Nigerian Ruling Party Summons Executive Meeting to Discuss President’sHealth; Family Threatens Legal Action Against Media

Yar’Adua: PDP Summons NEC Meeting

From Chuks Okocha in Abuja, 12.08.2009
Nigeria ThisDay

The National Working Committee (NWC) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has summoned a meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the party to discuss the health of President Umaru Yar’Adua, who is currently in hospital in Saudi Arabia.

Also, on the agenda of the NEC meeting expected to hold Thursday, December 10 at the National Secretariat of the party, Abuja include deliberations on the expected mid term convention by the first quarter of next year.

The party also called on the Inspector General of Police to investigate the outcome of the bye-election in Ondo State, where it accused the Labour Party of rigging the outcome of the Akoko Southeast/Akoko South west federal constituency polls.

According to a top source at the PDP National Secretariat, “the aim of the meeting is for the party to inform members of the NEC of the health of the President and urge members of the party to pray for the quick recovery of the President.”

“This NEC meeting is a follow up to the NWC special session where the NWC held a prayer session for the President. When some one is sick, the best you can offer to that person is to show empathy and prayers,” the source said.

Since the admission of the President in a Saudi hospital, there has been strident calls for his resignation, but both the party and the Federal Executive Council have opposed such calls, stating that there is no vacancy in the Presidential Villa as there is nothing to suggest that the President cannot perform his official duties.

But some politicians and civil society groups have called on the President to resign, claiming that the absence of the President has caused dislocations in the Nigerian economy.

Also the NEC meeting would be deliberating the proposal for a mid term expected to hold next year. The mid term convention would access the performance of the NWC and either passes a vote of confidence or no confidence.

Addressing a news conference in Abuja, the National Legal Adviser of PDP, Chief Olusola Oke said, “We demand that the Inspector General of Police set up a high powered probe to unravel the development that characterised the bye election in Ondo state.

“We demand that the AIG Abass who supervised the election in Ondo make public every development that occurred during the election with a view to setting the records straight,” he said.

The party National Legal Adviser said.

The PDP National Legal Adviser described the by election in Akoko Federal Constituency as a fraud accusing the deputy governor of Ondo state, Ali Olanusi of empowering the thugs that destroyed the election. He specifically accused one Col. Roland Omowa as being a master-mind the riggings of the election in favour of the Labour party.

Also Senator Gbenga Ogunniya denied that he was not arrested by the Police as alleged. According to him, “I was never arrested. There is no truth in the allegation that I was arrested. I was never interrogated or question by the Police. The footage of the stories carried by some television stations was manipulated. This is why we are calling on the Inspector General of Police to investigate the developments that took place in the Akoko Federal Constituency last week.”

Yar’Adua’s Family Threatens to Sue Media Houses

By Zacheaus Somorin, 12.08.2009

The family of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua said yesterday that it would not hesitate to institute legal action against any media house that continues to report the president’s health maliciously.

A statement signed by ”The President’s Sister” , Hajia Mairo Musa Yar’Adua, on behalf of the family said its attention has been drawn to ”the false, malicious and obviously sponsored media reports that suggested that the president’s mother, Hajia Dada Habib Yar’Adua asked Mr President to resign from office on account of ill health.

The reports, according to Hajia Mairo insinuated that Hajia Yar’Adua is disagreeing with the President’s wife, Turai, whom the newspapers claimed was urging the President to sit tight, saying there was no time that the president’s mother suggested so.

“To put the records straight, the President’s mother has never spoken to the media. She enjoys a cordial relationship with her daughter-in-law, Turai. The president’s mother contrary to media reports is supportive of Mr President’s foray into politics and has always encouraged him to render selfless service to the good people of Nigeria” the family said.

The family also said that instead of the media turning itself into malleable tools of ”blackmail by disgruntled politicians” it should rather ”cross check facts before going to press” most especially at “this critical stage of the nation’s development.

Sequel to this, Hajia Mairo Yar’Adua has instructed all the media houses “responsible for these falsehoods to retract the misleading reports and apologize to the family or face legal action”.

Uncertainty Trails Guinean Leader’s Health Status

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Uncertainty trails Guinean leader’s health position

Courtesy of the Nigerian Guardian

CONTROVERSY yesterday continued to trail the true position of Guinea’s military strongman, Capt. Moussa “Dadis” Camara,’s health after an assassination attempt by a section of his presidential guards.

Airlifted to a hospital in Morocco for operation after being wounded in the assassination attempt, two top government officials yesterday said Camara “cannot speak and may not be returning home anytime soon.”

But doctors treating him in Morocco claimed that the Guinea’s military leader is in a “favourable” condition after surgery.

The commander of the presidential guard who allegedly shot Camara on Thursday is on the run. Gunfire broke out Sunday evening after state TV announced a toll-free number where citizens could call if they had information about Abubakar “Toumba” Diakite’s whereabouts. Presidential guards searched passing cars as the junta launched a nationwide manhunt for him.

Communications Minister, Idrissa Cherif, said he does not know if “the boss will come back Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday - or when,” contradicting Guinea media reports that said the leader is due back shortly. Cherif said Camara’s return “is up to his doctors.”

He continued to insist Camara “is doing well” and has resumed his official functions from his hospital room in a Moroccan military hospital in Rabat.

But Guinean Foreign Minister Alexandre Cece Loua told France’s RFI radio yesterday that “Camara cannot speak.”

“I saw President Dadis Camara. He recognises his entourage,” Loua said from Rabat. “He cannot yet communicate.”

Loua would not say when Camara could return to Guinea, saying: “His condition is evolving … which makes me say that he could address the nation.”

The comments inject further uncertainty into the country which is facing a dangerous power vacuum.

Gen. Sekouba Konate, the vice president of the military junta, rushed back to Guinea’s capital from overseas to take charge following the assassination attempt.

Since coming to power in a military-led coup last December, Camara has adored the spotlight and his five-hour-long tirades in front of various journalists were broadcast as mini-serials on state TV, where they were dubbed the “Dadis Show.” Diplomats and experts on the country believe that if he was not gravely ill, he would have immediately gone on the radio to announce that he was well in an effort to extinguish potential coup plots.

Camara himself came to power in a coup last December, hours after longtime dictator, Lansana Conte, died.

Coup leaders promised to organise elections and hand over power to civilians within one year, but Camara quickly reversed the course.

In September, the presidential guard opened fire on unarmed demonstrators who had gathered to demand that Camara step aside, killing no fewer than 157.

Death by single lethal injection: is it a human experiment?

Convicted murderer Kenneth Biros will today become the first person to be executed through a massive single dose of sodium thiopental, provoking criticism that it is a form of human experimentation

Ban deplores series of deadly car bombings in Baghdad

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UNESCO chief pays tribute to Congolese Artist for Peace

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South Sudan Politicians Held Over Rally Against al-Bashir’s Party

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

South Sudan politicians held over rally against al-Bashir’s party

Courtesy of the Nigerian Guardian

SEVERAL senior southern Sudanese politicians have been arrested during a rally against President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP). Among those held in Khartoum was the Secretary General of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), Pagan Amum, according to Agence France Presse (AFP)

The arrests, agency reports added, sparked anger in the south, where NPC offices in two towns were set alight by protesters.

The SPLM joined a power-sharing government in 2005 to end 22 years of conflict between north and south Sudan. But tensions have been rising between the SPLM and the NCP in recent months. Next year’s election in the country will be the first presidential, parliamentary and local elections in 24 years.

Next Monday is the final day for voters to register for the election, and the government declared it a public holiday in an effort to encourage a good turnout.

But the SPLM and the NCP have failed to agree on changes to the election laws.

And about 20 opposition parties called for a gathering in front of the parliament building in the capital to demand electoral reform. Hundreds of demonstrators turned out for rally, watched by lines of armed police.

The AFP reported that demonstrators marched through Khartoum and its neighbouring city, Omdurman, waving placards and chanting: “We want our freedom.” As the protest grew - with some reports estimating thousands of people had joined the rally - police fired tear gas and beat the protesters with batons.

Amum was arrested along with his deputy, Yasir Arman, and other SPLM figures - with unconfirmed reports claiming dozens of protesters were also detained.

Following the arrests, protesters in the southern towns of Rumbek and Wau set fire to NPC offices.

After the crackdown SPLM members accused the NCP of suppressing free speech.

But interior ministry officials said the protest was outlawed because the organisers had failed to apply for permission to hold the event.

Agency reports claimed that 22-year old war between the mainly Muslim north and the Christian and animist south claimed the lives of 1.5 million people. Semi-autonomous southern Sudan has been controlled by the SPLM since a peace deal in 2005 ended the civil war.

A referendum on whether the south should secede is due in 2011.

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UNESCO chief speaks out at murder of another Mexican journalist

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Copenhagen climate change conference: ‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation’

This editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change is published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languagesCopenhagen climate change summit - opening day Editorial
The Guardian, Monday 7 December 2009

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.
Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.
The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.
Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.
But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”
At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.
Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.
Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.
Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.
The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.
Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.
But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.
Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.
Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.
It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.
The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.
This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page.