The ugly return of Uganda's Amin image

The 'walk to work' protests are having a more profound effect than the architects hoped for.
Uganda has returned in the international media and regained its former pariah status.
The Ugandan president is being called names reserved for Robert Mugabe by internation media houses such as Al jazeera and 'The New York Times'.
The governments brutal handling of riots against the rising fuel prices has earned it internation notriety and turned back the clock to the very darkest days of Uganda's history in the 1970s.
The savage arrest of Dr Kizza Besigye the opposition leader by police forces has gone viral on Youtube.Uganda is once again the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
The immediate casualities are a dip in foreign direct investment and tourism sales which had reportedly gone south. No one wants to take a vacation in a riotous and restless Kampala where foreign presidents are stoned on the way to the airport.
Uganda's international credit rating is set to suffer as fears of instability and turmoil gain currency.
There seems to be no end in sight as both the Museveni administration and the Dr Kizza Besigye camps dig in. The Ugandan government insists it will let the high fuel prices stay and the Dr Besigye camp insists it will continue the protests until government relents.

The changing face of the Libyan conflict

Is the situation in Libya a civil war or is it a case of a desparate leader dropping bombs on unarmed protestors?
Is the west foray into Libya still guided by the United Nations security council resolution?
We now hear that Britain has sent in military advisers near Benghazi and that the US has 'unmanned'drones which have already launched attacks against Gadhaffis' forces?
For starters this is no defence against Muammar Gadhafi,the world more than know what his ills have been as Libyan leader.
Are the international actors in Libya changing goal posts in Libya?
At first we were told the military strikes were there to forestall Gaddhafi from advancing rapidly against rebels and thereby preventing a sure bloodbath.
Strategically, the aims of the initial mission was to secure a 'no fly zone' and to build a buffer for the Libyan's opposition stronghold of Benghazi. It was to kind of enforce a ceasefire through military means. But character of the west's onslaught in Libya is changing very rapidly we need to be afraid,indeed, very afraid.
Arent we breaching international law by sponsoring an armed internal rebellion against a sitting government by providing them with direct military support?
Arent we setting a precedent?
Are we still within the UN security council mandate?
Is it legitimate for external forces to support a partisan party in a civil war?
We all know that the country that we know as Libya is actually a hotch potch of ethnic sects and tribes and that this a major part of the current conflict in Libya. Gadhafi is detested partly because he is from a different ethic group from the peoples of Benghazi.
How much support does international law accept in a conflict as peculiar as the one in Libya?
Initially, the libyan sage could be seen in black and white. A dictator using excessive force against his own people including peaceful demonstrators. Are we still at this stage of the conflict?
Arent we getting into Vietnam territory here?
Where is the worlds's rage?

What I have learned from the Libyan saga

Abraham Maslow was right. Satisfaction of physiological needs gives rise to the need to satisfy higher needs. The people of Libya may have had good good health care,education and roads but they had unmet civil and political needs. The west will intervene in a crisis if the country in question has oil and the conflict is getting in the way of the world's supply of crude oil. The African Union is toothless in the face of the west's hand wringing. The United Nations' Security Council is a mouthpiece for western interests. Staying in power for over four decades makes conditions ripe for a revolution given the right spark. Do not shoot and drop bombs on unarmed street protesters no matter how much power you think you wield. Do not ignore events in your neighbourhood they have a bad habit of spreading to your backyard. All conflicts have underlying economic undertones. Air prowess and strikes dont win wars on their own. 'You need boots on the ground'. Getting direct international intervention in national conflicts takes more than three weeks.

In Uganda,its a tense election eve

Many have been taken aback by the lack of violence in the Ugandan presidential election this year that goes against the experience similar elections in 2001 and 2006.
Ugandan jouralists are bemoaning an uneventful election season that makes it difficult to run 'all the news that is fit to print'.
Many ordinary Ugandans now feel that the unexpected calm before the presidential polls is akin to the calm before the storm.
In church yesterday, the priest strongly advised all his faithful to stock up on cereals just in case the election results spark violence and anarchy.'Buy lots of rice and maize meal and dry beans'he implored.
It is shocking how much violence is expected in the banana republics.
We are to lose almost an entire week in electioneering,voting and returning from upcountry voting trips.
May God bless Uganda!

China is not Russia: Why the US and China can be strategic partners

In the cold war mindset,a country that didnt agree with you ideologicallywas an adversary.
Many in the US view China's economic rise in adversarial terms but China is no USSR.
It is not communist in the strict sense of the world and its pursuit of export market capitalism rules it out of the strictly marxist-lennist lane.
To understand that China is not the ideological opposite of the United States one needs to go back to the power struggle between Mao Tse Tung and Deng Xiopeng in the early 1970s.
Chairman Mao, at the time the paramount leader of China,espoused marxist ideology and wanted China to follow a purist leftist doctrine in its politics and economy. Deng Xiopeng who is the father of China's economic reformation-and therefore it's recent rise to the second largest economy in the world,wanted China to pursue a leftist political ideology but a more liberal economic regime.
China and the United States need each other. They need to see themselves as strategic partners in the coming decades.
A strong and vibrant United States is good for China. Most of China's foreign reserves are in US dollars. The United States is a leading destination of Chinese products.
All major US corporations have operations in China where labor and expertise are cheap.
China constitutes a huge market for US products. The buyer of the Hummer brand of General motors was from China and almost all US computer hard ware companies such as Hewlett Packard,Dell etc have operations in China.
The US and China can strike up a dual partnership that can shape the coming decades.
The thorny issues of a devalued Chinese currency and human rights concerns can be resolved diplomatically without a recourse to more adversorial approaches.

Hope fading for Gbagbo removal from power

Hope is fading fast for the removal of Laurent Gbagbo, the Ivorian leader who defied a presidential election loss and has continued on president despite stringent international pressure to step down.
Diplomatic efforts and threats of his removal by force seem to have done little to weaken his resolve to cling to power despite clearly losing to Outtara according to the Independent Electoral commission of Ivory Coast and UN observers.
Despite several diplomatic pleas including visits by Thabo Mbeki,and an ECOWAS presidents' delegation and Kenyan Prime Minister Odinga's visits to Abidjan under AU urging to plead with Gbagbo to step down, the Ivorian leader is still hanging tough and rejecting any pleas to vanquish state power.
The United States recently proposed to him a generous offer for a post-presidential residency in America which he flatly declined.
Even threats of a military removal have not bore fruit.
And cracks are beginning to emerge in West Africa's ECOWAS resolve to bring Gbagbo to relinquish power.
Ghana announced yesterday that it would not take part in the military removal of Gbagbo because its military is 'overstreched',a clear signal that the alliance against Gbagbo's removal is cracking.
Already the international press is talking about a 'unity government', language which just a few days ago, was alien territory.
It would appear that the prospects of Gbagbo's removal from power are fading fast and a Kenyan-Zimbabwe option seem progressively alluring.
The losers will be Ivory Coast and electoral democracy on the African continent.
The Kenyan and Zimbabwean precedent and now in Ivory Coast seems to point to the demise of African presidential electoral democracy.

Will Ivory Coast go the Kenyan and Zim way?

A disputed election. The losing incumbent is quickly sworn in as president. The supposed victor is left out to dry. Riots and violence break out by angry disaffected youth of the undeclared victor.
International mediation teams jet into the country for talks between warring parties.
After several weeks of negotiations, the losing incumbent remains president and the supposed election winner is declared prime minister , with a few loyalists handed some non descript cabinet dockets in an uneasy,fragile settlement. Sounds familiar? Well this is the script that Zimbabwe and Kenya followed after bitterly disputed presidential elections a few years ago.Is this the future of electoral democracy in Africa?
Are African incumbent presidents becoming too cynical about African electoral democracy?
Hold an election which will leave you as president even when you lose it? Quicly swear in as president, close off your border and then let in a friendly mediator usually one who has been in the presidents club at the AU or EU.
In Ivory Coast this is about to play out between the incumbent and the undeclared victor.
Post election settlements are a real threat to the integrity of African elections and threaten to disenfranchise the African voter. Does national peace have to come at the price of a dashed election?