Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Afrique en ligne) – Ethiopia’s dictator Meles Zenawi said on Friday he was in consultations with his ruling party about the possibility of quitting as Prime Minister and retaining his role as the party leader after next year’s elections.
The Ethiopian Premier, who has been at the helm of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) for the last 18 years, said on Friday that he has had enough and wanted to do something different after the next elections.
Ethiopia is about 15 months away from the next elections, due in 2010.
The Prime Minister says he is considering quitting the post and remaining as party leader (a la Russia’s Putin) if his party members agree to the position, but said he would make a final decision on this later.
“I do not think there is a conflict of policy here. My desire is that I have had enough here and I have to move on. I want to leave this position (Prime Minister) without leaving the party as leader but I have to respect the decisions of the party,” Meles told journalists.
Meles was asked about two conflicting signals he had given about his intentions not to seek a new mandate during the next elections in 2010. He said his personal decisions not to seek the post of Prime Minister must be balanced by the party position.
The EPRDF says it has yet to decide on who would be the next leader but the party has begun the search for a new leader of the party. The party sources say they are looking for the “new face of Ethiopia” if the current premier insists on not running for the post.
“I cannot be a member of the party and not respect its decisions. My open decision is that there will be no conflict between my position and that of the party. If there is a conflict, I will have the freedom to chose but I will try to resolv e the differences,’ the PM said.
Meles said among his major achievements were leading the Ethiopian transition process from military rule to a democratic system that employs a parliamentary system of leadership.
The PM said he was glad Ethiopia’s transition from military rule to democracy did not suffer from setbacks such as those witnessed in Eastern Europe.
He said Ethiopia had transformed its political system to a full democracy, despite certain limitations the three arms of government still suffered.
He also said Ethiopia’s move from economic stagnation to rapid growth was equally an achievement during his tenure as Prime Minister. [This guy doesn’t get tired of lying. Ethiopia under the Woyanne rule remains one of the poorest countries in the world where millions of children do not have enough food to eat and have no access to school.]
“We took Ethiopia into one of the seven few elite states with a higher economic growth rate in the world, that is an achievement,” Meles, who holds a record as one of the few African leaders to conduct regular press interviews, told a three-hour long briefing.
He said under his rule, steps to fight corruption had also been initiated but expressed disappointment at some very lenient sentences that some people charged with corruption were getting away with. [Meles and his wife, Azeb Mesfin, are thought to be the most corrupt politicians in Africa who amassed incredible wealth in the past two decades.]
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (EuroNews 24) – Ethiopia’s Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi has said the arrest of the country’s opposition leader was not a political decision, arguing the authorities were left with no other choice.
Authorities arrested and sentenced Birtukan Midekssa to life in prison in January after she reportedly said she never expressed remorse to obtain a pardon in 2007. She was given three days to deny or confirm the reports.
We were put in an almost impossible situation politically and legally. The law says if a pardon is given under false pretenses it has to be annulled, Meles told journalists late Friday.
The Ethiopian leader accused Birtukan of banking on support from powerful friends in powerful positions — presumably Western nations — when she made the comments during a recent trip to Sweden and Germany.
Had we indulged on her assumptions the message that we would have conveyed would be ‘nothing happens to you no matter what you do. If you have friends in all the right places, you can ride roughshod with everything’, Meles said.
That message I think is a very dangerous political message to convey in an emerging democracy. The rule of law and equality involves everyone.
Birtukan, the head of the Unity for Democracy Justice party, had been detained with dozens of opposition figures and supporters following disputed 2005 elections.
The United States, a staunch ally of Ethiopia’s dictatorship and the country’s top aid contributor, has expressed concern over the arrest and called for more political freedom in the Horn of Africa nation.
Birtukan’s party made its most spectacular electoral gains ever in the 2005 polls and cried foul over reported fraud, claiming it was robbed of victory by Zenawi’s ruling party.
The ensuing unrest left close to 200 people dead and drew international condemnation.
Ethiopia’s next general elections are expected to be held in 2010.
It was 25 years ago today that the famous Ethiopian writer and journalist, Baalu Girma, was abducted by the military junta (Derg) in Ethiopia. He hasn’t been heard from since, but his legacy continues.
We are happy to announce that a foundation has been set up in the author’s name to advance his literary work and vision. Please click on the link below to learn more about the foundation and exciting projects planned.
WASHINGTON — The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.
Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is poised to play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism—aside from Predator missile strikes—for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.
The European Parliament condemned renditions as an “illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S. is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.
“Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing legal reasoning behind the decision. “The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”
One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”
Obama’s decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human-rights groups. Leaders of such organizations said that reflects a sense, even among advocates, that the United States and other nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.
“Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “What I heard loud and clear from the president’s order was that they want to design a system that doesn’t result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured.”
In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to re-examine renditions to make sure that they “do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture” or otherwise circumvent human-rights laws and treaties.
ADDIS ABABA (SAPA) – The defense ministers of South Africa and Ethiopia’s tribalist dictatorship signed a memorandum of understanding in Addis Ababa on Friday, South Africa’s defense spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi said. [The current South Africa regime is as full of scumbags as the apartheid regime.]
Defense Minister Charles Nqakula and his Ethiopian counterpart Arto Siraj Fegesa agreed that both countries would work towards developing procedures for military co-operation including the exchange and training of military personnel, instructors and observers and promoting technical co-operation.
Co-operating in the field of military medical services, knowledge and training would also be on the agenda.
The agreement was motivated by their commitment to support peace efforts on the continent under the auspices of the African Union, which has its headquarters in the northern African country.
Nqakula said co-operation between the two countries would benefit their respective populations who were “yearning for peace, stability and development on the African continent”.
This was in line with Freedom Charter principles that there should be peace and friendship on the African continent and beyond, said Mkhwanazi, relaying the essence of the meeting by telephone.
The agreement between the militaries of the two countries would serve as a springboard to ensure that they do whatever is necessary to ensure that conflict is eradicated on the African continent, added Mkhwanazi.
(The Guardian) – AHEAD of a proposal for the proclamation of the United States of Africa by 2017, continental leaders will by January next year establish an Authority of the Africa Union to work out the details of the plan.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who announced the two dates in Dakar yesterday, said that an extraordinary AU meeting would be held to adopt the recommendations of the organisation’s last summit early this month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The summit reached a consensus on the establishment of the AU Authority to coordinate efforts geared towards establishing the United States of Africa.
Opening a two-day international symposium on the Great Green Wall (GGW), President Wade said after this meeting, the countries were expected to adopt the new texts, before promulgating them.
Pan-African News Agency reports quoted Wade as saying that “the United States of Africa will be proclaimed in 2017, to allow for the time needed to work out the different African institutions,” he said.
He said at the just-ended AU summit, a “Group of 20 African countries were ready to go their own way and set up a Federal Union. We primarily had the idea of establishing a Federal Union. Eventually, we agreed to the resolutions of the summit providing for the establishment of an Authority.”
Also, Libyan leader and AU Chairman, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, yesterday said he would like a United States of Africa to include “Caribbean islands with African populations”.
Speaking in Tripoli as AU new chief, Gaddafi hinted that this could include Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
He sympathised with Somali pirates, describing their actions as self-defence.
Last week, he said that multi-party democracy was not right for Africa.
Gaddafi’s critics believe he is too erratic to be chairman of the 53-nation AU.
Celebrating his new role at his compound in Tripoli on Tuesday, Gaddafi suggested Caribbean islands should join the AU and become a bridge between Africa and Latin America.
He told the gathering of about 400 guests that Somali pirates were only hitting back against other countries stealing marine wealth from the region’s waters.
Gaddafi said the United Nations (UN) should protect Somali waters from the piracy of other countries.
He also said he would use his 12 months at the helm of the AU to try to resolve Africa’s conflicts, including Darfur and Somalia.
