of the interim National Transitional Council (NTC).

His support for the revolutionaries, and his support base of former Gaddafi supporters might make Jibril the ideal candidate to bridge the political divides of the bloody revolution, but some also see him as a switchcoat opportunist.

Some local media reports say that former revolutionaries plan meetings across Libya to protest that Jibril has “stolen their revolution.”

Former rebel fighter Suheil al Lagi told IPS that many of the former rebels were dissatisfied with Jibril and the NTC. “We didn’t give our lives and blood to be ruled by the corrupt and greedy leaders we have now. If things continue they way they are, we will be forced to take up arms again.”

Former fighters accuse the government of being nepotistic and reserving government jobs and diplomatic positions for cronies.

Jibril also faces problems from federalists wanting greater autonomy in Libya’s east. The federalists have been behind a spate of violent attacks against government offices and property over the last few weeks. A helicopter was shot down, elections offices were torched, and several oil wells forced to stop pumping oil.

Libyan security forces are often outgunned and outpowered by the militias which still control swathes of the country, and who are able to mobilise faster than the security forces.