Jean Bertrand Tour -Istide

Dictatorships abound in Africa ... it even looks normal. Frankly, Shervanadze is far better than most African leaders, but he was overthrown. African political opposition, which is built from a rank of dissidents, has never really made their position clear.

When you see the fate reserved for Jean Bertrand Aristide, i am very sure that there are very few African leaders who will be ready to leave power. In fact, being in power is what they know how to do best. The political stakes now are such that, any African leader - Bongo of Gabon, Biya of Cameroon, Eyadema of Togo, Obiang of E. Gunea, Conte of G. Bissau, Mouseveni of Uganda etc - leaving power becomes a renegade, homeless undesirable overnight.

I do not expect Aristide to have a better treatment - he is lucky he isn't behind bars - but I am sure that most African leaders who don't want to relinquish power, will rethink their positions if they are guaranteed safety afterwards. Why not propose legislation that that gives them lifetime immunity. It wont be long, they can live long anyway! And then just like African Presidents do, we can always ammend the constitution after they have left power and prosecute them again.

Genocide with an "S"

"Genocides" was coined by French diplomacy after their failure and involvement in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. This was a vain attempt to grade genocide by scale of death. Anyway the most "glorious" part of French political history, The French Revolution, was an exercise in Genocide d'Etat. Since then, the French have successfully exported genocide to Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi. Cote d'Ivoire will be next.

As such all who deal with the French will be surprised that French diplomats can readily accept the situation in Sudan as a budding genocide, but downscale it par-rapport à Rwanda 10 years ago.

SURVEY

Is Violence or the threat of violence an indispensible ingredient in politics?

Look FORWARD

The absence of the threat of violence is the ingredient that makes Cameroon look peaceful. But this ingredient, like all others, cannot spice a meal forever.