Official News Of the Day Thread -African National Congress

No but if he'd stayed he would most likely have been killed.

 

Watto I think "most likely" is an understatement. This however doesn't mean he was exiled.

There is a story about a mother who came to see Gandhi, and asked him to tell her son to stop eating sugar. He told the mother to come back with the boy in 2 weeks. She didn't understand but she complied. 2 weeks later she returned with her son, and Gandhi told the boy to stop eating sugar. She then asked him, why couldn't you just tell him this 2 weeks ago. Gandhi replied "Madam, 2 weeks ago I was eating sugar".

Don't tell people to stand up for, and most likely die for, a cause for which you aren't willing to do the same.

 

Yesterday saw Presidential and Parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe. No official results have yet been released but the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are claiming victory. It is rumoured that Joyce Mujuru (one of two Vice Presidents) has lost her seat in Parliament and celebrations on streets of Bulawayo have been reported.

It's possible that Zimbabwe's long nightmare could be coming to end but more likely that Mugabe will refuse to go quietly unleash the security forces.

 

Unconfirmed reports on opposition websites are saying that the MDC have won 199 out of 210 seats.

Lots of rumours are flying round. Some report that Mugabe has fled the country. Elliot Manyika (a member of the cabinet) is said to have shot someone in rage after losing his seat.

 

That would be great news for those people Karde.

 

Yeah, Zimbabwe has a long, long road ahead of it though. Besides being the single country that has the highest inflation in the world, it appears that at least Mugabe's administration has fled the country and taken what was left of the country's treasury with them.

It's unclear if they are just temporarily hiding, or if they are planning on permanently disappearing. Mugabe has already proclaimed that any announcement from the MDC that they won will be treated as a coup, and Mugabe has charged the opposition party leader with treason...

 

I think that if the MDC and Tsvangirai manage to get as far as assuming power, Tsvangirai needs to appeal for international peacekeeping troops ASAP before Mugabe loyalists can mount a coup.

As for the result, Zimbabwe has long been neglected, and look at the state of the country now. Inflation at 165'000%, 80% unemployment and a starving population. Zimbabwe needs the MDC because Zanu-PF is doing nothing.

 

Official results are finally starting to come through. In the Parliamentary elections 66 out 210 seats in the lower house have been declared. ZanuPF have 31 seats. The main MDC faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai have 30 seats while the breakaway MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara have 5 seats.

No results have yet been announced for the Presidential election.

EDIT: I have been looking a bit deeper at the results announced and things look quite good for the MDC. Many of the early results are coming from ZanuPF strongholds where they are not doing as well as they would expect. In Masvingo Province the 2005 elections saw ZanuPF win 13 out of 14 seats. This time the MDC have won 5 out the 9 declared so far. Even in Mashonaland East province where ZanuPF won every seat last time the MDC have won two seats.

 

Results continue to come through painfully slowly. With 161 seats now declared ZanuPF have 79, MDC (Tsvangirai) have 77 and MDC (Mutambara) have 5. Despite some clear rigging of the vote it looks like ZanuPF will finish well short of a majority. Of the seats still to declare around half are in Harare and Matabeleland where ZanuPF have little support.

There has still been no release of the results in the Presidential elections but it is now strongly rumoured that Mugabe is willing to step down and is negotiating a deal with the oposition. Both sides deny this but the consensus seems to be that talks are going on.

 

It is official Zanu-PF have lost their majority in Parliament. With 200 seats out of 210 now declared the results are as follows.

MDC(Tsvangirai) - 98 seats
Zanu-PF - 94 seats
MDC(Mutambara) - 7 seats
Independent - 1 seat

Still no results in the Presidential elections but the MDC have released results showing Tsvangirai on 50.3% compared to Mugabe's 43.8% and 7% for an Independent candidate. Zimbabwe state media are claiming that no candidate has achieved the 50% threshold and thus a run off between Tsvangirai and Mugabe will be held.

 

I do feel like I am talking to myself in this thread but stories coming out of Zimbabwe state that Perence Shiri has shot himself.

For anyone who wonders why this is a good thing please Google his name, Zaimbabwean Fifth Brigade or Gukurahundi.

 

Looks like Mugabe's going into a Presendential run off. I don't think he's going anywhere. He's going to terrorize his people during the campaign, to the point where a lot of them will not vote and thus, with a bit more vote rigging as well, he'll stick around to inflict more terror and misery on those people.

 

(moved to the new Mugabe thread)

 

So, shall we discuss Myanmar? Sounds like their government is highly screwed up. At least China helps its people when natural disaster strikes....

 

This whole situation brings up the question, when is it appropriate to intervene in a country when the government has failed its people?

I've heard a number of calls from commentators for the international community to just ignore the junta and head in with supplies and relief workers without permission. Time had a story on the question, and the Economist has a few articles, here and here. The US doesn't seem too keen on the idea, though, due to the possible precedent and consequences in the region, and it'd likely be shot down by China anyway. I think the strongest justification I've heard is for the UN to point to its "responsibility to protect" and intervene, but there's still the Chinese veto.

Personally, I lean a bit toward intervention, but I admit I don't know enough about Myanmar and the region to make an educated decision. Unilaterally entering Myanmar would certainly help the relief effort, but I have no idea what the repercussions would be and I really doubt it will be done. The Myanmar leaders seem to be allowing more supplies into the country now, though they're still stalling aid workers. Whatever happens, I'm sure the junta's little "constitutional vote" passed... and there are going to be thousands and thousands of dead Burmese.

 

Sovereignty, Lit Mod of Famine, sovereignty.

Sp?
Strange word.

Anyway, going in with aid without the governments' consent is not much different from declaring war. So, who's going to declare war on Myanmar? Why do you think all foreign affairs ministers rush to say they need consent before they can do anything... They have enough war on their hands. And look at what's north of Myanmar.

Looks like the people of Myanmar are karked.

 

I'll agree... its not our place to ignore a nation's sovereignty. If that means that people die, well, that's an unfortunite repurcussion that we can't do anything about if offers of aid are turned down.

 

Right, I understand the concept national sovereignty.

And I do have a grasp of the consequences of such an intervention, and why it won't happen. I'm not asking for it, I'm posing a question. Are there conditions when the international community can tell a nation "**** your sovereignty" and act without that county's permission?

 

No, its never right. Take that citizens of Myanmar, Sudan, North Korea, etc. Too many people have made the statement that national sovereignty trumps all.

 

Unilaterally entering Myanmar would certainly help the relief effort, but I have no idea what the repercussions would be and I really doubt it will be done. The Myanmar leaders seem to be allowing more supplies into the country now, though they're still stalling aid workers.

Somalia would be a good comparison here. While Somalia didn't have a strong centralized government, (and in fact didn't really have any government at all) it can be used as an example of what happens when relief efforts aren't supported by the powers within the country, or used for their own ends, and not for the benefit of the people.

 

So we carried out the Berlin Airlift very much without the consent of the Soviet Union, and they ended up backing down. Yeah sure, we actually controlled the airspace over the city back then, but what's Myanmar really going to do if we try it....protest a food delivery effort? Just to make sure no mischief occurs we can stuff food containers onto our B-2 stealth bombers and fly them out from Pearl or Guam.

About national sovereignty, most of the time you shouldn't violate it, but sometimes you should. Iraq was an example of how national sovereignty should not have been violated because there was no imminent crisis. This is not true of Sudan or Myanmar. By intervening in the first and not doing so in the latter two, we have failed in all three.

 

So we carried out the Berlin Airlift very much without the consent of the Soviet Union, and they ended up backing down. Yeah sure, we actually controlled the airspace over the city back then, but what's Myanmar really going to do if we try it....protest a food delivery effort? Just to make sure no mischief occurs we can stuff food containers onto our B-2 stealth bombers and fly them out from Pearl or Guam.

Yes, but your second point makes all the difference. The section of Berlin that was with the West- well... was with the West. It made all the difference that West Berlin cooperated.

In the case of Burma, the food still has to be distributed. Yeah, from a capability standpoint, we could drop aid and the Myanmar government couldn't stop it, but then what? All the government would have to do, if it so desired, would be to shoot those people who came to collect the food. The escalation is where the trouble develops.

This is very much what happened in Somalia, where the individual warlords couldn't stop the West from supplying the aid, but the strong ones just hoarded the food and killed all others who tried to collect it.

 

They're going to shoot people who are trying to get food? Like, how often can any government pull that kind of crap before the mass uprisings start? Heck, if the United Nations is going to just sit on its hands and go "oh noes, we need to respect the sovereignty of countries that commit mass murder against its people" then we may as well disband it.

See? See? This is what happens when U.S. credibility goes down the drain. Thanks to Bush and Iraq nobody will believe us when REAL regime change is needed.

 

Yeah, because before Iraq, the UN was doing something about these bad regimes.

The UN will, for obvious reasons, never in the forseeable future actually do something about changing a regime based on what its doing to its people.

 

After putting the issue to a popular vote, the people of Ireland rejected the EU's Lisbon Treaty by a margin of around 53% to 46%.

The top reasons given for rejection were:

1)the remoteness of the EU leadership
2)The EU body tends to ignore the smaller member countries
3)EU bureaucracy tends to be undemocratic in procedure.

Here's some general information about the treaty:

BBC

The problem is that the treaty had to be ratified by all 27 members of the EU, so Ireland's rejection stalls the entire reform process. Back in 2001, Ireland rejected the EU Treaty of Nice, and previous attempts at reform were vetoed by France and Netherlands. It looks like the standby issue of European Old Guard vs the upcoming nations again threw its hat into the ring.