Tag Archives: Ethiopia

Transparency International Annual Corruption Perception Index released [corrected and updated]

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The new Transparency International corruption perception rankings for 2010 have been released today.

For East Africa:

66 Rwanda (4.0 score on a scale of 10) [up from 3.3 for 2009]
116 Ethiopia (2.7) [unchanged]
116 Tanzania (2.7) [up from 2.6]
127 Uganda (2.5) [unchanged]
154 Kenya (2.1) [down from 2.2]
170 Burundi (1.8) [unchanged]
172 Sudan (1.6) [up from 1.5]
178 Somalia (1.1–lowest) [unchanged]

The United States dropped to 22nd with a 7.1 score.

The new report was drawn from surveys taken from January 2009 to September 2010.

For these listed East African countries, there was no demonstrated significant change from 2009 to 2010.

Given its methodology, the CPI is not a tool that is
suitable for trend analysis or for monitoring changes in the
perceived levels of corruption over time for all countries.
Year-to-year changes in a country/territory’s score can
result from a change in the perceptions of a country’s
performance, a change in the ranking provided by original
sources or changes in the methodology resulting from TI’s
efforts to improve the index.
If a country is featured in one or more specific data
sources for both of the last two CPIs (2009 CPI and 2010
CPI), those sources can be used to identify whether there
has been a change in perceived levels of corruption in
that particular country compared to the previous year.
TI has used this approach in 2010 to assess country
progress over the past year and to identify what can be
considered to be a change in perceptions of corruption.
These assessments use two criteria:
(a) there is a year-on-year change of at least 0.3 points in
a country’s CPI score, and
(b) the direction of this change is confirmed by more than
half of the data sources evaluating that country.
Based on these criteria, the following countries showed
an improvement from 2009 to 2010: Bhutan, Chile, Ecuador,
FYR Macedonia, Gambia, Haiti, Jamaica, Kuwait and
Qatar. The following countries showed deterioration from
2009 to 2010: the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary,
Italy, Madagascar, Niger and the United States.

Meles Claims Win in Ethiopia–Preliminary Results Due 9am EDT

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Daniel Howden in The Independent with early coverage: “Meles claims election win in Ethiopia despite poll fraud claims”.

The BBC reports that EU observers were “encouraged” by high turnout and relative calm, but will investigate complaints of irregularities. Reuters says preliminary results due at 1500 GMT Monday.

Links from this week

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Needed: “A stronger resolve on Kenya’s Internally Displaced Persons” from KenyaImagine.

From New York, Kevin Kelley reports in the Saturday Nation that accused Times Square bomber Faisal Shazhad, cooperating with authorities, has said that he was inspired by Sheik Abdullah al Faisal, the Jamaican deported from Kenya in January.

Ngugi wa Thiong’o interviewed by Reuters on release of the first volume of his memoir “Dreams in a Time of War”.

VOA Special Report: “Ethiopia Votes”. You may remember that Ethiopia started jamming the VOA Amharic service back in March in the lead up to the elections.

At the Economist: “Ethiopia’s elections: Five more years–the results are not in doubt, only the prospects of millions of impoverished and hungry Ethiopians”

“More Repression, Less Democracy, No Real Outcry” from Africa Works. “Rule of law is not enough in lands where repression is a cost of doing business.” Also, if you missed it a good piece titled “The Next Empire” by Howard W. French in the May Atlantic, traveling to observe the Chinese in Africa.

Kyrgyzstan–lessons for the U.S. in East Africa?

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Certainly the stature and image–and influence–of the United States in Kyrgyzstan seems to be badly damaged by the degree to which the U.S. got itself intertwined with the corrupt Bakiev regime. Bakiev played his leverage from granting the U.S. continued use of the Manas airbase at the Bishkek airport–increasingly important to the U.S. as the war on Afghanistan ramped up.

The needs of warfighting trump support for democracy, anti-corruption efforts and such. That’s reality. Thus, the question: in a war of choice for nation building in one country, what is the collateral damage to good governance and democracy elsewhere?

How far are we willing to go to support the TFG in Somalia? What compromises will we face in dealing with the leaders of Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Burundi?

One immediate issue is whether and how the U.S. will use its influence with the Kenyan military in regard to cooperation with the International Criminal Court in its current investigations.

I was an IRI election observer in Kyrgyzstan when Bakiev was elected to a full term in July 2005 following the March 2005 Tulip Revolution. I observed voting in small cities and towns in the Ferghana Valley region in the southwest. This was near the site of the Andijan massacre across the border in Uzbekistan and the region was tense–nonetheless, the atmosphere was hopeful with the new government. Voting was anti-climactic in that Bakiev cut a deal with his most prominent opponent shortly before the election, so the outcome was not really in doubt.

In that heavily Islamic part of the country the economy had been in decline since the fall of the Soviet Union. No one had taken down the statues of Lenin, or even a large portrait of Marx in the auditorium of one of the schools where we observed voting. The Soviet Union, I was told locally, had simply ended without much warning. Since then the roads were gradually crumbling, the machinery was wearing out, the stores had closed–and locals with a profession had gone to Russia for work. The country was much in need of the rent the U.S. was paying for use of Manas, but a main reason for getting rid of Akiev was the perception that he was running the government to the benefit of his family rather than the people as a whole. Apparently Bakiev was not the change in the this respect.

“Fuel Sales to US at Issue in Kyrgyzstan” NY Times

“How Not to Run an Empire” FP

“Blood in the Streets of Bishkek” FP

“When Patience Runs Out”–IHT, Paul Quinn-Judge of International Crisis Group

Friday links

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“Are the private sector and civil society natural enemies?”–insightful piece from the Nation Groups’s Pan-African Media Conference by Muthoni Wankeki in Pambazuka.

Meanwhile, a new survey reported in Business Daily indicates that Kenyan business leaders are worried about a repeat of election violence.

“In Defense of the Voice of America” by Alemayehu Mariam in Pambazuka, reprinted from Huffington Post.

Human Rights Watch reports on pre-election environment in Sudan and Ethiopia, says April and May elections unlikely to be “free and fair”. Ethiopia: Repression Rising Ahead of May Elections. Sudan: Government Repression Threatens Fair Elections. Daily Nation story here.

And for the first time a senior SPLM leader has called for Bashir to face the ICC charges against him in The Hague.

“Offbeat”

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“Sudan’s capital sways to hip hop”

On Safari in Chanute, Kansas

Ethiopia’s Zenawi says he will authorize jamming of Voice of America Amharic broadcasts, comparing VOA to Radio Mille Collines

Dysfunctional governance in Kampala–“‘The Bastard Child of Nobody?’–Anti-Planning and the Institutional Crisis in Contemporary Kampala”

“Ethiopia: Democracy or Stability”

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Lauren Gelfund writes from Nairobi in World Politics Review on the current situation in Ethiopia ahead of elections and the issues facing Western donors. Note the venue at Nairobi’s Habesha restaurant, a popular expat haunt and one of my family’s favorites.

Corruption and Geopolitics

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The Economist has highlighted the ongoing competition in Africa, including in Kenya, between Iran and Israel: “A Search For Allies in a Hostile World“.  In the East Africa/Greater Horn region, Sudan is Iran’s key ally and Ethiopia is Israel’s.

With diplomatic battles approaching over sanctions for Iran’s nuclear program in the context of all of the existing competition for influence, resources and business opportunities, the leverage for existing African players to extract corrupt rents are likely to increase. The Kenya Publicity Tour to Washington last week invited the US to once again move away from a strong stand on corruption and move on with greater government to government support and incentives for investment without waiting to see actual reforms in light of the 2007 election debacle.

To date we haven’t seen accountability for the multi-year theft of public education funds that triggered first the UK and then the US to freeze a small amount of education assistance.  While the PM and others are pressing for the resignation of the Education Minister, the funds have gone missing each year of the first Kibaki Administration as well, as indicated in the report from Transparency International.  Removing the current minister (who presumably would remain a Member of Parliament and, if patterns hold, soon enough get another ministerial appointment in another agency) is not a substantive answer.

Likewise, action on the Rift Valley Railroad concession remains elusive and deferred.  And accounting for the “Internally Displaced Funds” associated with the “Internally Displaced Persons” from the post-election violence remains outstanding. And the bills continue to come due, literally, from the Anglo Leasing scandal (you may remember this as the scandal that was supposedly caught in time to prevent major loss to the taxpayers–doesn’t seem to be working out that way).

Key players, at least, in the US government supported Kibaki’s re-election in 2007 in spite of the corruption concerns. Is Kenya better off now? What US interests were actually advanced? In particular, how is the situation in Somalia better now than it was in the fall of 2007? Let’s “don’t get fooled again” and maintain a focus on helping Kenyans who share the values to which we aspire to build a stronger and more prosperous country–by maintaining a strong and steady focus on improved governance and fighting corruption. We have a bad record on the geopolitical gamesmanship in Kenya, in my estimation, and values aside, I don’t think it has worked very well.

Updated: Some other African presidential election developments

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In Sudan, BBC reports that former Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi is entering the April race for President against Bashir.  Al-Mahdi promises action on Darfur.  This should be interesting.  BBC’s take is that this raises prospects for the legitimacy of the election (in which the SPLA chose not to offer its strongest challenge).  Maybe.  It might also raise the stakes for Bashir–is he willing to lose an election and leave office based on how the votes are actually cast?  While under ICC indictment?

Across the continent, perhaps the West’s and America’s very favorite African president has–wait for it–announced that she is running for a second 6 year term in next year’s election despite having pledged originally that she would only serve one term.

Good business for Johnson-Sirleaf’s American lobbyists and consultants anyway–hope it is good for Liberia.  Perhaps this is a positive development from a gender equality angle anyway:  maybe women are just as inclined to hang on to power, and just as disinclined to leave the presidency as men.

When Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was running for office, she boldly told this programme that once elected into office, she would only serve one six year term.

But a week in politics is a long time and 5 years is an eternity.

Yesterday, president Johnson-Sirleaf made a major U-turn when she announced that she will seek a second six-year term in next year’s elections.

And The Economist reports that “worries about Ethiopia’s election, due in May, are growing” while noting that “most Western governments seem keen to downplay Mr. Mele’s human-rights record, hoping his re-election will keep his country stable.”

In the Quicksands of Somalia | Foreign Affairs

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In the Quicksands of Somalia | Foreign Affairs.

I highly recommend this article which I have referred to several friends.  The author was the program officer at the National Endowment for Democracy who worked with our Kenya program funding and I met her briefly on the way to Africa in June 2007.  From my perspective, she seems to have it right and I would simply add that the consequences of the US support for first the invasion by Ethiopia, and then the African Union force to try to uphold the Transitional Federal Government have included the US incurring debts to be paid to other governments in the region, including Kenya and Uganda.