Weekly Round-Up - IRINWA-304: 18-Nov-05
U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa
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WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Round-Up 304
12 - 18 November 2005
CONTENTS:
LIBERIA: President-in-waiting vows to revamp country
BURKINA FASO: Compaore wins new mandate in country's first multiparty
race
CHAD-SENEGAL: Former detainees recount harrowing moments in Habre's
prisons
COTE D IVOIRE: Peace efforts at standstill, deadlock over new prime
minister
BENIN: Cash-strapped government can't pay for poll
NIGER: Harvests good but pockets of severe food shortages remain
LIBERIA: President-in-waiting vows to revamp country
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf for now is trying to avoid the limelight, waiting
for the fraud allegations surrounding Liberia's election to be dealt
with so she can be officially confirmed as the next president and
Africa's first elected female head of state.
But after that, the 67-year-old Harvard-educated economist has no
intention of sitting quietly in the corner of the African leaders' boys
club. "I am a woman, hear me roar" was a popular anthem of her campaign
after all.
"I could bring thousands and thousands of my supporters onto the street
and they've been wanting to do that, but we wanted to show
responsibility," she told IRIN in an interview this week.
"When we tell our supporters 'Now is the time to claim victory' you will
see the rejoicing in the streets," she said, speaking at her beachside
home in the capital, Monrovia, where she has been holed up for most of
the past week.
"The election was a fine hour for Liberia and it should not be stolen by
these bogus charges of fraud."
The preliminary results from last week's presidential run-off put
Sirleaf, a former finance minister and long-term political activist on
59.4 percent, more than 18 points ahead of soccer star and political
novice, George Weah.
Although international observers signed off on the poll as being free
and fair, Weah, the former AC Milan and Chelsea striker, has alleged
mass fraud and electoral authorities are investigating a formal
complaint.
But Sirleaf is confident that she will be declared the winner and is
forging ahead with her plans to turn Liberia, a shell of a nation after
14 years of civil war, into one of West Africa's most prosperous.
"We want first of all to get the government machinery functioning again
and that means a restructuring of the civil service," she said.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50152&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA
See also:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50142&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50118&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=LIBERIA
BURKINA FASO: Compaore wins new mandate in country's first multiparty
race
After 18 years at the helm of Burkina Faso, President Blaise Compaore
has won a new five-year term, garnering a massive 80.3 percent of the
vote in the country's first multiparty presidential race.
Releasing the results of the 13 November poll, the head of the
Independent National Election Commission, Moussa Michel Tapsoba, said
Friday that the closest runner-up, opposition leader Benewende Stanislas
Sankara, won 4.94 percent of the vote.
Too divided to run a joint challenge against the 54-year-old former army
captain, the remaining 10 contenders scored between 0.31 percent and
2.61 percent each of the vote.
Compaore's ruling Congress for Democracy and Progress (CDP) party spared
no effort to secure victory for the head of state, who seized office in
a 1987 coup and later went on to win elections in 1991 and 1998,
boycotted by the opposition.
Campaign manager Salif Diallo this week estimated the cost of the
campaign in the world's third poorest country at 983 million CFA francs
(US $1.8 million).
The 1,500 observers present deemed the election fair.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50188&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=BURKINA_FASO
See also:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50089&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=BURKINA_FASO
CHAD-SENEGAL: Former detainees recount harrowing moments in Habre's
prisons
The night before he was to travel to Europe on a university scholarship,
Clement Abaifouta says he was jailed by agents of ex-Chadian leader
Hissene Habre. For the next four years, instead of attending lectures he
dug graves for fellow Chadians allegedly executed by Habre's police.
Abaifouta's crime? He was suspected of preparing to join a rebellion.
And when agents tried to force him to admit this, he refused. "And that
got me four years in prison."
He was in a cell of two or three square metres with at least 100 other
people, he told IRIN in the Senegalese capital, Dakar. "We hardly ate.
My family knew nothing of me; I knew nothing of them."
"In that prison, everything was aimed solely at breaking people down and
killing them."
He recalled one prisoner being shot when he tried to get some water,
"because he hadn't asked permission to drink."
Days after Senegalese authorities detained Habre - who is accused of
torturing and killing tens of thousands of people - former political
prisoners are encouraged that justice might be done but are holding
their celebration for the day Habre is actually judged.
For Abaifouta, Habre's freedom is excruciating.
He said since his detention he is chronically tired, often falls ill,
and cannot work for more than three or four hours at a time without
getting sick.
"Here I am, a broken man, and he is still free."
A Senegalese court is expected to decide within days whether to uphold
an international warrant for Habre's arrest and extradition issued by a
Belgian court in September. If the court rules in favour of extradition,
President Abdoulaye Wade would then have to sign an order to hand Habre
over.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50167&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CHAD-SENEGAL
See also:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50116&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CHAD-SENEGAL
COTE D'IVOIRE: Peace efforts at standstill, deadlock over new prime
minister
A UN bid to get peace efforts back on track in war-divided Cote d'Ivoire
are marking time after two weeks of feverish negotiations wound up this
week with rebel leaders rejecting all names on a list of possible new
prime ministers.
African Union chairman and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, working
on behalf of the international community, has been trying to find a new
prime minister acceptable to all parties to steer the country towards
disarmament and elections within a year.
But at talks on Thursday, New Forces rebels threw out four names
proposed by Nigerian mediators because their leader and favoured
candidate, Guillaume Soro, had failed to make the shortlist.
"We are surprised that our candidate is no longer on the list," rebel
spokesman Sidiki Konate told IRIN. "We reject this procedure. They can't
exclude us. We are an important player."
The appointment of a new head of government is key to resolving a
three-year standoff between rebels who hold the north of the country,
and the government of President Laurent Gbagbo, based in the southern
half of the divided country.
A series of peace deals have produced a succession of missed deadlines,
including a presidential election supposed to have taken place on 29
October.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50178&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=COTE_D_IVOIRE
See also:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50165&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=COTE_D_IVOIRE
BENIN: Cash-strapped government can't pay for poll
A continuing economic crisis in Benin has left the government without
funds to pay for presidential elections in March 2006, according to
Finance Minister Cosme Sehlin.
Unlike the heads of states of regional neighbours Chad, Burkina Faso and
Gabon, President Mathieu Kerekou has agreed to step down next March when
his second mandate expires.
But Benin's cash crunch could harm this gesture of democracy.
During parliamentary question time last week, Finance Minister Sehlin
confirmed that government books are in the red to the tune of US $57
million, with no means of raising the US $58 million more to pay for
elections.
"The budget is already in a deficit of 32.1 billion CFA [US $57m] and we
have been unable to identify sources of funding. Add to this the cost of
presidential elections in March 2006, this budget deficit will worsen to
64.7 billion CFA [US $115 million]," said Sehlin.
One-time coup leader turned elected president, Kerekou won his second
consecutive term in office in 2002 and under the constitution cannot
stand for a third term in office in March.
Marking his difference with other regional heads of state already in
office for more than two decades, the septuagenarian president has said
he will not change the terms of the constitution but will step down at
the end of his current mandate instead.
Sehlin did not rule out the possibility of a delay in the electoral
calendar, as a result of the economic crisis.
But a postponement of the poll would leave Benin in constitutional limbo
as there is no provision for failure of elections due to a lack of cash
- only the death or deposition of the incumbent president.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50107&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=BENIN
NIGER: Harvests good but pockets of severe food shortages remain
Good harvests in Niger are fuelling hopes the country will avoid the
disastrous food shortages of the past year, but the UN says about 13
percent of rural households still have dangerously low foodstocks and
little to no means to fall back on.
As Nigeriens struggle to bounce back from a food crisis that killed
thousands and affected some 3.5 million people, government officials,
aid and development organisations and donors are meeting this week in
the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to discuss how to stave off hunger in the
Sahel region.
"Everyone knows what must be done - we need to invest more in avoiding
such crises," Margareta Wahlstrom, UN Deputy Emergency Relief
Coordinator, told reporters in Dakar on Monday.
But any such move would require a long-term strategy, focused more on
development, she said.
The consultations will be the first time representatives of the
development and humanitarian aid sectors come together in a bid to
define and tackle the immediate and chronic causes of malnutrition in
the region. The talks "aim to minimize future food security crises
through promotion of regional sustainable poverty reduction," the UN
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a 10
November communique.
A 2004 locust invasion coupled with drought triggered the emergency this
year in Niger, and food shortages elsewhere in the region. But aid
officials say that deeper long-term problems make families
ultra-sensitive to the slightest disruptions in food supply.
Poverty is at the root, Wahlstrom said.
"In Niger, you had a very fragile system; when something happened to
disrupt the system people went very quickly from chronic to acute
malnutrition."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=50091&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGER
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