http://www.africareview.com/Special+Reports/Africa+Union+votes/-/979182/1313660/-/2x55wuz/-/index.html Africa Union picks next leader By CIUGU MWAGIRUPosted Wednesday, January 25 2012 at 11:30 With African Union elections slated for the coming Sunday and Monday, questions will arise about the ICC ruling on the Kenya post-election violence case and the implications it will have for member countries in which the culture of impunity still reigns. Already there are concerns about who might assume the mantle of the next AU chairperson, who will be elected by secret ballot before the conclusion of the18th heads of state and government summit at its Addis Ababa headquarters on January 29 and 30. The AU has over the years had very dubious chairpersons. Additionally, many of the organisation’s embarrassing moments have been as a result of its official positions on major controversies like the ones surrounding Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir and the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The stands taken by the AU in both cases, as well as the Kenyan one, left the organisation open to ridicule by mightier entities like Nato on the one hand, and the UN and the ICC on the other. As for the two leaders that were lately of the AU's concern, one, Gaddafi, is dead, while the other, President Bashir, is still contending with the tag of an international fugitive from justice. The organisation’s choice of its chairmen over the years have proved to be a disappointment, and have overall betrayed the ideals of the pioneering founding fathers of African nationhood. Ironically, some of these founding fathers were disappointing in their own right, and many among them have gone down in history as some of Africa’s most disreputed rulers, many of who rose to power and left it in circumstances marked by utter ignominy. With that kind of history, it is hardly redeeming that the forthcoming AU elections have attracted the interest of the likes of the eccentric Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, who wants to become chairperson. Having seized power in 1994 at the age of 29, Jammeh has proved his mettle as an autocrat by ruling Gambia with an iron fist. Mysticism Add to that his characteristic aura of mysticism, and the fact that he has been accused of many crimes, among them being behind the frequent disappearances and assassinations of critics and journalists, and you have the typical African serial dictator. Endowed with a penchant for treating his subjects like so many schoolchildren, only recently, ahead of his swearing-in for a fourth term, he was berating his purportedly lazy countrymen while vowing to eradicate corruption "once and for all" and to turn his tiny landlocked country into an economic superpower. "I will be more dangerous in the next five years than I was, even in uniform, because people have to change their attitude to work," Jammeh is reported to have warned his fellow citizens on state TV. "You cannot be in your offices every day doing nothing or leaving the workload to a few people, and at the end of the day you expect to be paid. This has to stop. You either do your work or leave or go to jail." While threatening them with dire consequences if they didn’t change their ways pronto, Jammeh explained that he had been “too lenient" in the past and vowed that Gambians would soon see "a different Yahya Jammeh." He then added: "I will wipe out almost 82 per cent of those in the work force in the next five years unless they change their attitudes." With that kind of demeanour, Jammeh is hardly a great prospect for AU’s PR, and it is only fortunate that he is not touted as a frontrunner for the organisation’s 2012 chair. The edge is said to lie with his Benin counterpart, the little known Thomas Boni Yayi, who has also offered his candidacy for the chairmanship of the 54-member organisation. Also from West Africa, Yayi like Jammeh has reportedly over the past six months been on a diplomatic offensive to lobby members in various regional capitals using his country’s ambassadors. The successful candidate will replace Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who took over the AU chair in early 2011. The bloc's chairperson serves a one-year non-renewable term while the chief executive serves for four years, renewable by another four to make a maximum of two terms. Ultimately, the AU elections will raise the question of whether the organisation can in future prove that it has teeth to bite, or if it is doomed to retain its reputation for profligacy. Notorious as a huge and allegedly chaotic bureaucracy, the organisation is often described as a talking shop with a penchant for endless cocktail circuits and general misuse of funds on things like unnecessary travel and sojourns in luxury resorts where it prefers to hold its numerous conferences. Haunted by memories of its founders, many of who metamorphosed from revered nationalists into shameless dictators, and who either were deposed unceremoniously or were assassinated, the organisation will also be looking towards electing an effective chairman of the AU Commission, the chief executive of the body, with a view to salvaging its reputation. Regional interests The contest for that position is expected to be even more riveting than that for the ceremonial head of the organisation. Pitting Gabonese incumbent Jean Ping and South African Home Affairs minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, it will to a great extent be a contest between Anglophone and Francophone Africa, with regional interests thrown in for good measure. First elected in February 2008, the half-Chinese Dr Ping is seeking a second term. Remembered for leading delegations to Gaddafi’s desert tent in Sirte last year before the Libyan dictator’s tragic end, Dr Ping has in recent times been busy trying to bury the murdered dictator’s ghost. Having only recognised Libya's new leaders in September last year, the AU had miserably failed to assert itself as a mediator in the conflict between the Libyan rebels and Gaddafi. As for the AU’s reputation as a dictators’ club, it is indeed instructive that President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the outgoing chairman, presides over a regime that has one of the worst human rights records in the world, with the president himself ranked by Reporters Without Borders as among "predators" of press freedom. Having deposed his predecessor and uncle, the notorious dictator Francisco Macías Nguema, in a bloody coup d'état on August 3, 1979, the current president has since then had to contend with no less than 12 real or perceived unsuccessful coup attempts. He has somehow managed to hold onto power, though, without leaving a reputation quite like that of his predecessor. Political status During his bloody reign the latter is reputed to have butchered or forced into exile an estimated 100,000 people, approximately one-third of Equatorial Guinea's population at the time. Such was the dictator’s ruthlessness, indeed, that and on Christmas day in 1975, for instance, he had 150 alleged coup plotters executed in a national stadium to the sound of a band playing Mary Hopkin's tune Those Were the Days. With that kind of background, Equatorial Guinea even today retains notoriety as one of Africa’s worst kleptocracies. The situation has been exacerbated by the discovery of big petroleum reserves in recent years, a factor that has altered the economic and political status of the country, whose gross domestic product (GDP) per capita today ranks a very respectable 28th in the world. This generous endowment with oil notwithstanding, most of the tiny country’s considerable wealth only benefits a small elite. The privileged include the president’s own son,Teodorin, who is reputed to live on the fast lane in the US, enjoying an outrageously hedonistic lifestyle that rivals those of Hollywood stars. In the midst of such excesses, the majority of the country’s population remain onlookers in an environment of grossly unequal distribution of wealth. This is despite the fact that Equatorial Guinea ranks 9th highest in the Human Development Index (HDI) out of 44 sub-Saharan countries, and 115th in the world, placing it among the medium HDI countries. Ironically, a controversy arose at the 2006 AU summit after Sudan announced its candidacy for the AU's chairmanship as a representative of the East African region. Some member states refused to support Sudan, however, citing the then prevailing tensions in Darfur. Sudan eventually withdrew its candidacy, and President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo was elected. At the January 2007 summit, President John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana replaced Sassou-Nguesso, despite another attempt by Sudan to gain the chair. Sudan’s spirited bid for the chair was only thwarted when President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania took over from Kufuor in January 2008. Because he was representing the East African region, Kikwete effectively ended Sudan's attempt to become chair. Until, that is, the regional rotation returns to East Africa. Email: [log in to unmask] -- -Laye ============================== "With fair speech thou might have thy will, With it thou might thy self spoil." --The R.M ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://listserv.icors.org/archives/gambia-l.html To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?S1=gambia-l To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to: [log in to unmask] ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤