Foul play in Guinea

  It is reported that, ‘Guinea’s military rulers have dissolved the West African nation’s government, which had been in power since July 2022. The presidency’s spokesman, General Amara Camara, announced the decision on 19 February without providing any specific reasons.

The presidential decree, read by General Camara in a pre-recorded video published on social media, said a new government would be installed but did not specify when that would happen. 

“The government is dissolved... The management of current affairs will be ensured by the directors of cabinet, the secretaries general, and the deputy secretaries general until the establishment of a new government,” he said in the presence of around 20 uniformed soldiers.

Guinea has been under military rule since September 2021, when soldiers overthrew President Alpha Conde, who had ruled for more than a decade. Conde’s election in 2010 marked the country’s first democratic transfer of power since its independence from France in 1958.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has demanded that the coup leaders in Conakry, as well as those in power in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, hold elections within a reasonable timeframe and restore democratic order.

Colonel Mady Doumbouya, the interim president of the former French colony, agreed to return Conakry to civilian rule by the end of 2024 after facing sanctions over an initial three-year transfer of power. The military leadership has claimed that the transition period would allow it to implement major reforms in the poor but mineral-rich country.

In a separate statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, the presidency ordered members of the dissolved government to return state property, including vehicles and travel documents “without delay.”

“The High Commander of the Gendarmerie and the Director General of the Police are responsible for taking all measures to put buffers in all departments until the temporary workers are fully taken over,” announced Ibrahima Sory Bangoura, chief of staff and general of the Armed Forces of the Guinean Transitional Government.

ECOWAS, which has been embroiled in disputes with military rulers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, has yet to issue an official statement on Guinea’s unexpected government dissolution. The three former French colonies have served notices to withdraw from the bloc, citing harsh sanctions imposed in response to coups in their respective countries. They accuse the 15-nation regional authority of being a tool for foreign powers. The bloc is also dealing with political unrest in Senegal, where a surprise postponement of presidential elections has sparked deadly protests in recent weeks.’

Senegal :Anti - Democracy protests

 

The Socialist Party of Great Britain and its Companion Parties within the World Socialist Movement has always aimed for the transition from Capitalism to Socialism to occur through the democratic process and not through violent revolution.

It is considered that are seventy two countries in the world which qualify as democracies.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/democracy-countries

The Republic of Senegal is a West African country of eighteen million people.

It is numbered within the classification of heavily indebted poor countries.

The World Poverty Clock has seven per cent of Senegal living in extreme poverty. In Democratic Indexes Senegal ranks as the fourth most democratic country in Africa. ‘Senegal s one of the few African states that has never experienced a coup d'état or exceptionally harsh authoritarianism. There are seventy two political Parties there.’ Wiki

Senegal is currently undergoing violent protests because the President has postponed elections due to take place by ten months.

Senegal’s Parliament has supported the President. At present it is not known what the eventual outcome

‘On Saturday (FSb. 10) at least two people were confirmed dead after protests were held across Senegal, Friday (Feb. 09).

Demonstrators were not allowed to gather, and groups were dispersed by security forces.

The victims confirmed so far, two men in their twenties, were killed in Saint-Louis and in Dakar according to local media reports.

The victim in Saint-Louis was a student. He was killed on a school campus following demonstrations in the northern city, according to a statement from the public prosecutor.

Anger has mounted since President Sall last week postponed presidential elections scheduled this month.

The delay came hours before official campaigning was due to begin.

Parliament backed a delay until December and voted to keep Sall in power until his successor takes office, which is unlikely to be before early 2025.

Sall's second term was due to end April 2nd.

The president said he postponed the vote because of a dispute between parliament and the Constitutional Council over aspiring candidates who were not allowed to stand.

In an interview Friday (Feb. 09), he said he wants to rapidly organize a national dialogue that will pave the way for a peaceful electoral process.

Opposition lawmakers have filed an appeal at the Constitutional court while presidential candidates appealed to the Supreme Court.

A new round of protests is planned for Tuesday (Feb. 13).

Senegalese in the diaspora have also taken to the streets. In France where a large community of Senegalese lives, crowds gathered Saturday (Feb. 10) in major cities including Paris, Bordeaux (South west) and Nice (south).’

https://www.africanews.com/2024/02/11/election-protests-turn-deadly-in-senegal/

‘In his first interview since announcing the postponement of the presidential election, Senegal's Macky Sall argues his decision to intervene was necessary to prevent worse electoral chaos.

He spoke Friday (Feb. 09) as nationwide protests shook the country.

“I am for an inclusive, transparent and peaceful process that allows me to pass on the baton smoothly and in peace. That is the most important thing for our country today. You are right that West Africa is currently in a extremely difficult time, it's not at such a time when I am about to end my term that I will reinvent myself in a new career as a dictator or non-democrat," Sall told the Associated Press.

"That’s a picture they are painting, but it doesn’t correspond to my profile or my personality and that doesn’t correspond to reality. The reality is that if there hadn’t been this crescendo of successive crises, despite the breaches, we wouldn’t have gone in this direction''.

Last May, Sall held a national dialogue aimed at reducing political tensions after unprecedented riots.

However, rights groups continued to accuse authorities of repressing the media, civil society and the opposition.

Senegal's president now believes a new dialogue can solve the crisis the country grapples with.

“The dialogue for me can start anytime from next week, but I think there are prerequisites if we want to have success. First among these prerequisites is to establish trust between the actors, bring peace and enter a dialogue," Senegal's president said.

"So within one or two weeks maximum if the actors accept and I see a lot of interest from more and more actors who are okay with the idea of dialogue, that means we can get there quickly.”

Opposition lawmakers have filed an appeal at the Constitutional court.

The decree voted by Parliament to postne the election is also contested by candidates in the presidentialelection.

Out of 20, 14 appealed to the Supreme Court.

Senegalese faith in democracy has significantly declined under Sall, according to an independent survey by a research network.’

https://www.africanews.com/2024/02/10/i-am-seeking-for-nothing-except-to-leave-a-country-in-peace-sall-says-as-protests-erupt/

The Question of Eritrea

The UN's Commission of Inquiry (COI) for Eritrea said the government of President Isaias Afwerki had committed heinous crimes since independence a quarter-century ago, including the "enslavement" of 400,000 people. Much of the abuse is allegedly linked to a harsh national service programme. The Human Rights Council said it "strongly encourages the African Union to follow up on the COI report" and set up "an investigation ... with a view to examining and bringing to justice those responsible for violations and abuses of human rights identified by the commission of inquiry, including any that may amount to a crime against humanity".

Time to Go Mugabe

In the first anti-government rally in years, thousands hit streets of Harare in Zimbabwe to protest against economic mismanagement. Thousands marched through the streets calling for an end to the rule of longtime President Robert Mugabe. Police had initially threatened to ban the  protest but were eventually ordered by the High Court to allow it to go ahead.

Zimbabwe's economic crisis has worsened in recent months, taking a toll on employment rates and government expenditure.

Ghana's rich are the ruling class

According to Dr. Emmanuel Akwetey, Executive Director for the Institute of Democratic Governance (IDEG) the power of the ordinary Ghanaian is gradually being sold to the rich politicians and that it is not the power of the people that is governing Ghana now, but the power of people who have money, stressing that these group of people have different agenda than serving the public good and are exploiting the system. 

He said there could be a possible collapse of Ghana’s democratic system if vote buying is allowed to take center stage in the coming elections in November.

He explained there was a small group of people that is controlling Ghana’s democracy and not for public good but for their pocket.

When reading a book is a crime

In Lisbon last week angry demonstrations took place in support of Angola’s human rights activists and against the influence of Angolan tycoons who have been investing in Portugal’s cash-strapped news and telecommunications industries, something that has been called “reverse colonisation”. The Portuguese parliament failed to condemn the long sentences given to the so-called Luanda Book Club – the 17 dissidents convicted of political defiance of Angola’s government. They accuse the Portuguese government of  “complicity in the ongoing looting” of the country by the Angola’s regime. Monday marks the 14th anniversary of the end of Angola’s 26-year civil war which began after independence from Portugal. Dos Santos, 73, has been president since 1979 and has been accused of presiding over one of the world’s most corrupt regimes, amassing a fortune for himself, his family and friends while two thirds of his country lives below the poverty line. Dos Santos is worth an estimated $20bn.

The group – including rapper Luaty Beirão, writer Domingos da Cruz and political T-shirt seller Nito Alves – were arrested for holding a meeting at which they discussed books, including one by Gene Sharp about non-violent protest, which was entitled From Dictatorship to Democracy. After a lengthy remand period, which included several of the activists going on hunger strike, and a trial on charges ranging from conspiracy to plotting, all 17 were sentenced last Monday to terms ranging from two to eight-and-a-half years, with hefty fines. Beirão was given five-and-a-half years for “falsifying documents” and journalist da Cruz was given the longest sentence – “for leading the criminal association”. One activist, Francisco Mapanda, was further sentenced to eight months for contempt of court after shouting in the courtroom, “This judgment is a joke.”

The Albert Einstein Institution has strongly condemned the men’s trial, as has the Human Rights Foundation. All 17 have been adopted as “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International, which has called for their immediate release and dismissed the trial as a “mockery of justice”. Its director for Southern Africa, Deprose Muchena, said: “The activists have been wrongly convicted in a deeply politicised trial. They are the victims of a government determined to intimidate anyone who dares to question its repressive policies. This unjustifiable conviction and draconian sentences against these peaceful activists, who should never have been detained at all, demonstrate how Angolan authorities use the criminal justice system to silence dissenting views. They should not have spent a single day in prison.”

“The Angolan authorities always proclaimed to have caught this group ‘red-handed’ in their crime. That crime was reading a book,” said Vicky Baker, deputy editor of Index , the Index on Censorship’s magazine. “Evidence was so scant of the alleged coup-plotting that those charges had to be dropped. It is absurd and tragic that these young men have been convicted of rebellion and must now see out jail terms. This has been another sham trial, similar to the one we saw last year with Rafael [Marques de Morais], who was convicted of defamation after writing a brave and much-needed exposé of the country’s blood diamond industry.”

Fleeing Eritrea

Of those migrants who crossed the Mediterranean this year, Eritreans formed the third-largest national group, behind Syrians and Afghanis. The UNHCR says 5,000 leave every month. As many as 3% of the 6 million-strong population have migrated.

Eritrea is not at war, but its first and only president, Isaias Afwerki, plays up the possibility of a return to conflict with neighbouring Ethiopia. This threat is used to justify the absence of a constitution, the destruction of the judicial system. Until the early 2000s, Eritrea had the semblance of a judicial system but for the past decade, multiple reports suggest police are simply locking people up without trial. And there is the implementation of indefinite national service that allows the government to treat each civilian as a modern-day serf for their whole life. It is a totalitarian state where most citizens fear arrest at any moment and dare not speak to their neighbours, gather in groups or linger long outside their homes. Gathering in groups of more than two is effectively banned: an invitation for the police to stop and hassle you. Citizens cannot travel freely without written permission. The government has a wide web of informants, a network so extensive that some Eritreans claim they are wary even of speaking to their friends and family about politics. “The distrust between people is very high,” one told the UN’s Eritrea commission. “You do not even trust your own brother; he could be even part of the national security.” Phones are tapped, but most people aren’t allowed them anyway. Interviewees claimed people on active military service are barred from owning a mobile. Anyone else who wants one has to apply at a government office in the capital of their province. There is no private media. The only public meetings allowed are those of Afwerki’s political party.

There exists an indefinite national service and through this system, the government controls almost every aspect of a civilian’s life – male or female – from the age of 16 or 17. Where you live, your daily routine, and how often you see your family – all this is decided by the government, thanks to the national service system. The government takes away almost all prospect of personal choice. Conscripts are posted where the government orders them, and remain there for months and often years without being allowed home.

“We are just like slaves for them,” said Kibrom, 24, who spent the entirety of his adult life as a conscript until his escape a few months ago. “That’s why we’re leaving. It’s become one big prison for us.” Conscripts are technically paid. Different exiles report different monthly wages, but each fell between 500 and 750 nakfas (the local currency) – a negligible pay that equates to between £20 and £30. The amount is so low that it is virtually meaningless, former conscripts say. “It is only enough for three days – so for the other 27 days I would go hungry,” said Kibrom. “To buy a chicken, it’s 600 nakfa. And that tells you everything. If I want to have a family, to marry, to have children – that 600 isn’t going to be enough.”

To help people access food, the government gives out coupons, but even then this is essentially a system of control. If you’re not in good grace with the regime, you don’t get any coupons and if you don’t get any coupons, you don’t get anything to eat.

According to Andebrhan Welde Giorgis, the former head of the Eritrean central bank, ex-ambassador to the EU, and one-time president of Eritrea’s only university, when Eritrea won its freedom from Ethiopia in the early 1990s, after a decades-long liberation struggle led by, among others, President Afwerki, the period of service was meant to last for just 18 months. The aim was both to safeguard the fragile new nation’s security, and provide a temporary workforce to rebuild its war-shattered infrastructure and economy.

“It had a military aspect, a social aspect, an economic aspect, and also a cultural aspect,” said Welde Giorgis, a one-time ally of Afwerki who became an exile in 2006, and later wrote a history of his country. “But all of that was abused when it became indefinite. When it was proclaimed in 1994, people were in their late teens – and now they’re in their early 40s. How can they sustain families? The objective consequence is the destruction of the nuclear family. If you don’t have a nuclear family, you don’t have a community, and you don’t have a society. It’s modern-day servitude.” Welde Giorgis explained: “You’re not brought before a court of law. You’re not allowed to defend yourself. Your family has no rights of visitation, they don’t know where you are, they don’t know about the physical and mental condition you are in. Once you have disappeared you have one man acting as the accuser, the jailer, the judge and the executioner.”

Conscripts describe military service as a mixture of humiliation and tedium. “It’s not just about serving, it’s about being tortured,” said Sofia, who spent four years as a conscript before fleeing to Egypt. xiles often describe a torture position known as “the eight”, whereby a conscript lies on their front, has their hands and ankles tied together behind them, and is then hoisted into the air. One victim recalled hanging like this for days on end, as punishment for scuffling with a fellow conscript. When he was finally freed, it took weeks for him to regain control of his legs.

“Another [torture method] is when they spread tea powder mixed with sugar and some water – and then spread it on you, so that it attracts flies,” Sofia recalled.

The serving part of military service often involves providing cheap labour for the government. “Sometimes they say: ‘Go to the mountains to quarry the stone,’ sometimes they say ‘Go to the forest to cut wood,’ and sometimes: ‘Go and clean the streets,’” said Omar, 27. “Everything that the government might need doing, they use the conscripts as slaves.”

Unless they escape Eritrea, the unlucky majority of conscripts will stay in this limbo for their entire life. But a minority will play out their national service in a partly civilian context. After their first year, which is spent in a mixture of army training and classroom education, Eritreans take an exam. Those who do well are trained to fill a range of roles within the civil service – as teachers, nurses, or even newscasters within Eritrea’s amateurish state television network, Eri-TV. The pay is as low as it is in the army. Some conscripts within the civil workforce say they also had to fulfil military duties by night. Mehari, 22, who arrived in Italy this summer, was assigned to be a primary school teacher. “But when I say teacher, I mean that in the day I’d work as a teacher, but at night I would wait for orders from the army.” Most of the experienced teachers had already fled the country, so the staff were largely young conscripts, whom the students had little respect for. “They know that at the end of the day they will have to go to military service. So no one wants to learn. And the teachers know that. So the teachers don’t want to teach.”

Welde Giorgis left Eritrea in 2006 because he no longer believed internal reform was possible. The average Eritrean is now “a helpless victim”, he says. “And that’s why you see these large numbers of Eritreans leaving the country at great risk to their lives. Many die from dehydration in the Sahara. Many have drowned in the Mediterranean. Many have become victim to organ harvesters in the Sinai. But nobody cares. Eritrea has become an earthly hell, an earthly inferno for its people – and that’s why they are taking such huge risks to their personal lives to escape the situation. It’s become unliveable.”

 From here 

The Importance of Democracy

Over the next year, 15 different elections will take place across the African continent. Six of the forthcoming elections will be held in East Africa where, from Tanzania to Sudan, a wide range of legal tools hindering freedom of association have recently been put in place by the authorities.

In Uganda, human rights defenders themselves are increasingly under threat. For instance, Gerald Kankya, Executive Director of the Twerwaneho Listeners Club (TLC), an organisation that combats unlawful evictions from public land, has recently been the target of physical and judicial harassment.

In Kenya, following the attack in April 2015 by the islamist militant group Al Shabaab on Garissa University College in the north-eastern part of the country, human rights organisations have been the target of government repression. Haki Africa and Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI), which advocate for constitutional means to counter terrorism while respecting human rights, have reportedly suffered judicial harassment.

In Tanzania,  a new statistics law that makes it illegal for any publications to claim data as "official" if it has not been approved by the National Bureau of Statistics and also a cyber-crime law that punishes the electronic publication of "unsolicited" information and an access to information act which criminalises the spreading of "false" information. The Tanzanian media has had its hands tied by the establishment of a media council that determines which journalists and media outlets are permitted to operate. Under these circumstances, civil society is left with no choice but self-censorship.

Freedom of association and expression are cornerstones of any democratic society.

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000172475/danger-signs-freedom-waning-in-east-africa

Why Dictatorships?

In April, Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza, in power since 2005, announced he’d be running for a third term in elections scheduled for June. Opposition supporters, church leaders, student and civil society groups, much of the international community, and even many in Nkurunziza’s own party say this violates the Arusha agreement, which limits a president to two terms in office.

Thousands of Burundians took to the streets to protest Nkurunziza’s plans to run for office again. Hundreds were arrested and perhaps twenty—the number is disputed—were killed. Security forces were split, with some in the army on the side of the people. On May 13, a group of army officers led by former intelligence chief Godefroid Niyombare announced they’d ousted Nkurunziza, to much rejoicing in Bujumbura. Nkurunziza who was in Tanzania discussing the crisis with other African leaders, quickly sneaked back across the border where he was met by his own forces and retook the capital a couple of days later.

Nkurunziz isa former warlord who became a born-again Christian and travels with his own Hallelujah football club and choir—of presiding over a regime of corruption remarkable even by East African standards. Many also claim President Nkurunziza has condoned politically motivated killings of opposition figures and provided tacit government support to an armed militia known as Imbonerakure, which could be deployed to intimidate voters during the election. Niyombare is said to be on the run, and most of his fellow coup plotters have been arrested. Three who were wounded were subsequently shot in their hospital beds by men in police uniforms as horrified nurses, doctors, and other patients looked on. An estimated hundred thousand refugees have fled to neighboring countries. Nkurunziza seems determined to go ahead with his plans to stand for reelection. Radio France Internationale reported that police in Bujumbura had cordoned off an entire neighborhood and were shooting at anti-third term activists among their homes.

In their new book 'Africa Uprising', Adam Branch and Zachariah Mampilly document more than ninety political protests in forty African countries in the past decade—most in the past six years. Many have had the same aim as those in the Middle East: to force corrupt leaders out of power. After Senegal’s Constitutional Court ruled that President Abdoulaye Wade could run for what many maintained was an unconstitutional third term in the 2012 elections, people poured onto the streets in outrage. Police in riot gear fired tear gas and rubber bullets, and a handful of protesters were killed. But the country’s citizens got their point across. Wade lost the election and conceded defeat. In Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaoré tried to strong-arm the National Assembly into removing term limits so he could contest the 2015 election, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in front of the building while some forced their way in. He was deposed in October 2014, and an interim military council is now organizing elections to take place later this year. And when demonstrators in the Democratic Republic of Congo took to the streets of Kinshasa in January, they managed to halt President Joseph Kabila’s attempt to alter the constitution, which would have extended his term beyond its end date of 2016. Over two dozen African countries are headed for elections in the next two years, including Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and other countries whose leaders have signaled an intention to remain in office no matter what. Protest movements in some of these countries are gathering force, and army commanders are quietly choosing sides between the autocrats and the people.

But why do so many African leaders assume they can ignore their constitutions, cling to power, and get away with it?

Western aid pays for half of Burundi’s budget, roughly 40 percent of Rwanda’s, 50 percent of Ethiopia’s and 30 percent of Uganda’s . All these countries receive an unknown amount of military aid as well. This money enables African leaders to ignore the demands of their own people, and facilitates the financing of the patronage systems and security machinery that keeps them in power.

African countries that had borrowed and spent lavishly in the years following independence found themselves unable to repay the commercial banks that had lent them money. The Western nations, via the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, took over and restructured these loans, but demanded large public spending cuts. Huge numbers of teachers, nurses, doctors, and other public servants lost their jobs; programs to expand health care and education, improve roads and bring water and electricity to rural areas ground to a halt; poverty deepened; infant mortality rose.

In many cases, the new austerity programs, intended to lead to more efficient government, instead encouraged unprecedented corruption. Those who managed to hold on to government and civil service jobs scrambled to grab whatever they could for themselves and their increasingly dependent extended families. This patronage system helped control dissent, as many African leaders used what Cameroonians term “the politics of the belly”—bribery—to compromise their critics and coopt opposition groups. But it also led to deteriorating public services where for example the maternal mortality rate in Uganda’s largest referral hospital has increased seven-fold since the days of Idi Amin.

 Foreign aid donors were not oblivious to these problems. They knew that this new loan regime, known as Structural Adjustment, would hurt huge numbers of people. For example, in a notorious 1981 World Bank report about the program , the authors acknowledge that some reforms would be resisted by “consumers and producers, parasitical managers, civil servants and industrialists,”—meaning just about everybody in the nations involved. The state had to be “willing to take strong action on internal problems,” the report continued. As Branch and Mampilly note, many African scholars interpreted this as tacit donor permission for repression in countries receiving loans. This would be consistent with the donors’ tendency to look the other way when Adjustment-friendly leaders—like Burkina Faso’s Compaoré, Cote D’Ivoire’s Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Uganda’s Museveni and Kenya’s Daniel Arap Moi—jailed, murdered, or exiled their critics. The donors’ tolerance for human rights abuses may help explain why, when ethnic discrimination and repression escalated into genocide, as it did in Rwanda and Burundi, the international community did nothing until it was far too late.

Another reason so many African leaders feel they can afford to ignore their own people has to do with America’s “War on Terror.” During the 1990s, the Clinton administration began securing military ties with African leaders who seemed willing to cooperate in the fight against what Clinton officials saw as the rising threat of Islamic militancy on the continent. These ties have only grown in the years after September 11. According to journalist Nick Turse, the US military has sponsored more than one thousand African missions since 2011, with countries such as Nkurunziza’s Burundi, along with Rwanda, Ethiopia, Chad, and Uganda, deploying troops and guards across Africa and the Middle East at America’s behest. The primary purpose of this seems to be to monitor and prevent the emergence of terrorist groups in weak states. But it’s no coincidence that the US’s military allies in Africa have often used security forces against their own critics at home. As the events in Burundi suggest, providing support to ugly regimes may ultimately undermine the very stability we are supposedly seeking.

Now, fed up with decades of lies, plunder and abuse, Africans across the continent are finally rising up to challenge these Western-backed thugs. Some have been inspired by protests elsewhere in the world; some are united in new ways by Facebook, Twitter, and chat programs. Foreign aid has also brought thousands of NGOs into Africa. Not all are effective, but their American and European employees and volunteers have, naively or not, exposed African people to liberal Western attitudes and ideals of human rights as never before. Previous African protest movements had clear ideologies, like Independence, African Nationalism and Pan-Africanism, the only thing today’s protesters appear to want is the removal of the current leadership of their countries. But this lack of a grand objective may not be such a bad thing, as long as whoever takes over pursues a modest program of obeying the rule of law, eschewing corruption and respecting human rights.

FROM HERE

Ethiopia's Dictatorship

Some governments are more despicable than others. The elite ruling Ethiopia is especially nasty. They claim to govern in a democratic, pluralistic manner; they say they observe human rights and the rule of law, that the judiciary is independent, the media open and free, and public assembly permitted as laid out in the constitution. But the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) systematically violates fundamental human rights, silences all dissenting voices and rules the country in a suppressive, violent fashion that is causing untold suffering to millions of people throughout the country.

There is no freedom of the press: Journalists are persecuted, intimidated and arrested on false charges, so too their families. All significant media outlets and print companies are state-owned or controlled, as is the sole telecommunications company - allowing for unfettered government monitoring and control of the internet. Radio is almost exclusively state-owned and, with adult literacy at around 48 percent, remains the major source of information. Where private media has survived, they are forced to self-censor their coverage of political issues: If they deviate from "approved content," they face harassment and closure. The government also restricts access to numerous websites, including independent news, opposition parties and groups defined by the government as terrorist organizations and political blogs. The required technology and expertise to carry out such criminal acts is supplied by companies from China and Europe - companies that should "assess the human rights risks raised by potential business activity, including risk posed to the rights of freedom of expression, access to information, association, and privacy." In other words: behave in a responsible, ethical manner.

The two most prominent journalists to be imprisoned are award-winning Eskinder Nega and Reeyot Alemu Gobebo. Arrested at least seven times, Nega is currently serving an 18-year sentence for doing nothing more than calling on the government to respect freedom of expression laws enshrined in the constitution (that the EPRDF themselves penned), and end torture in the country's prisons. Reeyot Gobebo, winner of the 2013 UNESCO-Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, is currently serving a five-year jail term (commuted from 14 years after two of the charges were dropped on appeal), after being charged with a variety of unfounded, unsubstantiated terrorist related charges. These two courageous professionals, HRW relates, have "come to symbolize the plight of dozens more media professionals, both known and unidentified, in Addis Ababa and in rural regions, who have suffered threats, intimidation, sometimes physical abuse, and politically motivated prosecutions under criminal or terrorism charges."

By essentially banning independent media and making freedom of expression a criminal offense, the Ethiopian government is in gross violation of its own legally binding constitution as well as a raft of international covenants. All of which seems not to concern the ruling party, which treats international law with the same indifference it applies to the Ethiopian people. Freedom of the media and freedom of expression sit alongside other democratic principles, like an independent judiciary, consensual governance, participation and freedom of assembly. Where these basic tenets are absent, so too is democracy. If the state systematically crushes independent media and commits widespread human rights violations, as in Ethiopia, we see not a democratic government, but a brutal dictatorship committing acts of state terrorism.

This is an abridged version of a Graham Peebles article which is available in full at the Truthout website

Burundi About to Boil Over?

"There's no shortage of fear around here," said Pierre-Claver Mbonimpa Burundi’s leading rights activist. In May, Mbonimpa was thrown in jail for broadcasting widespread allegations that the government was distributing weapons to youths and training a faction in the badlands of nearby eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Gentle-mannered and close to retirement, Mbonimpa said it was only an international outcry and prison illness that freed him, and he's not allowed to leave the capital.

Marauding members of the Imbonerakure - a youth wing allied to Burundi's ruling CNDD-FDD party are accused of beating, extorting and killing civilians. Benefiting from complete impunity, some armed and militarised elements within the most popular youth party have become a weapon that the state can wield as it cracks down on critics ahead of elections in May. Rights activists say leaders only quelled violence because of international donors who raised the alarm over rights reports in a country that relies heavily on foreign aid. New rules banning people from jogging or meeting in unauthorised groups - even at the central market where people used to gossip on benches - show levels of state paranoia. People are not keen to talk amid reports of Imbonerakure beating police and taking over local governments in some areas. The few people accused of violent crimes have also been released from custody within weeks to seek revenge on victims who denounced them. Burundi's Interior Minister Edouard Nduwimana dismissed a leaked UN cable documenting a case of two military men distributing arms and uniforms to the Imbonerakure youth militia and former soldiers as the work of an unsteady employee.

Despite having a plethora of opposition parties, they are seen as weak and disorganised in a country where politics is viewed as a gravy train and public policy an afterthought. The irony of the current crackdown is that many say the CNDD-FDD would easily win next year's elections, despite rights groups crying foul over President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to run for a third term, claiming it violates the constitution.

Last week, the UN scaled down its operation in Burundi. "The UN got pushed out because it actually did its job," said a leading journalist who requested anonymity to protect himself from reprisals - rare praise in a region where peacekeepers are often accused of selling civilian protection down the river to save themselves from official backlashes.

In a region where police states or rebellions cause enormous and expensive international headaches, Burundi benefits from neighbours and backers keen on maintaining a semi-stable status quo. "There's the reasoning that you should favour stability to avoid a return to chaos and violence that will make us invest more to lift the country out of strife," said one diplomat. He added: "That means you're comforting a government in its authoritarian practices to control the country". He warned if "manipulating" the ballot box doesn't work, the government will "play all its cards" to win this election by activating "this new tool; these youths that they've trained as killers".

"Everything here has been bought; land, votes and the people's conscience," said Gabriel Rufyiri, who heads Burundi's main anti-corruption organisation. His predecessor was killed in 2009, and the government refused the US FBI's help to investigate. Rufyiri said one-third of Burundi's budget goes into individuals' pockets. The success of army generals accused of trafficking minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo or officials allowing friends to have tax benefits through kickbacks is visible on the prettiest hillsides. Next year, Burundi's elite "are going to use everything they've got" to maintain their grip on the purse strings, Rufyiri said.

Activists talk of "an invisible circle" of army generals who call the shots. The diplomat said this cabal has organised and trained youths to take orders that Burundi's state security forces would refuse. "The police can stop the opposition demonstrations, but you can't ask them to go and kill people," he said.  "If the state's in control of the army, why has it recruited, armed and secretly trained youths? It's to make them do what the other security organs can't."

Now, in one of the world's most densely populated countries, 80 percent of local court cases are over land. Stunting from malnutrition affects, almost 60 percent of the population and corruption keeps them poor. With a pressure cooker of local tensions, disputes easily turn deadly.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/12/burundi-no-shortage-fear-around-here-2014122371044747308.html

The Military Muscle

As many remember Nelson Mandela on the anniversary of his death, his hopes seem as far away as ever. For now, the advance of democracy in Africa appears to have stalled. Elections have now been held across the continent, but their credibility varies. In some countries, rulers deploy state security forces to marginalize opposition leaders. Less autocratic leaders foster loyalty by doling out state jobs and other perks that would raise eyebrows even in many developing nations. In 1990, just three of Africa’s 48 countries were electoral democracies, according to Freedom House, a Washington-based pro-democracy advocacy group. By 1994, that number had leapt to 18. Two decades later, only 19 qualify. In many African countries, soldiers have run the show since the earliest days of colonialism. In the late 1800s, Europeans recruited local men into new armies to help conquer a vast continent. Throughout the imperial century that followed, Europeans used those colonial brigades to repress the African lawyers, civil servants and journalists who were agitating for independence. Today, blue-chip companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and General Electric Co. are expanding into countries whose leaders have never faced a real electoral contest.

Two decades of elections and economic progress in Africa haven’t erased the vast power that militaries have long wielded in many countries, large and small. In much of Africa, in fact, the armed forces have gained influence in recent years as battling Islamist terrorists has become a priority. The military remains a swaggering presence in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. On the surface, the country is a flourishing democracy. President Goodluck Jonathan, one of the first elected Nigerian leaders who didn’t come from the military. But Nigeria’s army—which led the country almost nonstop from 1966 to 1999—still wields considerable power. A fifth of Nigeria’s nearly $30 billion budget goes to the armed forces. When Kashim Shettima, the governor of a state in Boko Haram’s heartland, complained that the army was being gutted by corruption, Mr. Jonathan threatened on television to remove the soldiers guarding Mr. Shettima’s house, exposing him to attack by Boko Haram.

The military has defended Mr. Jonathan, too. Soldiers have blocked opposition leaders from landing at airports during their campaigns, and in June, soldiers confiscated bundles of newspapers containing articles criticizing government corruption.

The U.S. trained some 52,000 African troops in 2013 alone, at a cost of $99 million. After Liberia’s 14-year civil war ended in 2003, the U.S. paid security contractor DynCorp International, based in McLean, Virginaa, to train the country’s new, 2,000-person army. Other institutions like the health ministry received scant attention.

“There are signs of the predatory nature of military rule” returning to Africa, said Larry Diamond, director of Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. “This is a calamity for a number of these countries.”

Many African countries, such as Angola and Sudan, are resource-rich, single-party autocracies that have consolidated their grip on power. Angola’s president, José Eduardo dos Santos, is a military commander who has used his country’s vast oil wealth to build a police network that has helped to neutralize rivals for more than 30 years. In 2012, his party won more than two-thirds of the vote in elections that observers called deeply flawed. Nations that underwent the Arab Spring have regressed back to military dictatorship as in the case of Sisi’s Egypt or become militia civil war zones as in Libya. Africa has weathered more than 60 coups between 1960 and 1990, according to the African Development Bank. Some overturned election results that military leaders found unpalatable; others promised to stamp out political corruption, took over and became corrupt themselves. A whole generation of elected leaders is now angling for more time in power. Next year, both Faure Gnassingbé of Togo and Joseph Kabila of Congo are expected to seek third terms. (Mr. Kabila will have to change Congo’s constitution to do so; Togo has no term limits.) Both men inherited power from their fathers, who were ex-military leaders.

Robert Mugabe, 90, has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980. This week, he tightened his grip on power at a party conference by sidelining perceived rivals and backing his 49-year-old wife, Grace, for a senior party post. And former rebel commander Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president since 2000, is widely believed to be weighing a constitutional amendment that would allow him to remain in power beyond his second elected seven-year term, which is set to end in 2017.

Taken from here 

Ethiopian Dictatorship

 Ethiopia’s ruling regime is following a nationwide policy of violent suppression and constitutional vandalism.

 Human Rights Watch state the government “regularly use abuse to gather information…. Ethiopian authorities have subjected political detainees to torture and other ill treatment at the main detention center [Maekelawi Police Station] in Addis Ababa.” Journalists who challenge the government are intimidated (so too their families) and silenced. Many have been arrested, and as the Committee to Protect Journalists reports, “are languishing in Ethiopia’s prisons on trumped-up terrorism charges for doing their jobs.” In their thorough report “They Want A Confession”. HRW documents “serious rights abuses, unlawful interrogation tactics, and poor detention conditions in Maekelawi since 2010. Those detained …include scores of opposition politicians, journalists, protest organizers, and alleged supporters of ethnic insurgencies.” Public assembly, whilst not being outwardly criminalized is effectively banned, despite the fact that it is a right enshrined like all such liberal freedoms in the legally binding constitution which has no influence over the ruling party, or indeed the judiciary, which functions as a docile enforcer of government criminality.

For a country beset with acute poverty, where it is conservatively estimated 30% of the population (World Bank figures) are living below the ‘official poverty line’ (that’s income of $2 a day), the government somehow manages to administer and fund (to the tune of $340 millions) the largest standing army in Sub-Saharan Africa. They boast 560 tanks, over 80 warplanes, and out of a population numbering 92 million, Global Fire Power reveals, 25 million are armed and ‘fit for service’, with a further 10 million standing by. The men in uniform are kept busy by their political masters – there is a whole nation to suppress and control, including the people of Oromia (who are calling for self-determination) and Amhara. There is the Ogaden region to occupy and forcibly govern, innocent men and women – who seek nothing more threatening than autonomy, their constitutional right – to murder, terrorise and rape. There is Gambella in the far south west and the Lower Omo Valley where women are raped by soldiers, men beaten, indigenous people (who have lived on ancestral land for generations) herded into government camps (the notorious Villagisation project – part funded by Britain and the World Bank) as vast tracts of lands are sold for pennies to international corporations. There is torture to be administered, assassinations to plan and execute, rapes to be performed and surveillance of dissenting voices to be carried out.

Graham Peebles' full article can be read here 

Protest or Vote

The recent coup by the army and the ensuing massacres show that Egyptians are still struggling with the same challenges of injustice and inequality that pushed people to overthrow Mr. Mubarak.

The defining chant of the 2011 protests – bread, freedom, and social justice – showed that what Egyptians wanted wasn't just free elections, but a government that would address the entrenched issues that were pushing the country down. The rulers who came after Mubarak never solved those problems and cannot.

They never attempted to reform police and create security forces that could protect people without the rampant abuse and torture that exists now. They ignored the civil strife that is deepening in dangerous ways, failing to protect Egypt's minorities. They didn't address the inequality and growing economic crisis leaving millions of Egyptians without jobs and options.

The mass street protests duels represent a battle over how to define democratic legitimacy in the new Egypt. Some insist that the fundamental basis of democracy, or power by the people, is the street. But others see such protests as having overthrown the ballot box as much as Sisi’s military have.

June 30th protests brought millions of Egyptians to the street to protest Morsi’s excesses of power, his failure to engage other political factions in a meaningful way, and his inability to make headway on the considerable problems he inherited when he took office a year earlier with 51 percent of the vote. A coup is a coup regardless of its level of popularity. After the coup, Muslim Brotherhood supporters went to the streets to insist that Morsi be reinstated as the legitimately elected leader of the country. “They took our voting rights away” was the claim.

We may be viewed as cynics but the slaughter of the Muslim Brotherhood followers may be seen as the bloody dress rehearsal for the future liquidation of  workers struggling for democracy by the army.

See the Socialist Standard here 

elections and democracy

Traditionally in Africa’s villages decisions and conflict resolution takes place using a consensus system with no absolute winners and losers, with all parties agreeing to the final decision and honor bound to carry it out. Just the opposite of what happens after “elections” in “democratic Africa”.

 In Ethiopia, where the ethnic minority regime declared themselves victors 12 hours after the polls closed with 99.6% of the seats in parliament.

 In Liberia, where the capital Monrovia has not had running water or electricity for the entire term of Eleanor Johnson’s Presidency, she who ran unopposed the last “election”, and won a Nobel Prize to boot.

 In Somalia, where there simply was no voting done by the Somali people, the entire parliament which “elected” the President was hand picked by the previous President.

In Libya where Al Queda militias run rampant and it doesn’t really matter who won the latest “election”, it is all about tribe and family and ties to the local warlords, sort of like Somalia really.

In Mali  the “victor” of the  “election”, is scheduled to be held in the midst of an ongoing counterinsurgency with thousands of French troops still occupying the country.

In Cote D’Ivoire where under the international communities supervision hundreds of thousands of non-Ivorians were allowed to vote (never mind the Ivorian Constitution) and then declared the World Banks local rep as the winner (again, never mind the Ivorian Constitutional Court who declared the incumbent President the winner). And when the incumbent wouldn’t cede power as demanded, rocket his Presidential residence courtesy of the French military and UN “peacekeepers” until shellshocked into surrender.

Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Burundi, Congo, Central African Republic…insurgencies and rebellions everywhere.

In Eritrea, 22 years independent and no elections.

Most Africans will tell you what we most want is food, water, shelter, medical care and education for our children. If a country’s leaders are providing these basic human rights to their people they are doing what their people want and practicing democracy. If they are not, if their people are hungry, cold, sick and illiterate then these leaders are not democratic no matter how many times they hold “elections”.

Adapted from here 

Eritrea's Tyranny

Eritrea has jailed at least 10,000 political prisoners, many in "unimaginably atrocious conditions", rights group Amnesty International said in a report. The exact figure is impossible to know.

Eritrea is one of the most repressive, secretive and inaccessible countries in the world. Anyone who challenges President Issaias Afeworki is jailed without trial.


Political opposition is banned, independent media quashed and religious minorities targeted. Reporters Without Borders lists Eritrea below North Korea as the worst country in the world for press freedom

"The government has systematically used arbitrary arrest and detention without charge to crush all opposition, to silence all dissent, and to punish anyone who refuses to comply with the repressive restrictions it places on people's lives," said Claire Beston, Amnesty's Eritrea researcher.

Underground dungeons and shipping containers are used to house the prisoners.

No Choice

In Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya the opposition had either been totally smashed or is rotting in jail. Alternatively, it has ceased to exist. Elections are fights between corrupt politician A and corrupt politician B, both campaigning along ethnic lines and on behalf of their vested mercantile interests who ‘compete’ over who will be the one to get his snout into the trough at the end of the ‘democratic electoral process’. Politicians do not use the rhetoric ‘Socialism or death!’ (whatever they take to mean socialism to be.) Nor do they campaign on the promise of ‘Let’s liberate our people from misery!’ The accepted political agenda is the more modest: ‘It’s our time to eat!’


In the recent Kenyan elections, not one single Presidential candidate dared to raise the essential issues exposing the neo-colonialism of the muli-nationals. Nor did any candidate protest being a military proxy for other powers.
In Rwanda, where the regime is co-responsible for the loss of millions of human lives in DR Congo, there is, at least, no charade about democracy. It is courted by ‘world leaders’ like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. The most prominent opposition leader in Rwanda, Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, is in prison. Her name much lesser known than Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi when she was in detention. Ingabire considers herself relatively lucky because many other Rwandan opposition figures have already been murdered.
Museveni, the President of Uganda, has held the reigns of power since 1986. He wears a cowboy hat which is indicative of his personality - a cowboy. Brutal civil war is raging in the north of Uganda. There, according to countless reports, the military are ordered, periodically, to rape but that is not preventing the West using Ugandan troops as ‘peacekeepers’ all over Africa, particularly where their interests lie. He is another loyal mercenary of the West in the region, Uganda is deeply involved in Somalia, Sudan and above all, in DR Congo. For the West, Museveni has been a very effective ‘buffer’ against Sudan. He is, of course, very useful for US interests in DR Congo. US gives Uganda money and they give them the bodies that they want removed.
Museveni hates gays, and he occasionally threatens them with capital punishment. To give the credit where it is due, there actually is, at least, some opposition in Uganda. Its members periodically protest; they write books and articles, arrange demonstrations, and even end up in prisons. But they too are also very careful not to alienate the West.

In these African countries, as elsewhere, there is very little talk about alternative political and economic systems.

A lesser evil is still evil

A year ago, waves of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa swept away western-backed tyrants one after the other - first Tunisia’s Ben Ali, then Egypt’s Mubarak. Occupiers from London to Wall Street were proud to “Walk like an Egyptian”. These revolts had echoes in other countries because they shared the same detonators of the explosion: authoritarianism, inegalitarian development, high unemployment, poverty, endemic corruption and nepotism, a suffocated political life, repression, human rights abuses, a frustrated educated youth without horizons and parasitic bourgeoisies who continue their protected robbery, exploitation and self-enrichment. It put to rest the lie the racist stereotype and contemptuous cliché that Arabs and Muslims are not fit for democracy. The Arab Spring debunked these myths.

From the beginning of the Egyptian protests, the powers that be have launched a counter-revolution to contain the struggle in a process of meaningless, piecemeal political reforms, aimed at deflecting people from a revolutionary path. The political elites has been of dismissing and appointing ministers in cabinet and committee reshuffles, conducting referendums parliamentary and now presidential elections. None of which represents any substantial, real democracy. Some people say that democratic change will come from above. But as long as the masses do not exercise pressure from beneath, struggle to radically change the status quo will be unfulfilled and the interests of the profiteering cast will be maintained.

Egyptians find themselves with a choice between ‘two evils’. These are: Ahmed Shafiq, who representing the interests of the previous regime guarantees ‘security’ and ‘stability’ ; and Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood who we are expected to believe will  ‘save’ us from the ‘old regime’ through a cultural and religious renaissance - all the while consolidating the financial and capitalist hegemony which depends on the rampant exploitation of Egypt’s people and their resources.

Most voters (75 per cent) have chosen neither Shafiq nor Morsi in the first round of elections. There is another choice - the immediate and uncompromising rejection of the status quo: of exploitation and class division, of militarized power and police repression. Egyptians must protest against the narrow perspective that says democracy is merely choosing the lesser of ‘two evils'.

The struggle in the workplace and factories, in the schools and universities and popular committees in the neighbourhoods must continue, an ongoing revolution, a revolution that will only be realized by the strength, community and persistence of the people. It is time to renew the struggle for a true liberation and meaningful democratic change, and to build a strong mass-movement against authoritarianism and any form of oppression and injustice.

The World Socialist Movement and the blog Socialist Banner are striving to build a platform for debate and an exchange of ideas regarding the challenges that face the people of Africa, from Cairo to Capetown.

Mauritanian Arab Spring

Many people have never heard of Mauritania, and most would probably be unable to pinpoint it on a map even though its land mass is larger than France and Germany combined. Many Arabs are unaware that it is a member of the Arab League. Since January 2011, when Yacoub Ould Dahoud fatally set himself alight in front of the presidential palace, the country has been ungoing an Arab Spring. Protests have taken place across Mauritania ever since, spurred by the same factors as in other Arab states: economic, political and social disenfranchisement. But unlike those in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere in the region, Mauritania's have been barely a blip on the news radar. Very low internet usage in the country – reportedly less than 2% of households – has made it difficult for Mauritanians to get their views, eyewitness accounts and images out to the rest of the world. It is the overlooked uprising.

 Few have taken little interest in Mauritania since its independence from France in 1960, because until recently it was seen as a poor expanse of desert with little strategic value (it has one of the lowest GDPs in Africa, making it among the poorest countries in the world). However, its importance is likely to increase, and with it the world's attention. Mauritania's extensive iron ore deposits, which account for almost half of its exports, have increased in value due to rising metal prices, leading to more mines being opened, and increased revenues. Furthermore, oil was discovered in 2001, although Mauritanians have yet to benefit because the country lacks the necessary infrastructure to fully exploit its reserves. However, with production on the rise, several oil exploration deals inked in the last year, the potential windfall is huge.

 There is also the possibility, or perhaps even the probability, that the protests in Mauritania will intensify, mainly because the government seems not to have learned from the mistakes of other Arab regimes that are under threat. It has used a combination of repression and pledges of reform that have left Mauritanians unconvinced and more frustrated. Demonstrations have thus far been peaceful and centred around reforms. However, as in other Arab states, if protesters feel they are being indefinitely ignored or oppressed, not only might calls for reform become demands for regime change, but violence may become a means to advance those demands – a particularly dangerous development given Mauritania's ethnic fault lines.

 Mauritanians are no less deserving of their rights, rather than the self-serving interests of  the world powers.


Taken from here

Going beyond the unions

Who is the labour candidate in the Egyptian presidential election? The answer is no one.

Despite the presence of the left wing candidate, labour lawyer Khaled Ali, who repeatedly denies the accusation of being a ‘socialist’, and advocates a ‘strong private sector’ working hand in hand with a state-run public sector, neither Ali nor any other candidates can claim to speak for Egypt’s working class, simply because the working class does not have yet formal entities, organisations, parties, and unions that can claim their representation.

In the West and elsewhere, there exist labour unions and parties that have a grassroots presence in the workplace and include millions of workers and civil servants in their membership. The rank and file members are engaged in daily struggles over improving work conditions via negotiations, agreements, or strikes against the management. The extent of grassroots support can always be measured by the degree of response to strike calls issued by those unions’ leadership. If you are in the United Kingdom for example, and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) issues a call for a general strike on any given day, you can safely expect industrial actions to take place that day. This is not to praise the politics of the TUC but to highlight the existence of a structure that can mobilise the working class, articulate their demands, and claim their representation.

There is nothing of that sort here in Egypt yet. While we have witnessed millions of Egyptian workers going on strikes or staging protests since 2006, it still lacks a national organisation that can coordinate the strikes, claim class representation, and raise political demands on behalf of the workers in the current political arena. Socialists are non-existent and those on the Left do not have enough of a presence among the working class. 

The Federation of Independent Trade Unions, announced in Tahrir Square in the midst of the 18-day uprising, has grown to include more than 200 independent unions, with two million workers. Yet, the federation is still green, with uneven support. The federation has been active in ‘intervening’ in and ‘extending solidarity’ to strikes, but it would be a farce to give the federation credit for ‘instigating’ the industrial actions in the first place. Though the federation lent its support for the November 2011 mini uprising, its presence in Tahrir was largely symbolic, and included one tent and a banner. The 11 February 2012 general strike call was another test for the federation’s strength, yet it once again exposed its weakness. Though the federation endorsed the anti-SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) general strike call, not a single strike took place. Strikes which occurred on that day were already scheduled in advance by the strike leaders, and we cannot credit the federation with this action.

The increased friction between strikers and the military police, which include crackdowns and military tribunals for strikers, means an increasing number of workers are turning against the army, even when they started their struggles over bread and butter issues. In cases like the harbours and airports, the strikers had clear demands about the demilitarisation of the management and the sacking of military generals and advisors who ran the business. Strikers in Suez also marched, calling for the execution of the National Democratic Party (NDP) tycoon who owns a ceramics factory and stands accused of involvement in the ‘Battle of the Camel’. Gas workers smashed NDP billboards in downtown Cairo, demanding the return of the NDP local office building back to their company, since the NDP had taken it over illegally under Mubarak. Among the demands of the public transport strikers was the purging of the management of police officers. These are some  examples of a ‘political’ dimension that is taking shape in the strike wave, but the Federation still fails to relate to it.

The Federation is roughly one year old, and the unions under its umbrella are still incapable of providing representation and a unified political voice in the current revolution. This is not a pessimistic look at the future of the federation. It takes years for unions to build their support and cement the channels of coordination between the different sectors, but there will always be limitations on the extent of the revolutionary potential those unions have. Unions, at the end of the day, are built to "improve" the conditions of exploitation, not  "abolish" exploitation once and for all - here is the task of a mass socialist party. As long as the most militant sections of the current strike - those who are leading the mass strikes in sectors in direct confrontation with the military - are not organised into a socialist party, you can expect the workers’ voice to continue to be absent in the current political process.