News Update. Kibaki and Raila fail to agree, therefore no cabinet as yet

Published by Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.standard.ke

By Stephen Ndegwa

No deal on cabinet, talks postponed

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime –Minister Designate Raila Odinga have postponed the announcement of a new cabinet after talks on Sunday failed to break the deadlock on portfolio balance.They had planned to name the cabinet on Sunday at 3pm, but disagreements arose over the sharing of ministries.

In a joint statement, the two leaders said they had made “substantial progress” and asked Kenyans to be patient.

“We have had a lengthy consultation throughout the day on the formation of a grand coalition government. In this regard we have made substantial progress. We expect to successfully conclude the consultations tomorrow (Monday). We would also like to assure Kenyans the final outcome will be in the best interest of all wananchi,” said the statement.

The tow held a day-long meeting at the Office of the President in Harambee House to renegotiate the sharing of key ministries after bickering ensued on Saturday when the two parties released of different lists on sharing of ministries.

Both teams have want the Foreign Affairs ministry currently held by Moses Wetangula, Local Government (Uhuru Kenyatta) Energy (Kiraitu Murungi) Roads( John Michuki) and Special Programmes (Dr Naomi Shaban).

A statement released by Government spokesperson Dr Alfred Mutua earlier in the day indicated Kibaki and Raila held a one-on-one meeting as their key lieutenants- PNU ministers and ODM Pentagon members- waited outside. The teams were later brought on board but still no agreement was reached.

On Saturday, Kibaki invited Raila for the meeting to finalise the list of a new cabinet which was earlier planned to be unveiled at 3pm today.

Last week on Thursday, the two leaders agreed to form a bloated cabinet of 40, the largest in Kenya’s history, but fresh bickering emerged after both parties released different lists showing how ministries would be shared out.

The cabinet is a critical part of a deal brokered in February to end Kenya’s bloodiest political crisis, where at least 1,200 people were killed and 300,000 displaced.

“Mr. Odinga will at that meeting reiterate that he has made numerous concessions … in the interest of a quick conclusion to the crisis gripping our country. But he will not make any further concession,” opposition spokesman Salim Lone was quoted by Reuters.

The inflated cabinet has angered civil society groups and many Kenyans who view it as yet another case of the political elite enriching themselves from the public coffers.

The construction of the expanded Cabinet hit the brick wall over disagreement on which political party takes Foreign Affairs and Local Government portfolios.

To Orange Democratic Movement, the two portfolios now held by President Kibaki’s Party of National Unity were in last week’s deal, their compensation for missing out on the plum Finance and Internal security dockets.

On Saturday, President Kibaki met several ministers, including Prof George Saitoti (Internal security) and Mr Moses Wetangula (Foreign), and the Head of Public Service, Mr Francis Muthaura. Thereafter ODM was sent the new list.

That list had separate ministries and slots for ODM to fill out the names of its preferred ministers and assistant ministers in the new line-up. ODM heavily protested after the government published a new list on its website.

“They want to have everything, they want us to be passengers in the Government,’’ Raila was quoted by the Sunday Standard.

“If what the Government spokesman has published is true, then it is bizarre if not absurd. The accord signed on February 28 was based on the sharing of power between Two equal partners. If one side decides to make appointments to the cabinet on its own, then that is the end of the accord,’’ said Lone on Saturday.

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AFRICAN PRESS INTERNATIONAL - API

 

 

 

Egypt arrests Brotherhood members

Published by Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.aljazeera.int

 Below:Khayrat al-Shater, a senior Brotherhood member was arrested for questioning last December [EPA]

Egypt has arrested 34 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including a top decision maker, continuing a crackdown on the country’s most powerful opposition group ahead of this month’s municipal elections.

 State security forces stormed the houses of the Brotherhood members in several northern and southern cities during a dawn raid, the group said in a statement.A senior member of the group was reportedly among those arrested, it said.

The Brotherhood said the crackdown was aimed at preventing the group’s members from running in municipal elections on April 8.

 Hundreds of Brotherhood members have been arrested, and thousands of candidates from the group prevented from registering for the upcoming contests.

 

Although the Brotherhood is banned, its candidates run in elections as independents.

 

The group scored surprise victories in 2005 parliament elections that gave it a fifth of the legislature’s 454 seats.

 

The upcoming local elections had been scheduled to take place in 2006, but were put off for two years, apparently out of fear of more Brotherhood gains.

 

Unconditional release

 

Amnesty International criticised the government on Friday for its crackdown against the Brotherhood ahead of the municipal elections.

 

“Amnesty International is concerned that many of those arrested and detained may be prisoners of conscience held for the legitimate exercise of freedom of expression and association,” the rights group said in a statement.

 

“Amnesty is calling for those who are being held as prisoners of conscience to be released immediately and unconditionally, and for the Egyptian authorities to lift all other unlawful restrictions on the exercise of freedom of expression.”

 

Traditionally dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party, the municipal polls are expected to draw fierce competition after a constitutional amendment was passed in 2005.

 

Friday’s arrests came two days before Egyptian textile workers and pro-democracy activists have planned a day of strikes and protests.

 

The Brotherhood has said that it supports the workers’ right to strike but played no part in organising the protests. The group said it would not rally its supporters to join the strike because it felt the goals were unclear.

 

Labour organisers have called on thousands of textile workers to walk out of factories in the northern Nile Delta industrial city of Mahalla el-Kobra on Sunday to voice their dissatisfaction over low wages.

 

The city has already been the scene of a string of unprecedented strikes over the past year.

 

The pro-democracy group Kifaya, which in Arabic means “enough”, has said it will hold a solidarity rally in Cairo’s twin city of Giza.

 

Abdel-Halim Qandil, Kifaya’s leader, said the move would support the workers and “express the grievances of the people … in a day of anger”.

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African Press International - api

 

 

Uganda: Mabira forest giveaway

Published by Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.newvision

GIVEN AWAY authored by Micky

My dear friends the intransigence of this regime is beyond measure. It rides rough shod over peoples’ opinion and looks with disdain on well meaning advice. Our Mabira is only surviving because we are able to monitor all activities going on.

There are forests on the Ssese Islands that have been plundered and nature so vilely treated that one can well call it environmental rape. There is no use of chain saws they instead fell the trees with huge earth movers. All this in an attempt to satisfy the lust of one BIDCO.

We are going to soon suffer the consequences of our abuses of the gifts of nature. When nature and providence saw it fit for us to have such natural forests there must have been a good reason now blantant destruction is taking place. Cry the beloved country.

Mike. Watmon
0754887480
Dialogue Consults

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African Press International - api

Enough reasearch is available on population growth.

Published by Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.newvision

 authored by Joseph van Eijndhoven

Talking about population size, the UK parliament has just conducted a study into the effects of immigration into the UK over the past few years. The government claimed that increase of the population would make the country more dynamic, more competitive and therefore better off.

The parliamentary commission is highly critical of this assertion and their conclusion is rather devastating. Yes, the size of the economy has grown but the wealth of the people has not increased because more people now have to share the spoils of the bigger economy. The chairman of the commission noted that the government should concern itself with the wealth of the people, not their numbers.

The same thing happens when a population grows through babies instead of through immigration. In fact, the burden on the country will be even greater because babies need schooling where as most immigrants will already have had their schooling when they enter the country.

To add to this, baby booms also create their own specific imbalances. Think of sudden bursts in schools, jobs, housing etc that are needed. Even in rich countries such bursts in population growth are very difficult to manage, let alone in developing countries. In fact, the reasons for wanting a big population are quite archaic and old fashioned and have mostly to do with misguided ideas about what will make a country powerful vis-à-vis its neighbours. In this day and age however, impoverished masses surviving on less than $ 1 a day do not make a country powerful, quite the opposite.

On the other hand, population explosions are a common phenomenon after years of war. The same thing happened in Europe after the Second World War and I for one am a product of that baby boom. If one wants to reduce population pressures one should understand the reasons why people want many children. Lot’s of research has been done in the past decades into this, e.g. why poor people want more children than affluent people, and the results are readily available for those who care to slow down the rate of population growth.

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African Press International - api

Boy dies after being caned in a school in Uganda

Published by Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.newvision.ug

Caning pupils is very old-fashioned and should not happen. Now a family has lost their child due to a primitive way of discipline. Saying that the cane was a small one is immaterial. The teacher should be charged for murder and even if compensation will not bring back the boy, the family should be aided out of the tragedy by the government. The government should pay compensation direct to the family now and then get it from the teacher and the school at a later date. We give our heartfelt condolences to the family.

By Carol Natukunda

<Alithum (in green) with his brother RIGHT: Upenycan

THE Police are investigating the circumstances under which a Primary Four pupil instantly collapsed and died after a teacher reportedly caned him.

Francis Alithum, a pupil of Luzira Progressive Junior School, died on March 14, 2008.

While the school says it was only a small stick that could not cause harm, the boy’s father, Bernard Upenycan, accuses the school of killing his son.

A March 18, 2008 postmortem report from Mulago Hospital, obtained from the father, shows that Alithum died of rheumatic heart disease. However, the school has a separate post-mortem report saying he died of cardiac (heart) failure. The two post-mortem reports have the same patient name, stamp, pathologist’s name and letterhead but different dates and handwriting. The report provided by the school is dated 14th February, a month before the boy died.

Efforts to get clarification from Dr. Kidaga, who carried out the post-mortem, had not yielded results by press time.

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African Press International - api

Blast Kills Sri Lanka Minister

 Published by Korir, api api africanpress@getmail.no source.aljaazera and agencies

Fernandopulle, centre, was attending a sporting event when the attack occurred [AFP]

At least 12 people, including a Sri Lankan minister, have been killed in a suicide bomb attack outside the capital Colombo, authorities have said.

 

Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, the highways minister, was opening a marathon race in the western town of Weliveriya, 12km from Colombo, when the attack took place.

Anura Yapa, Sri Lanka’s media minister, said the attack was “a suicide bombing of the Tigers”, referring to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), an armed separatist group. 

The country’s defence ministry said that 12 people had been killed and more than 90 injured in the blast.

The LTTE has led an armed campaign for a separate ethnic Tamil homeland since the early 1980s.

 

Senior figure

 

Fernandopulle was a member of a Sri Lankan government team that held failed peace talks with the LTTE.

 

Bloody trail

Key attacks blamed on the LTTE:March 1991: Ranjan Wijeratne, Sri Lanka’s defence minister, is among 19 killed in a car bomb attack in ColomboMay 1991: Rajiv Gandhi, a former Indian prime minister, is killed in southern India by a suspected female LTTE suicide bomber during an election rallyMay 1993: Ranasinghe Premadasa, Sri Lanka’s president, is among 24 killed by a suicide bomber during a May Day march December 1999: Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sri Lanka’s president, is injured in a bomb attack in Colombo June 2000: C V Gunaratne, industrial development minister, is killed in a suicide bomb blast in Colombo August 2005: Lakshman Kadirgamar, foreign minister, is shot dead at his home in Colombo by a suspected LTTE sniper January 2008: D M Dassanayake, nation building minister, is killed by a roadside bomb just outside Colombo

Minelle Fernandez, reporting for Al Jazeera from Colombo, said Fernandopulle was a well established figure in the Sri Lankan government.

 ”He was the chief whip in parliament… he has been in politics for a number of years and has been elected to parliament five consecutive times, from 1989,” she said.

 

“At this stage we are yet to hear any claims of responsibility from the rebels who are considered [by Sri Lankan authorities] to be responsible for the attack.”

 

She added that there had a been a recent lull in fighting around Colombo, with clashes occurring mainly in the north and east of the country.

 

Lakshman Hulugalle, director general of Sri Lanka’s media centre for national security, told Al Jazeera he had little doubt that the LTTE carried out Sunday’s attack.

 

“Suicide bombers belong to the LTTE. They have been doing this for the past 20 years,” he said.

 

“They have killed many ministers, presidents and presidential candidates. They have killed many government officials and armed forces chiefs.”

 

Hulugalle said the attack would not force the government to end military operations against the LTTE.

 

“The government will go forward with military plans… the government is not going to take anything back because of these terror attacks,” he said.

 

Strong resistance

 

There has been an increase in heavy fighting between government forces and the LTTE since the government ended a ceasefire in January.

 

The military has faced tougher resistance from the LTTE than it expected, diplomats and other observers have said.

 

Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka’s president, condemned Sunday’s attack.

 

“This dastardly act will not weaken our resolve to eradicate terrorism from our midst, and bring peace, harmony and democracy to all our people,” he said in a statement.

 

The LTTE has been blamed for more than 240 suicide attacks in recent decades and is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US, European Union and India

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African Press International - api

 

 

News Update: Kibaki meets Raila to break cabinet deadlock

Published by Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no source.standard.ke

By Stephen Ndegwa

Published on April 6, 2008, 12:00 am

President Mwai Kibaki and Prime –Minister Designate Raila Odinga are currently meeting at the Office of the President in Harambee House for further consultations over the naming of a 40 member cabinet.

A statement released by Government spokesperson Dr Alfred Mutua indicated Kibaki and Raila are holding the meeting as their key lieutenants- PNU ministers and ODM Pentagon members- wait outside.

On Saturday, Kibaki invited Raila for the 10am (EAT) meeting to for final consultations and the naming of a new cabinet which was earlier set be announced at 3pm today.

Last week on Thursday, the two leaders agreed to form a bloated cabinet of 40, the largest in Kenya’s history, but fresh bickering emerged after both parties released different lists showing how ministries would be shared out.

The cabinet is a critical part of a deal brokered in February to end nation’s bloodiest political crisis, where at least 1,200 people were killed and 300,000 displaced.

“Mr. Odinga will at that meeting reiterate that he has made numerous concessions … in the interest of a quick conclusion to the crisis gripping our country. But he will not make any further concession,” opposition spokesman Salim Lone was quoted by Reuters.

The inflated cabinet, the biggest since independence from Britain in 1963, has angered civil society groups and many Kenyans who view it as yet another case of the country’s political elite enriching themselves from the public coffers.

The construction of the expanded Cabinet hit the brick wall over disagreement on which political party takes Foreign Affairs and Local Government portfolios.

To Orange Democratic Movement, the two portfolios now held by President Kibaki’s Party of National Unity were in last week’s deal, their compensation for missing out on the plum Finance and Internal security dockets.

On Saturday, President Kibaki met several ministers, including Prof George Saitoti (Internal security) and Mr Moses Wetangula (Foreign), and the Head of Public Service, Mr Francis Muthaura. Thereafter ODM was sent the new list.

That list had separate ministries and slots for ODM to fill out the names of its preferred ministers and assistant ministers in the new line-up. ODM heavily protested after the government published a new list on its website;

www.communication.go.ke.”They want to have everything, they want us to be passengers in the Government,’’ Raila was quoted by the Sunday Standard.

“If what the Government spokesman has published is true, then it is bizarre if not absurd. The accord signed on February 28 was based on the sharing of power between two equal partners. If one side decides to make appointments to the cabinet on its own, then that is the end of the accord,’’ said Lone on Saturday.

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African Press International - api

The government cabinet list below is a good thing for the stability in Kenya

Published by Korir, api africanpress@getmail.no

Below is a list publicised by the Kenya government yesterday in readiness for the announcement of the cabinet today.

PRESIDENT KIBAKI AWAITING LIST OF NAMES FOR CABINET APPOINTMENT FROM HON. ODINGA

Today, President Mwai Kibaki requested Hon. Raila Odinga to submit his proposals for appointments into the Cabinet. The President is yet to receive the list.

Even though consultations as per the National Accord and Reconciliation Act, 2008, are important, they cannot go on indefinitely. In situations where there is sharing, neither party can be satisfied 100 percent, because of the spirit of give and take. The consultations for the formation of cabinet have gone on for over a month and have to end at one point.

President Mwai Kibaki has invited Hon Raila Odinga to a meeting, tomorrow, Sunday, April 6th, 2008, at 10 am, at Harambee House. The President is looking forward to meeting Hon. Raila Odinga to finalize the consultations on the new Cabinet.

Below is the final list of 40 ministries compiled by the President after extensive consultations with Hon. Raila Odinga:

GOVERNMENT COALITION

1. Local Government
2. Foreign Affairs
3. Finance
4. Justice and Constitutional
5. Nairobi Metropolitan Development
6. Transport
7. Information and Communications
8. Energy
9. Environment and Mineral resources
10. Trade
11. Livestock Development
12. Defence
13. Internal Security and Provincial Administration
14. Home affairs
15. Special Programmes
16. Housing
17. Women and Children Development
18. Education
19. Labour
20. Public Health and Sanitation

ODM

1. Immigration and Registration of persons
2. East African Community
3. Planning and Vision 2030
4. Public Service
5. Regional Development Authorities
6. Roads
7. Public Works
8. Water and Irrigation
9. Lands
10. Tourism
11. Agriculture
12. Fisheries Development
13. Industrialization
14. Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid lands
15. Medical services
16. National Heritage and Culture
17. Youth and Sports
18. Higher Education, Science and Technology
19. Cooperative Development
20. Forestry and Wildlife

 

Dr. Alfred N. Mutua
Public Communications Secretary &
Government Spokesperson 

April 5th, 2008

19:00 Hrs

 

 

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African Press International - api