PARIS, FRANCE – France’s Socialists face the choice of Martine Aubry and Francois Hollande for the 2012 presidential election, after a weekend vote. Arnaud Montebourg and Ségolène Royal failed to attract as many voters as Hollande, the former party chairman who received 39 percent of the vote, and the mayor of Lille and former French labour secretary Aubry, with 31 percent.
The first-ever open primary by the nearly 100-year-old party pulled in some 2 million voters worldwide. The two leading candidates face off 16 October and the winner that day will join the presidential race against President Nicolas Sarkozy and other candidates.
The Socialists at one point looked set to have Dominique Strauss-Kahn as their presidential candidate, before he was charged (with charges later dropped) with raping a hotel maid in New York in early 2011.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Dominique Strauss-Kahn has handed his resignation as director, effective immediately, to the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which he has headed since 2007 (IMF announcement with the letter, published by Reuters). His post will be handled by his deputy, John Lipsky, while the board begins its search for a new director.
Strauss-Kahn was named to the post for five years, and he was widely expected before this week to be the Socialist candidate for president in 2012, running against President Nicolas Sarkozy.
He was in Zurich 10 May for IMF meetings hosted by the Swiss National Bank.
The resignation, and Strauss-Kahn’s words in his letter to the IMF, that he will “deny with the greatest possible firmness all of the allegations that have been made against me”, comes a day after results of a French poll were published, showing that a majority (57 percent) of the 1,000 questioned believed Monday that he is the victim of a plot. The poll was run before a judge in New York refused to release him on bail.
The New York Times uses the resignation to point to the long-standing French tradition of tolerance for politicians’ sexual foibles, but the charges against him are of a different order from extra-marital affairs, it notes.
Le Monde published a stark announcement about the resignation shortly before 07:00 Swiss time. It also carries an article saying that the affair will not hurt Socialists in the presidential elections, with primaries scheduled for September 2011. It also carries an audio file with brief interviews with French celebrities and politicians commenting briefly on “DSK pilloried by the media”.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva-based refugee and migration officials say the conflict in Cote d’Ivoire, which has been building for weeks, has suddenly heated up and some 20,000 people have been sealed off by fighting in the west.
“A major military offensive launched in Western Cote d’Ivoire by forces loyal to president-elect Alassane Ouattara has effectively sealed off tens of thousands of vulnerable displaced persons, preventing them from receiving adequate humanitarian assistance and protection,” the IOM (International Migration Organization) said in a statement issued late Tuesday afternoon 29 March.
Fighting near the western town of Duékoué has sealed off some 20,000 Ivoirians and migrant workers from neighbouring countries. They have taken refuge in a Catholic mission, with little in the way of supplies.
In the east, the city of Abidjan is reportedly by IOM to be the scene of violence, but the extent of it is difficult to gauge, and people are fleeing to Ghana. Some 800 people at the Takoradi border crossing are housed in a shelter designed for 200-300 and new arrivals say they have been victims of violence. Many of them saying they had to sell their possessions to find transport out of Cote d’Ivoire.
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, says that some 3,000 Ivoirians have now fled to Ghana, but there are reports that many more are on their way and the agency is rushing to establish more refugee centres to handle them.
An estimated 116,000 Ivoirians have fled the country for eight other West African nations since November’s presidential election, reports UNHCR, and thousands of migrant workers have also escaped. Liberia, the neighbour to the west, has the largest number, more than 24,000 Ivoirians, with 10,000 crossing the border in the past seven days.
UNHCR reports that it has received $24 million of the estimated $96m needed to care for the refugees.
Refugees from Cote d'Ivoire registering 3 January 2011 with UNHCR in Liberia (©2011 UNHCR / F. Lejeune-Kaba )
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Refugees continue to cross into Liberia from troubled Côte d’Ivoire at the rate of 600 a day. Liberia is now hosting some 25,000 refugees, according to Geneva-based UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), which announced 11 January that it is building a new camp in the eastern Liberian town of Bahn. The new camp will house 18,000 people and will provide health, sanitation, water and schooling to ease pressue on 23 border villages currently taking in thd refugees.
UNHCR is clearing 80 hectares of jungle provided by the Liberian government, for the new camp.
The Côte d’Ivoirians are fleeing in the face of unrest and an uncertain future, with the two main candidates in the December 2010 presidential election, Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo. each continuing to claim victory.
A court in Minsk, Belarus has sentenced 580 people to jail for between five and 15 days for participating in violent protests following the presidential election 20 December which observers have called seriously flawed, according to the AFP. The centre of Minsk was the scene of violent clashes Sunday night as more than 10,000 people attempted to enter government buildings and were repelled by riot police.
President Alexander Lukashenko told a press conference Monday: “The vandals and hooligans lost their human face. They simply turned into beasts. You saw how our law-enforcers behaved. They stood firm and acted exclusively within the bounds of the law. They defended the country and people from barbarism and ruin”, he noted.
Lukashenko was reelected with 79.9 percent of the vote Sunday. The USA has condemned the post-election crackdown on the opposition and says it rejects the polls results. “We cannot consider the election results as legitimate”, said US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.
Links to other sites: BBC, Washington Post
Former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, has claimed victory in the country’s presidential run-off, Sunday 7 February. With more than 96 percent of the votes counted, Yanukovich has declared victory with a narrow lead of 48.5 percent over his opponent, current Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko who garnered 46 percent of the votes. Tymoshenko has refused to concede and is preparing to contest the results.
Yanukovich is seen as the pro-Russian candidate and is expected to move quickly towards improving strained ties with Ukraine’s huge neighbour. Yanukovich was denied the presidency in 2004 in a bitter election whose results were later annulled.
Links to other sites: BBC, CNN, New York Times, Reuters
Former president and scion of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SFLP), Chandrika Kumaratunga, has endorsed the opposition candidate, former general Sarath Fonseka, in his bid against SFLP candidate and current president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. The move Sunday 24 January is seen as a major blow to the re-election bid by Rajapaksa in a close and increasingly violent campaign. It is the first election following the government’s victory in the long war against the Tamil Tigers last year.
Opposition parties have rallied around the former general, and accuse the ruling party of electoral fraud, of hogging the state media, and of planning a coup to seize power if the vote goes against Rajapaksa.
Links to other sites: Al-Jazeera, The Guardian, New York Times
Update 17:05 Afghan election officials have announced that Hamid Karzai is the elected president of Afghanistan and cancelled the second round of the election, scheduled for 7 November. They expressed fears for security and the cost of going ahead with an election without a challenger, who withdrew.
Afghan election officials were to announce this week whether to hold the second round of presidential elections due Saturday 7 November, after challenger Abdullah Abdullah announced his decision to withdraw from the race Sunday, 1 Novmber. Abdullah had asked for the head of the election commission to resign as a condition for his participation. The first round of the election was widely seen to be compromised by massive fraud in favour of President Hamid Karzai.
Western countries had insisted on the run-off, in order to provide Karzai with a semblance of legitimacy, ahead of important decisions by the USA, Afghanistan’s main backer in the war against the Taliban militants and the remnants of al-Qaeda in the country. US President Barack Obama is to announce a major new US strategy in coming days, and the US administration has said it needed a “credible partner” in Kabul. BBC, CNN, New York Times
A closed Tehran court has sentenced a senior local employee of the British embassy in Tehran, Hossein Rassam, to four years in prison for fomenting violence, reports say. The sentence has not been communicated officially. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, said the sentence was unacceptable, and dismissed the charges as “wholly without foundation”, reports the Times.
Rassam, the embassy’s political counsellor, was arrested late June with eight other embassy employees, following the mass disturbances after the disputed presidential election. He was put on trial with a Frenchwoman. He is free on bail after having been released from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison in August. Reuters,The Times
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was the first to claim victory in the Afghanistan presidential polls Thursday 20 August, though this was immediately disputed by his main opponent, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah. Karzai’s election team based its claim on preliminary results from its poll workers in almost 29,000 polling stations around the country. The main opposition candidate said that based on its results, Abdullah had won 63 percent against 31 percent for Karzai.
Election officials asked candidates to refrain from making predictions until the final tally was in. Officials confirmed that counting for the presidential election was complete. The elections were also for provincial assemblies. Observers had expected a turbulent election, possibly disrupted by violence promised by the Taliban, but they turned out to be reasonably peaceful. Election officials said 26 people had died in violence around the country. BBC, CNN
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini is expected to officially endorse President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the winner of the disputed 12 June presidential election, ahead of his swearing-in 5 August in front of parliament. Ahmadinejad has had difficulties forming his new government, reflecting a serious rift within the establishment. Various cabinet members have been rejected, have resigned or been fired. The massive demonstrations following the election resulted in an unknown number of deaths and many hundreds of detentions. The losing presidential candidates criticized the trials 1 and 2 August of hundreds of demonstrators held in government prisons, saying they were unconstitutional and alleging that their confessions were obtained using “medieval” torture methods. Popular discontent with the election results has been more subdued and subtle since. Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Reuters
Iran has reportedly released 140 detainees from northwestern Tehran’s notorious Evin prison after they posted bail, according to an Iranian news agency. The detainees, arrested during violent protests after the contested presidential election 12 June, were freed following a visit to the prison by members of a parliamentary commission on security. The visit was reportedly prompted by the death of the son of a prominent conservative politician. Leading clerics and some members of the establishment have called for the release of several hundred detainees. Another 150 across the country could be released soon. Al-Jazeera, CNN
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who now heads the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, has sent a sealed envelope with a list of names of people suspected of having fanned ethnic violence following the 2007 presidential election in Kenya, to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.
Annan played a key role in mediating a settlement between opposing political forces.
Thousands of supporters of the losing candidate in 12 June’s Iranian presidential elections, Mir Hussein Moussavi, took to the streets of Teheran again 18 June in a peaceful protest against what they say was voter fraud and official violence against the protesters. Thirteen people have reportedly died since 14 June at the hands of the authorities. The election was won by the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but authorities have already said they would conduct a partial recount of the vote. Moussavi has asked for new elections.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Khameini is to appear today, 19 June at the University of Teheran, for a much anticipated speech on the situation. The university has been the scene of much violence, where civilian militia, the Basij, have targeted students. Foreign news agencies have been prevented from covering the unrest, and the authorities have disrupted cell phone service sporadically. BBC, CNN, Tehran Times, NYT
