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IRIN Africa | West Africa | WEST AFRICA | WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 310 covering 24 - 30 December 2005 | Children, Democracy, Early Warning, Economy, Education, Environment, Food Security, Gender issues, Health, HIV AIDS, Human Rights, Natural Disasters, Peace Security, Refugees IDPs, Other | Weekly

Tuesday 21 February 2006


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IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 310 covering 24 - 30 December 2005

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENTS:

COTE D IVOIRE: New government announced after weeks of haggling
GUINEA: Ruling party wins landslide in pivotal local elections
CHAD: Parliament defies World Bank, scraps ‘future generations’ oil fund
MAURITANIA: Junta announces anti-corruption pay hikes for civil servants
GUINEA-BISSAU: Government says cholera crisis over
CHAD-SUDAN: President Deby, Sudanese envoy meet with Obasanjo over tensions

COTE D IVOIRE: New government announced after weeks of haggling

After weeks of negotiations war-torn Cote d’Ivoire’s new prime minister has formed a transitional government that has 10 months to reunite the country, disarm fighters and hold presidential elections.

Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny late Wednesday announced his trimmed 32-member cabinet, which brings together representatives of the ruling party, the rebels and the political opposition.

“I wanted Ivorians to recognise themselves in this government,” Banny told reporters after the presentation of the cabinet.

“This government has an important and fundamental mission. We have to remove all weapons from our territory, we have to reunify the country, we have to identify the population…We have to learn to solve our own problems.”

Warring parties have failed to deliver on key targets laid out in the three-year-old Marcoussis peace deal, including disarmament of rebel and pro-government militias and resolving the sensitive issue of who is entitled to citizenship. Elections scheduled for 30 October had to be cancelled.

A succession of international mediators have blamed the intransigence of the rival factions, saying they have displayed a lack of political will to end the ‘no war no peace’ stand-off. The country remains divided between a rebel-held north and government-controlled south.

Banny has created a new position for rebel leader Guillaume Soro, named minister for reconstruction and reinsertion. It is the second highest position in the cabinet after the prime minister.

Soro’s remit is likely to include disarmament and the redeployment of government administration in rebel-held territories, according to analysts.

Full report

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GUINEA: Ruling party wins landslide in pivotal local elections

More than a week after nationwide municipal elections, regarded by many as a test of Guinea’s democracy, the results are finally in and the ruling party looks as strong as ever.

Results were delivered in a marathon three-hour broadcast by the minister in charge of organising the elections, Kiridi Bangouraon, on Tuesday night. The ruling Party of Unity and Progress (PUP) retained the vast majority of the more than 300 ridings, according to his final tally.

The poll was closely watched by the international community, which has been highly critical of Guinea in the past over a perception of corruption and lack of democracy.

The West African nation – one of the world’s poorest despite its wealth of water and mineral resources – has a history of polls marred by violence and boycotted by the opposition.

But this time, international donors backed the poll and the opposition participated in an electoral process billed as a trial run for the prime minister’s ongoing reform programme.

Full report

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CHAD: Parliament defies World Bank, scraps ‘future generations’ oil fund

The Chadian parliament on Thursday voted to scrap a fund set up to safeguard a portion of the country’s petrodollars for future generations, in a move the World Bank has called a ‘material breach’ of a ground-breaking contract with donors.

The trust fund was one pillar of a model plan aimed to ensure that oil revenues be used to reduce poverty – an effort to buck the trend of other African oil-producers where black gold has enriched none but an elite few.

Parliamentarians approved the changes by a 119 to 13 vote with one abstention, following a debate in which deputies repeatedly evoked the issue of Chad’s ‘sovereignty’ in the oil project scheme.

The World Bank provided essential backing for the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline on condition that the government set up the ‘future generations’ fund.

“As a condition for its support for the project, the Bank worked with the Government of Chad to help it establish an unprecedented system of safeguards assuring that the revenues are used to reduce poverty,” a Bank document says.

The new law, once signed by President Idriss Deby, would mean that some US $30 million currently stashed in the future generations fund would go into the state coffers.

Full report

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MAURITANIA: Junta announces anti-corruption pay hikes for civil servants

Civil servants will be able to celebrate the New Year in Mauritania safe in the knowledge that their pay packets will be 50 percent thicker come 1 January.

The Mauritanian head of state, Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, announced the wage adjustments on Wednesday. The pay rises are intended to crack down on corruption, he said.

The changes are intended to create “adequate conditions for the establishment of social justice and the implementation of the principle of good governance for a more equitable distribution of the national wealth,” said Vall.

The government has also promised to slash a 30 percent income tax, known locally as the ITS tax. That tax is levied on salaries of all government and private sector employees.

Civil servant and military pensions will also be increased by 15 percent.

In March, former president Maaouya Ould Taya announced a six-fold pay rise back-dated to January for government ministers, also in a bid to tackle corruption, he said.

But this failed to do the trick and the military government that ousted Taya in an August coup cited government corruption as their main motivation. Vall’s junta has promised to restore democracy to the Islamic Republic and scheduled elections for March 2007.

Full report

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GUINEA-BISSAU: Government says cholera crisis over

Guinea-Bissau’s government has declared that the worst of the cholera epidemic, which ravaged the country in the second half of this year, is over - for now.

“The cholera threat in our country is passing but we have to remain vigilant if we want to avoid a resurgence in Guinea-Bissau,” said Public Health Minister Antonia Mendes Teixeira, at the country’s biggest hospital on Tuesday.

She said that the last three weeks have brought no new cases of the disease, which according to a new health ministry report, affected 25,111 people and killed 399 since the epidemic began in June.

Nevertheless, special medical teams deployed to each of the country’s health districts to help stem the tide of the disease will remain in place.

Cholera, which thrives in poor sanitary conditions, is a recurring problem in much of West Africa but was particularly devastating this year because of the region’s unusually heavy rainy season.

Full report

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CHAD-SUDAN: President Deby, Sudanese envoy meet with Obasanjo over tensions

President Idriss Deby of Chad met with Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigerian president and head of the African Union, in Nigeria on Tuesday, as part of efforts to defuse tensions between Chad and neighbouring Sudan.

The meeting comes days after the Chadian government declared “a state of belligerence” between itself and Sudan following a deadly border attack Chad blamed on the Sudanese government.

Deby’s visit – as a guest at Obasanjo’s farm in southwestern Nigeria – coincided with a visit by a Sudanese special envoy, Obasanjo’s spokesperson Remi Oyo told IRIN.

“In his capacity as AU chairman, [Obasanjo] held separate talks with both Idriss Deby and the Sudanese president’s special envoy on issues that appear to be the areas of conflict between the two neighbours,” Oyo said.

Chad and Sudan have long traded accusations, each side saying the other is supporting rebel movements. Most recently, Chad blamed Sudan for a 18 December attack on the eastern Chadian town of Adre.

Full report

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[ENDS]

Theme(s)	Children

Other recent WEST AFRICA reports:

IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 317 covering 11-17 February 2006, 17/Feb/06

IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 316 covering 4-10 February 2006, 10/Feb/06

Africa’s poorest nations fight to ward off deadly bird flu, 9/Feb/06

IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 315 covering 28 January – 3 February 2006, 3/Feb/06

IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 314 covering 21-27 January 2006, 27/Jan/06

Other recent Children reports:

IRAQ: Thousands of families still displaced after flooding, 21/Feb/06

SOUTH AFRICA: Govt adopts more focused approach to help orphans, 21/Feb/06

YEMEN: Two killed in flash floods, 21/Feb/06

YEMEN: Measles vaccination campaign launched to prevent children’s deaths, 21/Feb/06

TAJIKISTAN: UN appeal for 2006 launched, 16/Feb/06

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