News from Africa

The Coup in Mauritania
Video from Al-Jazeera covering the aftermath of the coup.

US Suspends Humanitarian Aid to Mauritania
It is always the poor and defenceless that pay the price of others’ folly. The United States suspended more than $20 million in nonhumanitarian aid to Mauritania in the wake of the coup on Thursday and demanded a return to civilian rule. I think it important to denounce the coup but not to take away much needed aid from a resource rich but fundamentally poor country. I think it important at this point to examine what went wrong and how the West can assist Mauritanians in strengthening their fragile institutions. I prefer taking a longer view. Mauritanian took an important step with its elections in 2006 and 2007 but it faltered. Let’s help the country stand up again.

Worries in Ghana in Advance of Elections
Ghana votes on December 7, 2008 for a new President and Parliament. West Africa is inching forward towards a sustained transition to democratic governance but problems beset these nations. Institutions remain fragile and processes as yet not formalized. Systems are antiquated and require capital investment. A report today out of Accra points to disturbing irregualarties in voter registration in Ghana. From All Africa.

Independent observers and civil society groups in Ghana say voter registration, the first major step towards landmark general elections in December, is being marred by violence and irregularities.

In the north of Ghana supporters of the two main political parties – the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) – vandalised registration centres on 2 August and gun shots were heard in Tamale, the capital of the northern region, during voter registration.

The Media Foundation for West Africa, a press-freedom monitoring group, warned that five journalists covering voter registration in Tamale were attacked by supporters from both parties.

One of the journalists, Alhassan Abdul Ganiuw Brigandi, with local newspaper The Independent, was filing a report on the registration of underage voters allegedly transported to the voting station by NDC supporters.

On 6 August, one person sustained serious knife wounds and two people were arrested by the police in another clash in the Volta Region of southeastern Ghana.

“I am not surprised at the acrimony; it’s definitely a crucial election, but the parties must first protect the peace,” said Kwesi Amakye, a political science lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, in Accra.

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A few of the Obama Magazine Covers from January-July 2008

“I can imagine that folks need a break from politics and they didn’t really get one like they normally do,” Obama said, citing long primaries and the extended contest with Senator Clinton as the foremost cause of the overexposure that has left voters tired of him. “I think that the majority of people have been fed a constant stream of political chatter.”

That was Barack Obama when asked today about the Pew Poll that suggested that 48% of voters were seemingly tired of him already. His response was akin to “they are not tired of me, they are tired that Senator Clinton dragged out my coronation. Why didn’t the stupid bitch quit?”

To be fair it is not all the would be messiah’s fault. His cult of devotees turns many off. How does swallow a comment like this:

“Barack Obama is inspiring us like a desert lover, a Washington Valentino,” Lili Haydn wrote in the Huffington Post. “Couples all over America are making love again and shouting ‘Yes we can’ as they climax.”

Lili, sweetheart, seek therapy. Get a grip. I pity your partner Lili if you’re thinking of Obama when you climax. Personally, Obama has one of two effects on me. He either raises my blood pressure with his amorphous policy positions and frequent reversals, quicksand has more substance, or he makes me toss my cookies with his empty rhetoric out of some cultish revival. We are the ones that we have been awaiting for? Honestly, I am not waiting for anyone to save me. I am responsible for my own salvation, not some morally challenged, lacking experience politician from Hawaii via the south side of Chicago and a score of other transitory stops on his road to no where.

Obama is in trouble. He may yet win, there are still nearly three months to go where much can happen but he’s not off to a good start. A Gallup/USA Today poll showed McCain leading Obama by 49% to 45% among likely voters and tied among registered voters (within the margin of error). The cash-enfused Obama campaign has spent millions in battleground states like Florida, Missouri, Ohio and Michigan to little avail with polls in those states tightening or flipping. McCain now has a five point lead in Florida. Even in liberal Oregon, Obama is up but three and over in Massachusetts, Obama was up 23% and is now up 9% in just the past two months. Democrats running for the Senate are enjoying a 8-15 point advantage over Republicans even red states like Alaska and swing states like New Hampshire. But in the Presidential race Obama and McCain are in a statistical tie with trendline going against Obama. Over the past month, McCain has slowly but surely close a six point gap. Most of that has been really an erosion of support for Obama, not McCain picking up Independents. It is an actual switch of support from one camp to the other. Why? It has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton and everything to do with Barack Obama.

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Just for the record, Donna Brazile has worked on five Presidential campaigns. Apart from her first for Carter in 1976, she has lost all the others. While she is not “technically” working on the Obama campaign, she shamelessly advocated for Obama both on CNN in her role as a pundit and behind the scenes in her role as a superdelegate. Now comes word that Ms. Brazile is the source of friction in the DNC between the DNC and the gay community.

Hit the road, Donna.

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While polls show Obama with a large lead among gays for Obama, he leads McCain 60% to 17%, many in the gay community remain undecided and/or tepid supporters of Obama at best. But now there are signs of growing rift between the gay community and Democratic leadership.

From Politically Drunk:

In a story that the Main Stream Media has largely overlooked this summer, rumors are spreading of a growing rift between the Democratic Leadership and gay community. Although the DNC has tried to avoid the publicizing of the events that have occurred this summer, the rift and subsequent fallout is likely to occur prior to election day. A concern that the DNC and Obama campaign both share.

There are two events that occurred this summer that are creating problems for both the Obama campaign and DNC. First, Obama sparked limited outrage and raised questions among activists in the gay and lesbian community after reports surfaced that he was vetting Sam Nunn for the vice-presidential position. The gay and lesbian community was struck by the possibility that Obama would choose the architect of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy that has been in force within the armed services for the past 15 years.

The larger problem for the Democratic Party however, may be the fallout from the firing of Donald Hitchcock, a former DNC Director for Gay & Lesbian Outreach. After pushing for timetables for the inclusion of gay & lesbian delegates to the parties national convention. Talks apparently broke down in May amidst objections of by African-American leaders. Shortly after the hostilities between the African-American leaders, led by Donna Brazille, and Hitchcock broke out, Hitchcock’s partner launched public attacks against DNC leadership calling for the removal of Howard Dean. A short while thereafter, Hitchcock was abruptly fired.

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The irony is that when I was writing this post right before I was to publish it, the cease-fire broke down. It lasted two hours.

The Georgian government in Tbilisi has declared a unilateral ceasefire in the conflict with its breakaway republic of South Ossetia. Georgia’s minister for reintegration said Tbilisi wanted to avoid mass casualties. It follows days of shelling and skirmishes between the two sides. Georgia launched an attack on the rebel region of South Ossetia and clashes near the regional capital Tskhinvali left at least four dead.

Russian supports South Ossetia and Georgia is determined to hold onto the province. Georgia also faces a separatist movement in Abkhazia. It’s hard not to think that an all-out military confrontation is on the way.

Americans might remember Abkhazia from the Dannon yogurt commercial in the 1970s that featured several centenarians whose longevity was attributed to eating yogurt. Those centenarians were Abkhazians.

Georgia's Breakaway Regions

This is how far I had gotten when I went to double check the reports. As of now, the Georgian ceasefire in South Ossetia has collapsed and fighting is raging in the region. More from Al Jazeera below the fold.

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The John McCain campaign released a new ad this morning highlighting what former and present US Senators of the Democratic persuasion have to say about Senator McCain. It is a sixty second spot. The length allows me to believe that it can be used both on television and over the Internet but the McCain campaign noted that the ad is Internet-only.

The ad features comments from former Senator and current Obama campaign manager Tom Daschle, Senator Joe Biden, Senator Russ Feingold, DNC Chair Howard Dean plus Obama and Senator Clinton. While most of the video clips in the ad are taken from before the presidential election season, Obama’s comments were made less than two weeks before his official campaign kickoff and Clinton’s were from March of this year.

The Democrats responded angrily. Biden said “The John McCain of 2008 is not the maverick of 2000. On the most urgent national security challenges we face — Iraq, Iran and al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan — there is no daylight between [President] George Bush and John McCain ,” Biden said in a statement released from his Senate office. “He has embraced President Bush’s failed policies and will continue them. It’s unfortunate he’s changed so much in just eight years.”

“ John McCain a maverick? The John McCain of 2000 wouldn’t even consider voting for the John McCain of 2008,” Dean said. “ John McCain has changed: he’s taken the low road, leveling false, negative and misleading attacks against Barack Obama . John McCain is no more a maverick within the Republican Party than Dick Cheney is. He’s just more of the same.”

And so it goes.

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Protests in Caracas Today

Venezuelans are today taking to the street in Caracas to protest a ruling by the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ), the country’s Supreme Court that has been stacked by Chávez. The TSJ ruled yesterday that Article 105 of the Ley Orgánica de la Contraloría General de la República y del Sistema de Control Fiscal is constitutional. The article allows for Controller General of Venezuela to declare any citizen ineligible to run for political office based on whether that individual had at any time in past abused public funds. The opposition in Venezuela charges that the law is being used to disqualifed its candidates without charging the individuals of a crime but instead submitting them to a review process by Chávez’s Controller General. So far, over 250 Venezuelan candidates for office have been declared ineligible.

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Last year, Colombia began training Afghani police in anti-narcotics enforcement at the Espinal military base shown above. Now the government of Spain, which has a NATO mission in Afghanistan, is requesting the help of the Colombian government with more training for Afghani forces and has requested that Colombia do the training in Afghanistan. Colombia has sent an evaluation team to Kabul to meet with Afghani and NATO commanders. In addition to anti-narcotics training, Colombia would send personnel specialized in anti-mine and an engineering brigade.

Colombian Defence Minister Juan Manual Santos noted that the Colombian government had begun to consider post-conflict roles for Colombia’s well-trained military forces. Currently, Colombia contributes 500 peace-keeping troops to the United Nations’ mission in the Sinai. However, Colombian troops have not engaged in a foreign war since the 1950s when Colombia contributed the second-largest contingent to the UN mission in Korea. In Afghanistan, the risk of combat would be high. I personally support the move. The West needs to do more for Afghanistan.

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The word from Nouakchott, the capital of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is the country has largely accepted the military takeover. Apart from one demonstration against the coup, which the police broke up, the country is calm. Ousted President Sidi Cheikh Ould Abdallahi remains undre house arrest and there is no word yet as to whether he will be exiled or charged with some abuse of power. Mauritania gained independence in 1960 and has largely been ruled by military strongmen. So this for Mauritanians is nothing new. Nor are coups a new phenomenon. This marks the fourth successful coup, all bloodless, in the country’s history. There have also been a number of unsuccessful coups including a rather bloody in June 2003. The last coup in August 2005 led by Colonel Ely Ould Mohamed Vall ended the twenty-one year dictatorship of Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya

What was new for Mauritania was an adjustment to democratic life. While Mauritania has had elected Presidents before, those were under a one-party state with one man on the ballot. The elections of March 2007 followed both parliamentary and municipal elections in late 2006. The March 2007 elections were the first competitive multi-candidate elections in the country’s history. The election was won in a second round of voting by Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi and demonstrated a real level of growing political sophistication in Mauritania. Mauritania, which is a member of the Arab League, became just the second fully democratic country in the Arab world, the other is the Comoros.

In part, this government fell apart because of political in-fighting between the President and Parliament. The new military junta is promising “free and fair” elections. I assume that means competitive multi-party elections. Beyond political instability, Mauritania has its share of problems. It is a impoverished country of some three million people. Its largest export is iron ore. Tourism has been slow to development and has been setback by the murder of four French tourists by an Islamic fundamentalist group. The country has full diplomatic relations with Israel, only one of three Arab League Nations to do so.

From the UK Guardian:

Mauritania’s new ruling junta, which seized power in a coup yesterday, has promised to hold free and fair elections in the impoverished north-west African nation “as soon as possible”.

The military regime did not give a date or explain publicly its ousting of the president, Sidi Cheikh Ould Abdallahi, who was elected last year.

The president and his parliament had been at odds over corruption claims and Abdallahi’s policy of engaging with Islamic radicals.

The bloodless coup – heralded by troops on the streets of the capital, Nouakchott, and state TV and radio going off the air – was staged when Abdallahi fired the country’s top four generals, reportedly for supporting parliament. One of those sacked was Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the head of the presidential guard, who led the coup.

“We will engage in a dialogue with all the political parties and all civic institutions in organising these elections,” the junta said in a statement today. Until the elections, Mauritania will be governed by an 11-member military council.

Life in the former French colony, Africa’s newest oil-producing nation, has remained largely unaffected. In Nouakchott, shops, transport and public administration seemed to be operating normally.

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He hasn’t even been nominated yet and already many Americans are tired of hearing about his so-called exploits. Call it Obama Fatigue.

A new poll published by Pew Research Center points to a growing fatigue with Barack Obama that is setting in among the American public after his trip to the Middle East and Europe received around the clock media exposure. It seems too many cameras can be a problem too. For a fortnight, we here in the United States were simply bombarded with Obama.

Pew found 48% of those questioned said they had been hearing too much about the Democratic presidential candidate recently. Only 28% said they felt they had been hearing too much about his Republican rival, John McCain. There are also signs that the exposure was eroding favourable views of him among some voters, and that negative ads by McCain were also having an impact. More worrisome are the numbers while 67% of Republicans thought Obama was overexposed only 34% of Democrats thought Obama was overexposed. Here’s the kicker: 51% of Independents think Obama is overexposed. If half of Independents are already Obama fatigued, then that surely spells trouble. People just stop listening. They’ll tune him out.

As he has since January, this week, Barack Obama enjoyed much more visibility as far as the public was concerned than did John McCain. By a margin of 76% to 11% respondents in Pew’s weekly News Interest Index survey named Obama over McCain as the candidate they have heard the most about in recent days. But the same poll also shows that the Democratic candidate’s media dominance may not be working in his favor. Close to half (48%) of Pew’s interviewees went on to say that they have been hearing too much about Obama lately. And by a slight, but statistically significant margin – 22% to 16% – people say that recently they have a less rather than more favorable view of the putative Democratic nominee.

In contrast, if anything, Pew’s respondents said they want to hear more, not less about the Republican candidate. Just 26% in the poll said they had heard too much about McCain, while a larger number (38%) reported that they had heard too little about the putative Republican candidate. However, as for Obama, a slight plurality reports that recently they have come to have a less favorable view of McCain rather than a more favorable view of him – (23% to 18%).

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