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The administrative court on Tuesday upheld his appeal allowing him to resume his bid to become the country's next president.
\t On Friday, internet and international calls were cut off across the West African nation in anticipation of the election results, according to locals and international observers in the capital, Conakry.
\t This was the third time that Conde matched-up against Diallo. Before the election, observers raised concerns that an electoral dispute could reignite ethnic tensions between Guinea's largest ethnic groups.
[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.
Mauritania became an independent nation on Nov. 28, 1960, and was admitted to the United Nations in 1961 over the strenuous opposition of Morocco, which claimed the territory. In the late 1960s, the government sought to make Arab culture dominant. Racial and ethnic tension between Moors, Arabs, Berbers, and blacks was widespread.
Mauritania and Morocco divided the territory of Spanish Sahara (later called Western Sahara) between them after the Spanish departed in 1975, with Mauritania controlling the southern third. The Polisario Front, indigenous Saharawi rebels, fought for the territory against both Mauritania and Morocco. Increased military spending and rising casualties in the region helped bring down the civilian government of Ould Daddah in 1978. A succession of military rulers followed. In 1979, Mauritania withdrew from Western Sahara.
In 1984, Col. Maaouye Ould Sidi Ahmed Taya took control of the government. He relaxed Islamic law, fought corruption, instituted economic reforms urged by the International Monetary Fund, and held the countrys first multiparty parliamentary elections in 1986. Although the 1991 constitution set up a multiparty democracy, politics remain ethnically and racially based. The primary conflict is between blacks, who dominate the southern regions, and the Moorish-Arabic north, which holds political power. Racial tensions reached a peak in 1989 when Mauritania went to war with Senegal in a dispute over their shared border. As each country repatriated citizens of the other, critics accused Mauritania of taking the opportunity to expel thousands of blacks.
In 1992, Taya won the nations first multiparty presidential election, which opponents charged was rigged. Tayas attempts to restructure the economy provoked periodic protests, the most serious of which were the bread riots in Nouakchott in 1995.
Although Mauritania officially abolished slavery in 1980, the nation continued to tolerate the enslavement of blacks by North African Arabs. In 1993, the U.S. State Department estimated
The emergence of Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, in Uganda’s political landscape, has given hope that Yoweri Museveni could be defeated in the next presidential election scheduled 2021. For many Ugandan political analysts, a united opposition front behind Wine could bring victory that has eluded the Uganda opposition for years. However, the divisions among opposition...
The post A fragmented opposition poses no threat to Museveni in Uganda's upcoming election appeared first on Face2Face Africa.
The capital of Senegal, Dakar, is the westernmost point in Africa. The country, slightly smaller than South Dakota, surrounds Gambia on three sides and is bordered on the north by Mauritania, on the east by Mali, and on the south by Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.
Senegal is mainly a low-lying country, with a semidesert area in the north and northeast and forests in the southwest. The largest rivers include the Senegal in the north and the Casamance in the southern tropical climate region.
Multiparty democractic republic.
The Toucouleur people, among the early inhabitants of Senegal, converted to Islam in the 11th century, although their religious beliefs retained strong elements of animism. The Portuguese had some stations on the banks of the Senegal River in the 15th century, and the first French settlement was made at St.-Louis in 1659. Gorée Island became a major center for the Atlantic slave trade through the 1700s, and millions of Africans were shipped from there to the New World. The British took parts of Senegal at various times, but the French gained possession in 1840 and made it part of French West Africa in 1895. In 1946, together with other parts of French West Africa, Senegal became an overseas territory of France. On June 20, 1960, it formed an independent republic federated with Mali, but the federation collapsed within four months.
Although Senegal is neither a large nor a strategically located country, it has nonetheless played a prominent role in African politics since its independence. As a black nation that is more than 90% Muslim, Senegal has been a diplomatic and cultural bridge between the Islamic and black African worlds. Senegal has also maintained closer economic, political, and cultural ties to France than probably any other former French African colony.
Senegals first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, towered over the countrys political life until his voluntary retirement in 1981. He replaced multiparty democracy with an authoritarian regime. An acclaimed poet, Senghor sought to become
Adama Barrow is a Gambian politician and real estate developer who is the third and current president of Gambia. Barrow defeated Yahya Jammeh in the 2016 Gambian presidential election, but because the incumbent president initially refused to recognize the victory, Barrow was inaugurated at the Gambian embassy in Senegal on January 19, 2017. He returned to Gambia on January 27, 2017.
Barrow was born on February 16, 1965, in Mankamang Kunda, British Gambia (Gambia), at a small village near Basse Santa Su to Mamudu Barrow and Kaddijatou Jallow, two days before Gambia achieved independence from the United Kingdom. Barrow attended Koba Kunda primary school, Crab Island secondary school, and then received a scholarship to the Muslim High School located in Banjul, the capital of Gambia.
After graduation, Barrow worked for Alhagie Musa and Sons, a Gambian energy company where he became a sales manager. Barrow moved to London, England, in the early 2000s, where he studied for a degree in real estate while working as a security guard to help finance his education. Barrow returned to Gambia in 2006 and founded Majum Real Estate. He remained CEO of the company until 2016.
On October 30, 2016, Barrow was chosen by a coalition of seven opposition parties as their endorsed candidate for the 2016 Gambian Presidential Election. Before being a presidential candidate, Barrow had not previously held any elected office, but he had served as treasurer of the United Democratic Party (UDP). He resigned from the UDP on November 3, 2016, to run as an independent with the backing of Coalition 2016. During the campaign, he promised to return Gambia to its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations and the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. He also promised to reform security forces, suggesting that they should be “distanced from politics.” He also said that if elected he would create a temporary transition government formed of members from the opposition coalition and would step down within three years. Barrow won the
WAGENINGEN, Netherlands (AP) - Suriname's newly elected Parliament chose a former police chief as the country's president on Monday to replace Desiree 'Desi' Bouterse, who faces a murder conviction at home and a drug smuggling sentence abroad.Chandrikapersad Santokhi, better known as 'Chan', will inherit a devastated economy in the South American nation of about 600,000 people upon his inauguration tomorrow.
Malaysian immigration authorities raided apartment buildings in Petaling Jaya Old Town on Wednesday morning, arresting about 200 people who had emigrated to the southeast Asian country.
All 200 arrestees were tested for COVID-19, according to Immigration Department director-general Datuk Khairul Dzaimee Daud.
Some Malaysians particularly oppose the presence of Rohingya refugees in their country, fearing they might bring COVID-19 when they emigrate.
Petaling Jaya Old Town’s quarantine, ordered when 26 COVID-19 cases were confirmed there, will be lifted Thursday morning.
The post VIDEO: Malaysian Immigration Police Raid Apartments during COVID-19, arrest 200 appeared first on Zenger News.
The IEC says that it stands ready to resume running by-elections under Level 1 lockdown, with strict Covid-19 protocols in place.
Human rights groups in the Western region want suicide decriminalised as part of efforts to address mental health issues and assist those affected.
Members of the Tinada Youth Organisation, Nyarwek, Gender Dialogues and Trans Alliance met in Kisumu to discuss mental health issues and stigma and its effects during the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia marked on May 17.
Tinada programmes coordinator Mike Wanjengu said decriminalising suicide will be the first step towards reducing cases of mental illnesses.
In case it is a failed suicide attempt, the person will be in trouble with the law yet the cause of the problem is not addressed,” he said.
Ms Caroline Rucah, the head of programmes at Nyarwek, urged the government to spearhead a multisectoral approach to respond to the mental health challenges in the country.
A video showing soldiers executing two women at close range, kneeling and blindfolded, along with a girl and a baby two years ago had caused massive outcry in Cameroon. But there is even more outcry now.
At the time, the government denied any involvement before recanting and arresting seven soldiers.
Four of them have now received a 10-year prison sentence for the killing. Another, sentenced to two years. The last two acquitted. Human rights groups are disgusted.
Maximilienne Ngo Mbe is the Director of the Network of Human Rights Defenders in Central Africa.
\"A ten-year prison sentence is not only weak, it is insignificant. It is not only insignificant, but it is insignificant because those who get ten years are not, in fact, those who ordered the murders.\" the human rights campaigner explains.
The defence counsel however in fact wants to appeal the verdict. Me Sylvestre Mben is a lawyer for the incriminated soldiers. He says \"we should not forget a legal provision in our procedural code which states that the allegations of one co-accused against another can only be valid if they are confronted by other evidence. It is for this reason that we believe that there was, at the very least, some doubt.\"
The video was one of several to emerge in recent years of alleged atrocities by Cameroonian forces during operations against Islamist Boko Haram militants in the northern part of the country and against Anglophone separatists in the west.
The trial started in January and was conducted behind closed doors.
[Nation] Charles Thomas recalled one afternoon, three years after Zimbabwe got independence in 1980, when nearly 20 soldiers stormed his village in Matabeleland with bayonets. He was 24.
The Harris County District Court ruled that Texas law allows Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins to send vote-by-mail applications to all registered voters as part of his authority to conduct and manage elections. If the Court’s decision stands, more than 1.9 million registered voters in Harris County under the age of 65 will receive vote-by-mail […]
The post Harris County Clerk cleared to send vote-by-mail applications appeared first on DefenderNetwork.com.
[FrontPageAfrica] Monrovia -- The Catholic Diocese of Cape Palmas, whose pastoral and administrative jurisdiction cover the five counties of the southeast of Liberia, has expressed grave concerns about the incident of intimidation and threats of violence by some residents of Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County against a political grouping of Liberians exercising its constitutional rights to free movement and peaceful assembly, which occurred on July 30, 2020.
1994: Five Iraqis and a Kuwaiti are sentenced to death in Kuwait for plotting to kill former US President George H W Bush with a car bomb during his visit to Kuwait in 1993.
2002: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says that shortly before September 11, 2001, Egyptian intelligence officials warned the United States that al-Qaeda was planning an attack on an American target.
2003: The Special Court for Sierra Leone, set up to try war crimes suspects from the country's civil conflict, make public a 17-count indictment against Charles Taylor, the president of neighbouring Liberia.
2008: The US military orders navy ships loaded with relief aid off Myanmar's coast to leave the area after the country's xenophobic junta refused to let them help survivors of a devastating cyclone the previous month.
England's King George III (1738-1820); Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Finnish marshal and statesman (1867-1951); Modibo Keita, president of Mali (1915-1977); Robert Merrill, US opera singer (1919-2004); Dennis Weaver, US actor (1924-2006); Bruce Dern, US actor (1936- ); Angelina Jolie, US actress (1975-); Noah Wyle, US actor (1971- ); Russell Brand, British actor/comedian (1975- ).
… such as Kobe Bryant, an African-American basketball legend; Chadwick Boseman, a …
Widespread condemnation for ANC and former President Jacob Zuma after he fails to appear at state capture inquiry.
Although Mauritania officially abolished slavery in 1980, the nation continued to tolerate the enslavement of blacks by North African Arabs. In 1993, the U.S. State Department estimated that there were more than 90,000 chattel slaves in the country.
In 2002, the government banned a political party, Action for Change (AC), which has campaigned for greater rights for blacks, calling it racist and violent. Two other opposition parties have been banned in the past few years.
Benin gears up to hold local elections without key opposition parties Sunday as the authorities push ahead with the vote despite the coronavirus threat and calls for a delay.
But critics say the health risks are too high for a vote that opponents of President Patrice Talon insist should not be happening in the first place.
Benin, traditionally seen as one of the region's most stable democracies, has been mired in a political crisis since a disputed parliamentary poll last April sparked mass protests.
Parties allied to the president won all the seats at the polls last year after opposition groups were effectively banned from standing.
Opponents have called on voters to boycott the poll over the political situation and the risks from coronavirus.
Togo, twice the size of Maryland, is on the south coast of West Africa bordering on Ghana to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Benin to the east. The Gulf of Guinea coastline, only 32 mi long (51 km), is low and sandy. The only port is at Lomé. The Togo hills traverse the central section.
Republic transitioning to multiparty democratic rule.
The Voltaic peoples and the Kwa were the earliest known inhabitants. The Ewe followed in the 14th century and the Ane in the 18th century. The Danish claimed the land in the 18th century, but by 1884 it was established as a German colony (Togoland). The area was split between the British and the French under League of Nations mandates after World War I and subsequently administered as UN trusteeships. The British portion voted for incorporation with Ghana. The French portion became Togo, which declared its independence on April 27, 1960.
Togos first democratically elected president, Sylvano Olympius, was overthrown in 1963. He was shot and killed by Sgt. Etienne Eyadema while he attempted to scale the walls of the American Embassy to seek asylum. The government of Nicolas Grunitzky was overthrown in a bloodless coup on Jan. 13, 1967, led by Lt. Col. Etienne Eyadema (now called Gen. Gnassingbé Eyadema). A National Reconciliation Committee was set up to rule the country, but in April, Eyadema dissolved the committee and took over as president. He suspended the constitution, banned political parties, and created a cult of personality around his presidency; his official biography describes him as a “force of nature.” Under pressure from the West, Eyadema legalized opposition parties in 1993, but the first multiparty presidential election in Aug. 1993 (which gave Eyadema more than 96% of the vote) was considered fraudulent, as was his 1998 reelection. In Feb. 2005, Eyadema died—he had been Africas longest-serving ruler (38 years). A day after his death, the military installed his son, Faure Gnassingbe, to serve out his term. Gnassingbe took office on Feb. 7 amid strong
Guinea's main oppositon party published Friday a list of 46 people, aged between 3 and 70 years, killed during the repression of demonstrations after the October 18 election, officially won by the incumbent Alpha Condé.
Condé was declared re-elected on October 24 by the Electoral Commission for a controversial third term with 59.5% of the vote, but three of his opponents, including opposition leader Cellou Dalein Diallo, are contesting the results before the Constitutional Court, whose decision is expected on Saturday.
Diallo's party, the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea (UFDG), denounced in a statement a \"wave of terror\" orchestrated by the government between October 19 and November 3.
\"The provisional toll of this repression is 46 dead, nearly 200 wounded by gunfire, about a hundred arrests and extensive material damage,\" according to the UFDG.
The opposition has so far reported a death toll of at least 27, while for the government, the post-election violence resulted in 21 deaths, including members of the security forces.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) Africa Officer Ida Sawyer on Twitter on October 24 accused Guinean security forces of killing \"at least 8 people, including 3 children.
Amnesty International for its part accused the same security forces of firing live ammunition at demonstrators, without giving a detailed account.
The Ministries of Security and Territorial Administration did not immediately respond to the multiple requests for a reaction from the AFP to the UFDG document.
This document includes a list of names, usually with age, profession, circumstances of death, contacts of a relative, and photos showing these people, dead or alive. In about fifteen cases, these are photos of bodies showing traces of violence.
Most of the presumed victims are young men and women between 15 and 30 years old: motorcycle cab drivers, mechanics, students...
The youngest are a boy and a girl of 3 years old, Mamadou Midiaou Diallo and Mariatou Bah, and the oldest Mamouna Camara, a housewife of 70 years old.
The UFDG also states that \"the overwhelming majority of the victims (...) belong to the same ethnic group as the opposition leader,\" in a country where community affiliations play an important role in elections.
[Monitor] Ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party presidential candidate, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni is poised to extend his reign in power to 40 years after Electoral Commission (EC) chairman Simon Byabakama credited him 5,562,141 votes, representing 58.89% of the 9,445,184 valid votes.
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Uganda’s electoral commission said Saturday that President Yoweri Museveni won a sixth five-year term, extending his rule to four decades, while top opposition challenger Bobi Wine dismissed “cooked-up,...
Opposition parties in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of India's parliament, this week questioned the government for its failure to respond to increasing cases of mental health issues during the pandemic. During parliament's session on Sept. 14, the opposition was led by members of the Congress and Samajwadi parties. 'The number of people affected by mental health issues has […]
[Zimbabwe Standard] Godfrey Kurauone, an MDC Alliance councillor in Masvingo, is languishing at Masvingo Remand Prison awaiting trial and his alleged crime is singing a derogatory song.
