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Allegations of fraud and ballot stuffing have been raised by the opposition leaders, leading to their call for a demonstration on the inauguration day.
Critics have called it a stunt to invite sympathy. Yet Amuriat says campaigning without shoes is a protest and that those who do not get its symbolism are missing a point.
Uganda is due to hold a general election on January 14. Amuriat and another opposition candidate, Bobi Wine have had their rallies violently dispersed by security forces or been arrested.
In mid-November, scores of people were killed as security forces attempted to quell protests against the arrest and detention of Bobi Wine.
Police has accused the candidates of addressing huge gatherings in contravention of regulations on COVID-19 prevention.
Swollen feet
In an interview with one of the dailies in Uganda, Amuriat said his feet hurt a lot and has to pour cold water on them in between campaign stops for some relief.
Doctors have cautioned him on the potential danger of contracting tetanus from cuts to his feet.
Yet Amuriat remains adamant. He says by refusing to wear shoes, he’s standing in solidarity with people whose wealth and opportunities have been stolen by the country’s longtime ruler Yoweri Museveni.
JUST IN: FDC presidential candidate Patrick Amuriat has been arrested at the border of Rubirizi and Bushenyi districts. The reason for his arrest is yet to be known📹 @MukhayeD#MonitorUpdates#UGDecides2021 pic.twitter.com/xopK4FMoD0
— Daily Monitor (@DailyMonitor) December 4, 2020
Museveni, in power since 1986 is seeking a new term. In 2017, he changed the constitution to remove age limits that would have stopped him from seeking re-election.
FDC is Uganda’s largest opposition party. In 3 previous elections, the party fronted veteran activist and retired army colonel Kizza Besigye for president.
A surge in violence in the two months since April has seen nearly 200,000 people displaced from their homes in Ituri province, northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), say Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams working in the region.
Currently, DRC is second only to Syria for the number of internally displaced people within its borders.Relief web
MSF is calling on national and international organisations to step up their assistance to the displaced people.
\"The violence is systematically targeting villages and health centres in order to prevent the people who fled from returning,\" says Benjamin Courlet, MSF's field coordinator.
MSF has been providing medical assistance to people in Ituri region since the conflict began.
As well as caring for the wounded, MSF teams provide treatment for common but deadly endemic diseases, including malaria, severe respiratory infections, diarrhoeal disease and measles, in hospitals, health centres and community health centres in areas where displaced people have settled around Nizi, Drodro and Angumu.
Jonson was born two months after his father died. His stepfather was a bricklayer, but by good fortune the boy was able to attend Westminster School. His formal education, however, ended early, and he at first followed his stepfather’s trade, then fought with some success with the English forces in the Netherlands. On returning to England, he became an actor and playwright, experiencing the life of a strolling player. He apparently played the leading role of Hieronimo in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. By 1597 he was writing plays for Philip Henslowe, the leading impresario for the public theatre. With one exception (The Case Is Altered), these early plays are known, if at all, only by their titles. Jonson apparently wrote tragedies as well as comedies in these years, but his extant writings include only two tragedies, Sejanus (1603) and Catiline (1611).
The year 1598 marked an abrupt change in Jonson’s status, when Every Man in His Humour was successfully presented by the Lord Chamberlain’s theatrical company (a legend has it that Shakespeare himself recommended it to them), and his reputation was established. In this play Jonson tried to bring the spirit and manner of Latin comedy to the English popular stage by presenting the story of a young man with an eye for a girl, who has difficulty with a phlegmatic father, is dependent on a clever servant, and is ultimately successful—in fact, the standard plot of the Latin dramatist Plautus. But at the same time Jonson sought to embody in four of the main characters the four “ humours” of medieval and Renaissance medicine—choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood—which were thought to determine human physical and mental makeup.
That same year Jonson killed a fellow actor in a duel, and, though he escaped capital punishment by pleading “benefit of clergy” (the ability to read from the Latin Bible), he could not escape branding. During his brief imprisonment over the affair he became a Roman Catholic.
Following the success of Every Man in His Humour, the same
[Daily News] Zanzibar -- ZANZIBAR Electoral Commission (ZEC) has announced September 11, the official day for commencing election campaigns, which are scheduled to last after 46 days.
[Nation] The electoral commission wants to procure its ballot papers locally in what it said will be 10 times cheaper than getting them from abroad.
She recently announced her department will be sending out unsolicited absentee ballot applications to 7.7 million registered voters in Michigan.
In the past, opponents have been successful before Michigan courts stopping mass mailings of absentee ballot applications.
In Fleming, the court ruled unconstitutional the Macomb County Clerk’s mass mailing of absentee ballot applications.
The case relied on the following facts: the applications discriminated in favor of a narrow portion of voters, they were limited to persons over 60-years of age; the applications were sent out by a county clerk; and it violated Art. 2, Section 4 of the Michigan Constitution.
This time around a different legal outcome is more likely; because the mass mailing of absentee ballot applications is being done by a current Secretary of State, Michigan’s principal elections official, not a local county clerk.
[Monitor] The newly revised roadmap for 2021 General Election that authorised virtual campaigning has been challenged in the High Court for violating various fundamental constitutional rights and freedom.
A new political entity — Jamaica Progressive Party (JPP) — has applied to the Electoral Commission of Jamaica (ECJ) to be registered as Jamaica's fourth political party.
The party, said the ECJ, is now provisionally registered, having fulfilled the requirements of the Seventh Schedule of the Representation of the People (Amendment) Act 2014.
“The Electoral Commission is in the process of conducting investigations pertained the party's submissions and invites members of the public having probable cause, so to do, to register objections to the registration of the applicant party.
Registered political parties are eligible to contest future elections and will have their finances monitored by the ECJ.
Presently, the nation's three registered political parties are the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), the People's National Party (PNP), and the United Independents' Congress, which was registered in 2019.
He did not acknowledge that such an apology was recommended, two years earlier, by the national Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) in its final report.
But the statement Kenyatta made with opposition leader Raila Odinga did not mention the TJRC or its report either, even though they had addressed the issues raised in their statement.
As a candidate for the August 2017 presidential election, Odinga - and his lieutenants - had made the TJRC report a campaign issue, calling on the government to implement it as a way of addressing historical injustices in Kenya.
Prior to March 2018 Odinga and other opposition leaders said they would not recognise Kenyatta's government after successfully challenging the results of the August 2017 presidential election and boycotting the repeat October 2017 election.
The TJRC, whose mandate ended with the publication of the report, recommended the government form an implementation committee to oversee and coordinate the work needed to make the TJRC's wide-ranging recommendations a reality.
[East African] Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have indicated they will tighten controls on mineral exports to tame a weakening local currency against the US dollar.
The Ministry of Health says that the postponement of resuming inter-provincial movements and passenger taxi-moto services was triggered by five new Covid-19 cases confirmed in Rusizi district, Western Province on Sunday, May 31.
Explaining the change in an interview on Radio Rwanda on Monday, June 1, Minister of Health Dr Daniel Ngamije said that the change resulted from five new cases confirmed from residents of Rusizi district.
He said: \"We did an assessment and found that the recent new Covid-19 cases include five citizens from Rusizi district.
According to Ngamije, these five new Covid-19 cases include traders, truck-drivers and a motorcyclist who transported goods.
So far, according to the Ministry of Health, Rusizi is the only district where community cases were confirmed recently.
The National Identification Authority (NIA) has asked the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to report the state agency to the police if the party has any evidence to back its election rigging allegations made against the Authority on Thursday, 14 May 2020.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC), at a press conference, raised fears that the decision of the Electoral Commission to compile a new register of voters using passports and the NIA's Ghana card as proof of eligibility may give undue advantage to the governing New Patriotic Party and President Nana Akufo-Addo and also help the incumbent to rig the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in December 2020.
According to the biggest opposition party, over 10 million Ghanaians are unable to retrieve their Ghana cards from the NIA several months after they were registered, a situation which the Chairman of the party, Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, said will make it impossible for them to be captured on the new electoral roll.
At a counter-press conference on Friday, 15 May 2020, the Executive Director of the NIA, Prof Ken Attafuah, said it was a \"disturbing allegation that the NIA, in consent with the Electoral Commission, embarked on an election-rigging agenda in order to benefit the New Patriotic Party, and most disturbingly, to disenfranchise a significant portion of the Ghanaian populace from their rights to exercise their franchise\".
\"I want to assure the good people of this country that the NIA is not involved in any such criminal design or enterprise with the EC, with the government of Ghana or any with any person or entity whatsoever described.
The World Food Programme says it is rapidly scaling up operations in DRC with millions facing "the world's second biggest hunger emergency".
[New Times] The Court of Appeal will on Thursday November 12 begin the hearing of an appeal lodged by genocide convict Bernard Munyagishari against the life imprisonment sentence that was handed down by the High Court in 2017.
BANGUI (Reuters) - Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadera has won five more years in power by securing more than 53% of votes in an election that was marred by violence, according to provisional results announced on Monday. The electoral commission declared Touadera the winner of the Dec. 27 election, saying he had secured enough votes in the first round to make a second round runoff unnecessary in the gold- and diamond-producing country. Touadera, 63, has struggled to wrest control of vast swathes of the country from armed militias since first winning power in 2016, three years after former President Francois Bozize was ousted by another rebellion. The presidential election went ahead despite an offensive by rebel groups who tried to disrupt the vote after Bozize’s candidacy was rejected by the country’s highest court. “Faustin-Archange Touadera, having received the absolute majority of the vote in the first round with 53.9%, is declared winner,” Mathias Morouba, the electoral commission’s president, told a news conference in the capital, Bangui. He said about half of the country’s electorate, or around 910,000 people, had registered to vote and turnout among the registered voters was 76.3%. Provisional results of a legislative election held the same day will be announced at a later date, Morouba said. INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED Separately on Monday, prosecutors said an investigation had been launched into Bozize’s role in the rebellion intended to disrupt the election. Bozize and other accomplices were being investigated for various crimes including sedition, rebellion, assassination and theft, the prosecutors said in a statement. Bozize could not immediately be reached for comment. His party had previously denied the government’s accusations that the former president was plotting a coup, but some in the party have suggested that they are working with the rebels. The vast but sparsely populated country of 4.7 million which is larger than France has struggled to find stability since Bozize was ousted in 2013. Successive waves of violence since then have killed thousands and forced more than a million from their homes. The United Nations, which has over 12,000 peacekeepers in the country, said in a statement that calm had returned to Bangassou, a town attacked on Sunday by rebels allied to Bozize. “The situation in Bangassou is calm but tense, with the presence of armed elements in parts of the city,” the U.N. mission said, adding that 180 civil servants and workers from humanitarian organisations had sought refuge at its base. - Reuters
June 12: Tigray ‘rejects’ HoF mandate extension, vows to hold polls
\tTigray regional state has all but rejected the regional parliament’s mandate extension granted by the House of Federation earlier this week.
June 10: MPs back extending Abiy’s term amid election delay
\tEthiopia’s upper parliamentary chamber, House of Federation (HoF), has approved an extension to the mandate of the current parliament as well as regional parliaments and councils.
The CCI’s recommendations included that terms of office of the House of Peoples Representatives, HoPR, the HoF, state councils and the executive at federal and state levels be extended for as long as COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a threat to public health, and a current State of Emergency (SOE) remained in place.
If major opposition parties reject the recommendations from the Council of Constitutional Inquiry, “protests or election boycotts could become a reality, reducing the chances of successful competitive polls in 2021,” said William Davison of the International Crisis Group (ICG), a conflict-prevention organisation.
June 8: Abiy rejects talk of transitional govt amid delayed polls
\tEthiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Monday rejected the idea of forming a transitional government when his term of office expires in October, brushing aside fears of a constitutional crisis.
The Public Servants Association, which represents some 240 000 workers, is set to file papers at the Constitutional Court at the end of January.
Zimbabwe has come under international scrutiny after President Emmerson Mnangagwa's government launched a crackdown against its critics that include opposition leaders, lawyers and journalists.
\"A pattern of intimidation and arbitrary arrest and detention of lawyers and journalists and indeed legitimate political opponents has distinctly emerged in Zimbabwe during the Covid-19 era,\" said Martin Okumu-Masiga, the AJJF secretary-general.
\"We urge the government of Zimbabwe to respect the rule of law and the right to freedom of expression and the right to fair trial as well as to respect the independence of judges and lawyers as is guaranteed by domestic and international obligations that the country is party to\" said Okumu-Masiga.
\"I draw the Zimbabwe government's attention to principle 16 of the UN basic principles on the role of lawyers, which requires surety from governments that lawyers are afforded the space to perform all of their professional functions free from intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference; nor may lawyers suffer or be threatened with prosecution, or administrative, economic or any other sanction for any action taken in light of the recognised professional duties, standards and ethics.\"
\"We are concerned about the shrinking democratic space evidenced by abductions, arrests, persecution by the prosecution of civil society, lawyers and political opponents is inconsistent with (the government's) assertion that Zimbabwe is stable and peaceful.
Rwanda, in east-central Africa, is surrounded by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Burundi. It is slightly smaller than Maryland. Steep mountains and deep valleys cover most of the country. Lake Kivu in the northwest, at an altitude of 4,829 ft (1,472 m), is the highest lake in Africa. Extending north of it are the Virunga Mountains, which include the volcano Karisimbi (14,187 ft; 4,324 m), Rwandas highest point.
Republic.
The original inhabitants of Rwanda were the Twa, a Pygmy people who now make up only 1% of the population. While the Hutu and Tutsi are often considered to be two separate ethnic groups, scholars point out that they speak the same language, have a history of intermarriage, and share many cultural characteristics. Traditionally, the differences between the two groups were occupational rather than ethnic. Agricultural people were considered Hutu, while the cattle-owning elite were identified as Tutsi. Supposedly Tutsi were tall and thin, while Hutu were short and square, but it is often impossible to tell one from the other. The 1933 requirement by the Belgians that everyone carry an identity card indicating tribal ethnicity as Tutsi or Hutu enhanced the distinction. Since independence, repeated violence in both Rwanda and Burundi has increased ethnic differentiation between the groups.
Rwanda, which became a part of German East Africa in 1890, was first visited by European explorers in 1854. During World War I, it was occupied in 1916 by Belgian troops. After the war, it became a Belgian League of Nations mandate, along with Burundi, under the name of Ruanda-Urundi. The mandate was made a UN trust territory in 1946. Until the Belgian Congo achieved independence in 1960, Rwanda-Urundi was administered as part of that colony. Belgium at first maintained Tutsi dominance but eventually encouraged power sharing between Hutu and Tutsi. Ethnic tensions led to civil war, forcing many Tutsi into exile. When Rwanda became the independent nation of Rwanda on July 1, 1962, it
After announcing on July 6 that the US would not allow foreign students to remain in the country if all of their classes are moved online, the Trump administration yesterday abandoned the plan following widespread condemnation of the move and pressure from colleges and major businesses.
Benin was the seat of one of the great medieval African kingdoms called Dahomey. Europeans began arriving in the area in the 18th century, as the kingdom of Dahomey was expanding its territory. The Portuguese, the French, and the Dutch established trading posts along the coast (Porto-Novo, Ouidah, Cotonou), and traded weapons for slaves. Slave trade ended in 1848. Then, the French signed treaties with Kings of Abomey (Guézo, Toffa, Glèlè) to establish French protectorates in the main cities and ports.
However, King Behanzin fought the French influence, which cost him deportation to Martinique.
From a Colony of France to Independence:
In 1892 Dahomey became a French protectorate and part of French West Africa in 1904. Expansion continued to the North (kingdoms of Parakou, Nikki, Kandi), up to the border with former Upper Volta. On 4 December 1958, it became the République du Dahomey, self-governing within the French community, and on 1 August 1960, the Republic of Dahomey gained full independence from France. T he country was renamed Benin in 1975
Between 1960 and 1972, a succession of military coups brought about many changes of government. The last of these brought to power Major Mathieu Kérékou as the head of a regime professing strict Marxist-Leninist principles. The Parti de la Révolution Populaire Béninoise (Revolutionary Party of the People of Benin, PRPB) remained in complete power until the beginning of the 1990s.
Kérékou, encouraged by France and other democratic powers, convened a national conference that introduced a new democratic constitution and held presidential and legislative elections. Kérékous principal opponent at the presidential poll, and the ultimate victor, was Prime Minister Nicéphore Dieudonné Soglo.
Supporters of Soglo also secured a majority in the National Assembly.
Benin was thus the first African country to effect successfully the transition from dictatorship to a pluralistic political system. In the second round of National Assembly elections held in March 1995, Soglos
[Monitor] Finance minister Matia Kasaija was last night on the defensive following accusations that he irregularly dangled a top government job to secure the exit of his opponent in a parliamentary contest.
Luanda — The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Member States who want to reopen the educational establishments should establish the minimal and basic requirement of prevention including the availability of hygiene, water and sanitation.
This is one of the recommendations from the organization report that ANGOP had access Sunday appealing the members who want to reopen the school classes to have hygiene and screening products as well as to add the teaching staff to ease the school rooms.
The mandatory use of masks, the hygiene and disinfection of the school rooms and common areas having social distance inside the school rooms and in the school bus, are also part of the organization recommendation.
Regarding to this situation, Angola has suspended school classes since last March in the framework of the first Provisional Legislative Presidential Decree reinforced on 25 April with the first Decree of the national State of Emergency in the country history.
Found in 1992, SADC is an organization created and supported by the Southern African countries aiming to promote the socioeconomic, political and security cooperation at the level of its members as well as to foster the regional integration to reach peace, stability and wealth.
A new technology platform, Homeskul, could provide relief to struggling teachers.
A team of Rwandan developers backed by investors from the UK and US have developed an electronic learning platform that seeks to connect teachers and students.
According to Olivier Nshizirungu, a lead developer, the platform was developed to respond to the learning needs of students and teachers who have been left with nowhere to go.
The platform provides the right learning environment for students to improve their education.
Moddle is essentially an online learning platform that only enables students to access learning materials.
Three-dimensional headless/limbless figures “walked” an invisible runway showcasing pieces from the Pink Label Collection, the lastest colletion from her brand, Hanifa.
The Pink Label Congo collection was directly inspired by the often overlooked women and beauty of Congo.
In a statement on the Hanifa website Mvuemba explained, “Riddled with a painful history, the beauty of Congo is often untapped and overlooked.
The gentleness, beauty, history, poise, majesty, strength, power, and hope of the Congolese spirit inspired this collection.
My hope is that this collection inspires all women to stand tall in their power and like the Democratic Republic of Congo, to use their history, whether pretty or painful — to redesign their future.
Cuango — At least twenty four health technicians, including nurses and doctors, have been trained to handle positive cases of covid-19 in Cuango municipality, Lunda Norte province.
The Cuango municipality has a reference hospital, with 26 beds for the admission and treatment of patients with Covid-19.
Guilherme Cango informed that the municipality has a genexpert device, to perform tests of the new coronavirus, waiting only the cartridges for the purpose.
As part of the restrictions imposed by the Angolan state to halt the spread and/or import of the virus, all the country's borders were closed.
The governor of Lunda Norte province, Ernesto Muangala, Tuesday in the town of Xacassau, municipality of Lucapa, called for the involvement of traditional authorities in raising awareness of the population to comply with preventive measures to combat the new Coronavirus.
