Tag Archives: Jeffrey Gettleman

Updated: Once more, with feeling: Museveni’s election commission has scheduled his latest re-election for Thursday

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Contrary to what one would expect for a fair competition for elective office, Museveni appoints his own seven member election commission (with confirmation by the Parliament controlled by his NRM).

But international observers can surely be counted on to blow the whistle on any “funny business” as Kenyan Senator Amos Wako, Attorney General from 1991 to 2011, is co-chair of the Commonwealth observation delegation, with Nigeria’s former president Obasanjo.  Wako is especially known for observing Kenya’s Goldenburg and Anglo Leasing scandals as Attorney General.

Last time, in 2011, the United States made some public effort at least to press Museveni to allow an independent election commission.  Museveni called our bluff and said no, so we did not say much this time.

Here is the latest release today from CEON-U, or the Citizen Election Observers Network working with NDI funding.

Here is a link to the longstanding CCEDU or the Citizen’s Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda.

Update 2-17 – Rosebell’s Blog gives a good overview of tense atmosphere during the last weeks of the campaign: “Worrying war rhetoric ahead of Feb. 18 Uganda vote”.

And Jeffrey Gettleman’s analysis piece for today’s New York Times: “Uganda, Firmly Under One Man’s Rule, Dusts Off Trappings of an Election.”

And, from Andrew Green in Foreign Policy: “A real debate before Uganda’s fake election.”

Kenyan Election Violence: why would anyone expect the Kenyan Police to play a positive role in March 2013?

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(As an aside, here is a headline to pause over from the Daily Nation:  “Sudan’s Islamists need new blood: vice president”.)

On Kenya’s police, Jeffrey Gettleman has an outstanding story in the New York Times: “Police Killing in Kenya Deepens Aura of Menace”.  Gettleman ties a compelling story of what amounts to the “typical” extrajudicial execution of two bothers in Nairobi’s slums to the massacre of new police recruits in Samburu:

The two episodes were hundreds of miles apart and technically had nothing to do with each other. But beneath them was the same rotten root: a spectacularly dysfunctional national police force.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give our police a 2,” said Macharia Njeru, the chairman of Kenya’s new police oversight board, citing corruption allegations, human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings, failed inquiries and lost public trust.

“The list is endless,” Mr. Njeru said.

.  .  .  .

“On the face of it, it’s quite clear that the police leadership totally failed,” Mr. Njeru said. “The senior commanders were sleeping on the job.”

Kenya’s news media have characterized the massacre as the single most disastrous episode for the Kenyan police since independence in 1963. Unlike Kenya’s thriving business community, its booming safari industry or its reforming judiciary, Mr. Njeru said, the national police service has intentionally been kept weak for decades so it could be manipulated by politicians.

The concept of the various reforms under the new Constitution is great, but surely it is time to face the fact that it is simply too late for deep substantive change.   Of course every effort should be made by Kenya’s international supporters to intervene and step up as well as possible, but let us not kid ourselves.  It has been almost 59 months since the 2007 election disaster–the Kenyan police are still in the state they are in, with less than four months to go to March 4, 2013 because the Kenyan powers that be chose the status quo instead of reform (and for obvious reasons).

Again, please remember that current Kenyan Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere was the commander of the Kenya Police’s GSU (“General Service Unit”) branch during the 2007 election and its aftermath.

Let’s see what the Kenya Police official website has to say about the status of reforms today:

.  .  .  the Government has made some important steps. A task force appointed in March 2003 is drawing a road map for the Police Reforms. The Commissioner of Police is committed to a Police Force whose members are motivated, people friendly, open, relaxed and honest with one another and the public; know their role and mandate and be proud of their job; appreciated by the public…

The just concluded Constitutional review holds a promise for the establishment of an emancipated Police Service, that will operate in conformity with democratic transformation from the current practice of Regime Policing to Democratic Policing (Community Policing)

These measures augur well with the Police Reforms as well as the goodwill of citizens. An international survey conducted in January 2003 placed Kenyan’s as the most optimistic citizens in the world. The Government will do well to tap into this optimism. It is the energy that will drive the nation’s transformation to Its desired destination.

For citizen’s security:this is the moment.

Yes, 2003 was in fact “the moment”.  Let’s not let 2013 be remembered as a different kind of “moment”.

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Ethiopian President Meles has died [Updated]

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[Update] “Ethiopian PM Meles Zenawi’s death sparks fear of turmoil”, The Guardian.  Here is Jeffrey Gettleman’s take from the New York Times. And Ken Opalo’s Blog.

Ambassador Theatre--"Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow"
“Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow” Addis

Here is an assessment from NED’s Democracy Digest, “Ethiopia: Zenawi’s ‘tainted’ authoritarian legacy.”

Kenya’s government has lost a key regional ally.  From the Obituaries in the Washington Post:

Ethio­pian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who was once hailed as a major U.S. ally against terrorism but whose 21-year rule was tarnished by the killing and jailing of political protesters and a grisly border war with former ally Eritrea, died late Monday while being treated abroad for an undisclosed illness. He was 57.

The death was announced by Ethio­pian state television, which said only that Mr. Meles died shortly before midnight after contracting an infection. The government did not specify where he died, and the circumstances of his death were laced with intrigue. . . .

With Ethiopian troops in Somalia just as the process of selecting new Somali leadership is underway, and heightened tension in Ethiopia itself, the region will be anxious as the stability and sustainability of new leadership post-Meles.  Meles got along with other rulers and governments in the region, and with the U.S. and China and international institutions, while maintaining a repressive role at home.

 

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Puntland and Piracy

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The VOA reports on risks from U.S. engagement in Puntland:

The United States says it is planning to boost ties with Somalia’s two autonomous regions – Somaliland and Puntland – in an effort to restore stability in the south and to curb the spread of Islamic extremism. Some analysts say the move, however, may end up increasing violence and instability in Puntland.

In late July, Puntland government forces began fighting with militants loyal to an Islamist factional leader based in the remote and mountainous Sanaag and western Bari regions of northern Somalia.

Puntland President Abdirahman Mohamed Farole said the assault was a counter-terrorism operation, targeting the terrorist leader of the Puntland cell of al-Qaida, Mohamed Siad Atom. The Puntland government has linked Atom to numerous kidnappings, bombings, and assassinations in the region since 2008.
. . . .

But the leaders of the Warsangeli, a sub-clan of the larger Somali Darod tribe, say the conflict in the north is not about entirely about terrorism. They say it also is about long-held political and economic grievances the Warsangeli have had against the Puntland government since the region declared autonomy in 1998.
. . .

The leadership of the Puntland government is dominated by members of the Majeerten sub-clan of the Darod, and there has long been a simmering power struggle between the two sub-clans for control of Puntland’s lucrative commercial hub, Bosasso.

In the meantime, Jeffrey Gettleman writes that “The Pirates Are Winning!” in the New York Review of Books”:

There’s very little hope, in the near future, of the transitional government in Mogadishu becoming strong enough to wipe out the pirates’ bases. The government is simply trying to stay alive. The hard-line Islamist insurgents who control much of Somalia have flirted with dismantling the piracy business, but the money is too good. One group, Hizbul Islam, recently moved into Xarardheere and now gets $40,000 from each ransom. The more powerful insurgent group al-Shabab made a deal with the pirates in which they will not interfere with the pirates’ business in exchange for 5 percent of the ransoms. This seems to be the beginning of the West’s worst Somali nightmare. The country’s two top exports—piracy and Islamist radicalism—are at last joining hands.

Yesterday, however, the BBC reported that a Puntland court in Bossaso had sentenced a pirate leader to death for murder of a ship captain following a raid by Puntland soldiers.

Gettleman reports on Somali TFG Child Soldiers–now what?

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Jeffrey Gettleman’s Sunday NY Times story about child soldiers fighting on “our side” for the TFG is moving and has some “legs” in terms of popularity on the web site.

At the same time, it would appear that the U.S. administration through the Biden visit to Nairobi was intending to soften up and be more supportive of the Kenyan government because of the perceived threat to U.S. interests from Somalia. Certainly the message from the Kenyan V.P. Musyoka’s visit to Washington a few months ago was just that–the U.S. should let up in Kenya and support the Government in traditional Cold War/GWOT fashion as a bulwark against Somali and Somali-based terrorists. Jendayi Frazer herself said not long ago that Obama’s Somalia policy was substantially the same as Bush’s.

To me, the question we ought to ask is whether since the policy has been conspicuously unsuccessful in recent years we ought to do more of it because the problem is now worse, or whether we are open to adaptation.

Meanwhile, back inside the Beltway . . .

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Three Republican Congressmen have asked the Inspectors General of USAID and the State Department to investigate the notion that Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger and others are violating U.S. law prohibiting the use of foreign aid funds to lobby for or against abortion. The theory here is that activities supporting passage of a new Kenyan constitution constitute lobbying for abortion because the final proposed draft, which states that life begins at conception (unlike the current constitution) and makes abortion generally unconstitutional also has potentially ambiguous language that allows some “health of the mother” exception.

In other words, the proposed new Kenyan constitution is much more favorable from a pro-life perspective than the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court over the past thirty-plus years.

I remain convinced that Kenyans are wholly qualified to make up their own “hearts and minds” and cast their own votes. If we can avoid confusion and help the process of the vote itself that’s good. We don’t have a great track record, especially in the last election, and in the past in giving too much public and private support for too long to Moi. We should be humble and careful.

Jeffrey Gettleman has a rundown of the American culture wars, East African front, in the NYTimes.

“With Flights to Europe Grounded, Kenya’s Produce Wilts”

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With Flights to Europe Grounded, Kenya’s Produce Wilts Jeffrey Gettleman in the NYTimes

A good article, worth reading.

If farmers in Africa’s Great Rift Valley ever doubted that they were intricately tied into the global economy, they know now that they are. Because of a volcanic eruption more than 5,000 miles away, Kenyan horticulture, which as the top foreign exchange earner is a critical piece of the national economy, is losing $3 million a day and shedding jobs.

The pickers are not picking. The washers are not washing. Temporary workers have been told to go home because refrigerated warehouses at the airport are stuffed with ripening fruit, vegetables and flowers, and there is no room for more until planes can take away the produce. Already, millions of roses, lilies and carnations have wilted.

“Volcano, volcano, volcano,” grumbled Ronald Osotsi, whose $90-a-month job scrubbing baby courgettes, which are zucchinis, and French beans is now endangered. “That’s all anyone is talking about.” He sat on a log outside a vegetable processing plant in Nairobi, next to other glum-faced workers eating a cheap lunch of fried bread and beans.

Election-driven riots, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and stunningly bad harvests have all left their mark on Kenya’s agriculture industry, which is based in the Rift Valley, Kenya’s breadbasket and the cradle of mankind.

But industry insiders say they have never suffered like this.

“It’s a terrible nightmare,” said Stephen Mbithi, the chief executive officer of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya. He rattled off some figures: Two million pounds of fresh produce is normally shipped out of Kenya every night. Eighty-two percent of that goes to Europe, and more than a third goes solely to Britain, whose airports have been among those shut down by the volcano’s eruption. Five thousand Kenyan field hands have been laid off in the past few days, and others may be jobless soon. The only way to alleviate this would be to restore the air bridge to Europe, which would necessitate the equivalent of 10 Boeing 747s of cargo space — per night.

“There is no diversionary market,” Mr. Mbithi said. “Flowers and courgettes are not something the average Kenyan buys.”