ANTANANARIVO,

Ousted Madagascar leader Marc Ravalomanana has rejected sharing power with the new army-backed president in a move likely to entrench the deadlock between the two camps.

Tensions have heightened this week on the Indian Ocean island as pro-Ravalomanana supporters defied a government ban on public protests and continued their attempts to hold near-daily gatherings in the capital Antananarivo.

“They broke the law and carried out a coup d’etat that was condemned by the entire international community,” Ravalomanana said in a statement late on Wednesday.

Last week, he told Reuters that he was open to sharing power with Andry Rajoelina, Africa’s youngest president, who has accused Ravalomanana of being a dictator.

Analysts say Ravalomanana’s statement deepens the impasse as the international community seeks a constitutional way out of the crisis, which saw 135 people killed in clashes from January to March and hit the $390 million-a-year tourism sector.

“A power sharing deal seems the only way of the crisis, but the question is whether power will be shared by Ravalomanana and Rajoelina,” said Edward George of London’s Economist Intelligence Unit.

George said that the shift in position could reflect a sense of growing international support or a change in mood at home.

TEAR GAS

Security forces fired tear gas and warning shots on Thursday to disperse a gathering crowd of Ravalomanana followers, sending people running through the streets.

This week, two people were killed in the capital when security forces and anti-government demonstrators clashed, igniting fears of a return to violence on island.

Ravalomanana, who insists he remains the legal head of state despite stepping aside last month, said he would work with all legitimate parties to haul the island out of the crisis.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), African Union (AU) and France, Madagascar’s former colonial ruler, have all branded Rajoelina’s takeover a coup.

Ravalomanana says he will return to Madagascar in the coming weeks — a move which risks stoking political frictions and inciting further violence, experts say.

Currently in exile in southern Africa, Ravalomanana has been on the road to drum up support from regional leaders — including Swaziland, South Africa and Botswana.

Rajoelina’s government says elections will be held in October 2010 once a new electoral code and constitution are drawn up. The international community says that is too late.

source.nation.ke

Participants at the anti-racism conference in Switzerland seemed to lack a clear unity of purpose, with only a few making relevant contributions. HENRY GOMBYA reports from Geneva.

The United Nations Conference Against Racism (WCAR), which ends in Geneva, Switzerland, today, will perhaps best be remembered for the walk-out by Western delegates and demonstrations outside the meeting hall.

The five-day conference, which opened on Monday at the UN headquarters, was organised to evaluate the progress achieved so far towards the goals set by the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance in the South African city of Durban in 2001.

However, it seems that Africa will gain little from Durban II� as it is also known � if the contribution of delegates from the continent is anything to go by. Delegates from Africa largely glossed over the main issues, with only a few making any serious contributions.

Among the notable contributors was Kenya’s Assistant Minister for Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs, Mr William Cheptumo, who warned that the current global economic crisis is posing severe challenges to the most vulnerable sectors of society.

Speaking shortly before the conference adopted a 16-page document re-affirming its pledges to combat racism, Mr Cheptumo said it was regrettable that eight years after the first summit on racism in Durban, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance continue to thrive.

Cheptumo was among the few delegates who came out to say that there had been little progress among member states with regard to the elimination of racism since the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action was adopted in 2001. He said the international community needed to work together to undo the damage caused by past injustices. This conference should send a clear message that the international community is determined to eradicate the vestiges of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance, he said.

Call for willpower

Mr Cheptumo was supported by the Libyan deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Abdulati Alobidi, who said that lack of political will by the international community had made it difficult to end the scourge of racism.

He, too, pointed out that despite international efforts to combat racism, the objectives of the Durban Conference in South Africa in 2001 are yet to be met, adding that the fight against racism called for willpower on the part of the international community, as well as the implementation of genuine programmes to counter the racist behaviour.

People of African origin were exploited for centuries by whites, who did not accept their dignity, Alobidi said. Then, demanding reparations and apologies on behalf of the people of Africa, the assistant minister said such demands would help avoid a repeat of racism. He said Libya was calling on all states that had been colonised to seek compensation and apologies from their former colonisers.

Alobidi, who said it was unacceptable for anyone to liken Islam to terrorism, called for the inclusion of a paragraph calling for reparations in the outcome document, but his appeal fell on deaf years. Instead, the document stated that slavery, the slave trade, apartheid, colonialism and genocide must never be forgotten.

No mention of recent events

Generally, the delegates agreed that racism has often led to war, but there was no mention of the problems faced, for example, by the people of Darfur in Sudan, where thousands have lost their lives as a result of racial discrimination. Nor was there any mention of the relatively more recent events in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe, where lives were lost because of xenophobia and intolerance.

Meanwhile, South African Foreign Minister Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma only made a passing remark about the xenophobic attacks that took place in her country last year. She did not say what her country had done to make sure such incidents never occurred again and whether the relatives of those affected had received any compensation, or even an apology.

Interestingly, Dr Zuma had a lot more to say about Rwanda. Commenting on the 1994 genocide in that country, she said that “Propaganda and incitement by Radio Mille Collines, other media and politicians were to blame for the Rwanda massacres. We remain concerned at the surge of incidents relating to incitement to racial and religious hatred.�In this regard, we should learn from the lessons of the past, she said.

Progress in US ignored

She also talked of lack of basic services such as water, energy, housing, health care facilities and sanitation.

It is notable that while delegates said little about the suffering in different parts of Africa as a result of discrimination and intolerance and kept congratulating each other on the “tremendous progress” made towards the elimination of racism since Durban I, they made no mention whatsoever of the progress made in the United States, where, for the first time ever, a black man, Barack Obama, was elected president in November last year.

BANGKOK,

Opposition politicians grilled Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on today in a special parliamentary debate called by the government to find a way out of the country’s intractable political crisis.

The 44-year-old Abhisit defended his crackdown on violent street protests last week, which opposition members said smacked of tactics used by the ruling generals in neighbouring Myanmar.

In this region the use of automatic rifles by soldiers to control the crowd can be found in Myanmar, which is a dictatorship, said Chavalit Wittayasuth of the main opposition Puea Thai Party.

The party, stacked with allies of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who lives in exile after being ousted in a 2006 coup, demanded Abhisit lift a state of emergency in Bangkok, now in its 11th day, and call new elections.

But with pro-Thaksin red shirts planning more protests outside the capital this weekend, Abhisit is under pressure from the military to keep the emergency decree in place.

The latest flare-up in Thailand’s four-year-old crisis has distracted the government at a time when the export and tourism-driven economy faces its worst year since 1998.

The Bank of Thailand said it expected the economy would shrink between 1.5 and 3.5 per cent this year because of the global financial crisis and political unrest.

Thai shares were down 1.2 per cent after the announcement and economists feared another downward revision by the central bank if the political chaos drags on. Carl Rajoo, an economist at Singapore-based Forecast, said there was some hope for investors that a political solution may still be worked out.

However, if �politicking continues in the next quarter, a downward revision by the BoT will almost be guaranteed, given the fact that political uncertainty is seen as a severe risk by investors, and any delay in arresting such fears will definitely delay the recovery process in Thailand, he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Abhisit said yesterday his government was consulting Asian leaders on a new date for a regional summit cancelled twice due to political unrest in Thailand.

We need to make our partners feel confident that they can meet safely, Mr Abhisit told reporters after a cabinet meeting.
He did not give details, but Foreign Ministry officials said the summit may be held in June on the southern resort island of Phuket, more than 860 km from the capital. Bangkok remains under emergency rule as the government tries to contain political violence. (Reuters)

source.nation.ke

The second round of voting is the biggest of the five phases

GUWAHATI, India,

Millions of Indians, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, voted peacefully on Thursday in the second stage of a month-long general election that could throw up a weak coalition.

Hundreds of thousands of police guarded some 200 million eligible voters across swathes of central and southern India, but no major violence was reported. A week earlier, 16 people were killed in Maoist violence in the first phase of voting.

The ruling Congress party-led coalition appears to lead against an alliance headed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but both may need the support of a host of smaller regional parties to win office.

Under armed guard, Singh cast his vote in Guwahati, the principal city of the northeastern state of Assam which was hit by a string of separatist bombs in the run up to the election.

Singh is the prime ministerial candidate for the Congress party, which has overseen an economic boom since coming to power in 2004. But the outlook for the next government is less rosy due to a yawning fiscal deficit just as the economy suffers a downturn.

There is also speculation that a group of smaller parties known as the “Third Front,” who are often seen as opportunist and an unknown quantity in government, could spoil the chances of the BJP or Congress.

At least 55 percent of eligible voters cast their ballots on Thursday, election officials said, compared with 62 percent in the first phase last week

The second round of polling, the biggest of the five phases, involved people from India’s rural heartland, the IT centre of Bangalore and some states where Maoist rebels are strong.

As rain fell, long queues of people formed at polling stations in Guwahati.

Violence

“There is no cause for fear and I have come here to vote on my own,” said Biren Barua, a mid-30s voter who waited to cast his ballot in Guwahati.

The rebels blasted a railway station and chopped down trees to block roads in the eastern state of Jharkhand early on Thursday. They briefly seized a train on Wednesday in a show of strength before releasing the passengers unharmed.

In the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, one person was killed and at least a dozen injured in separate political clashes, police said.

The staggered voting is to allow security forces to move around the country to curb any attempt to coerce an electorate more than twice the population of the United States.

The outcome of the election will be known on May 16. India’s elections are notoriously hard to predict and polls have been wrong in the past. Exit polls are banned for the election.

An array of castes, religions and ethnicities comprise the 714 million eligible voters in the world’s largest democratic exercise, where ancient ties still play a large role at the ballot box.

There is no single national issue in this election and the campaigning has been marked by personal attacks and rhetoric. Parties are wooing voters with populist measures such as food subsidies and a promise of better governance and security.

�

source.nation.ke