Gabonese opposition leader Jean Ping has vowed not to abandon his pursuit of presidency soon after the Constitutional Court upheld the narrow victory of incumbent President Ali Bongo in last month’s presidential election and dismissed Ping’s appeal.

“This decision does not bring the Gabonese people together and it does not appease them because they don’t recognize it, nor does the international community, which gives it no value,” Ping said on Saturday, hours after the court declared its final decision on the August 27 election.

The opposition leader said the court ruling was “miscarriage of justice.” Ping had declared himself the rightful president and called for a vote recount over alleged electoral fraud days after Bongo won the election with a razor-blade margin.

In its final decision, the high court acknowledged that the 57-year-old Bongo had garnered 50.66 percent of the votes against 47.24 percent for the 73-year-old Ping, while partially changing the results of the close vote by putting the margin at 11,000, almost doubling the 6,000 margin that was initially announced.

“I will not retreat. (As) president clearly elected by the Gabonese people, I remain at your side to defend your vote and your sovereignty,” Ping said.

Ping’s refusal to concede defeat raises the specter of prolonged unrest in the oil-rich central African country, which has already suffered from bloody clashes between Ping’s supporters and police over the past month. According to the opposition, some 100 people have so far lost their lives in clashes and 1,200 others have been taken into custody as part of a government crackdown.

Bongo has thanked his supporters, underlining challenges Gabon would face in the wake of the election. “The tight margin of this victory means there are many voters who, for one reason or another, did not choose us. We must decipher their message, hear and understand it,” Bongo stated.

He also said in an interview with Reuters on Saturday that he “most likely” included leading opposition figures in his new government, adding that “everything is possible.” Following the post-election chaos, the European Union and certain countries including the US and France, urged calm and called on authorities in the former French colony to show more transparency about the election results.

Bongo, who came to power in 2009, will now remain at the helm for a second seven-year term, succeeding his father, Omar Bongo, who had come to power in 1967 and passed away in 2009.

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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has named five former army generals as new provincial governors as part of appointments that increase the influence of military and security figures on crucial bodies. The five new provincial governors were sworn in during a ceremony at the presidential compound on Wednesday. Atef Abdel-Hamid, a former army officer and the minister of transportation in the 2011 Essam Sharaf government, was named as the new governor of the most populated and capital province of Cairo. The position had been vacant for six months.

Amr Abdel-Moneim, a former military official and the current secretary-general of the Egyptian cabinet, was appointed as the new governor of the northern province of Qalyubia. Alexandria’s new governor is former police general Reda Farahat. Former police general Essam el-Din el-Bedawai was appointed as the governor of Minya Province in the Upper Egypt region, while Air Force Major General Ahmed Mohamed Hamed was named governor of Suez.

University professor Gamal Sami was appointed the governor of Fayoum Province, located about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Cairo. Sisi also named retired 64-year-old army general Mohamed Ali el-Sheikh as the new minister of supply. His nomination had been approved by the parliament on Tuesday.

Sheikh succeeds Khaled Hanafi, who had to step down last month amid corruption allegations and implication in a scandal related to fraudulent wheat subsidy payments. Egyptian provincial governors normally have held senior roles in homeland security and the military before their appointment. With the recent appointments, only eight of the country’s 27 provincial governors now have civilian backgrounds.

The Egyptian government has been engaged in a crackdown on the opposition since democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in July 2013 in a military coup led by Sisi who was then the head of the armed forces. Sisi has been accused of leading the suppression in which hundreds of Morsi supporters have been killed in clashes with security forces. Rights groups say the army’s crackdown has led to the deaths of over 1,400 people and the arrest of 22,000 others, including some 200 people who have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

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Denise Mekamne has replaced Seraphin Moundounga at the Ministry of Justice. The information was made public on Wednesday night on the airwaves of the national television by Prime Minister Daniel Ona Ondo.

In all President Ali Bongo made just three ministerial changes in the government. Former Justice Minister Seraphin Moundounga was a close ally to the former President of the National Assembly and it is rumoured that they could create a political party.

Désiré Guedon, Minister in charge of Town Planning and Housing replaced Alexis Boutamba Mbina.

By Chi Prudence Asong

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has agreed to the deployment of 4,000 additional UN peacekeepers after initially rejecting the regional protection force as a breach of its sovereignty. Kiir made the announcement on Sunday following a meeting with the UN Security Council in the capital Juba.

“The transitional government of national unity gives its consent for the deployment of the regional force,” read a joint statement released by the UN and the government. Juba initially rejected the proposal, which was offered earlier in the month, stating that it lends the United Nations the ability to govern and “seriously undermines” South Sudan’s sovereignty.

South Sudan has witnessed a new wave of conflict since July 8, when gunfire erupted near the state house in Juba as Kiir and then Vice President Riek Machar were holding a meeting. More than 300 people were killed in the clashes. The country gained independence from Sudan in 2011. It has gone through turmoil ever since.

The US envoy to the UNSC, Samantha Power, praised the additional deployment but noted that it was now time for action. “What we need to do now is move from those very important high-level commitments into working up the modalities in an operational way,” she said.

The conflict in South Sudan has exposed deep ethnic divisions. It erupted after a power struggle between President Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, and rebel leader Machar, a member of the Nuer ethnic group. “Fundamentally, it’s going to be the tribes themselves and the political leadership of this country that are going to have to come together,” added Power.

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South Africa’s ruling party, African National Congress (ANC), has been dealt a major blow as an opposition politician is named as the mayor of the capital Pretoria for the first time since the end of Apartheid two decades ago. Opposition councilor Solly Msimanga, 36, of the liberal center-right Democratic Alliance (DA), was elected Pretoria mayor on Friday.

“The people decided which way they want the city to go, and it was not the direction that it has been taking in the last… years,” Msimanga said in his inaugural speech to the city council. People are “tired of corruption, they are tired of nepotism, they are tired of cronyism… they are tired of work only given to members of certain families and their friends,” he said.

Msimanga vowed to end the patronage that he said had left the capital in the red. “This city is technically bankrupt right now because of greediness and because of people who decided to put themselves first,” he said. “No more will our people suffer under the hands of the ANC.”  The ANC councilors heckled Msimanga during his speech.

It is the first time since the end of white-minority rule in 1994 that Pretoria, also known as Tshwane, is not headed by a mayor from the ANC. The loss for the ANC and victory for the DA follows nationwide municipal elections earlier this month. The ANC lost control of three major cities, namely, Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Nationwide, as well, the party suffered its worst results in 22 years in the municipal vote, gaining less than 54 percent of ballots cast, an eight percentage point drop from the last local elections in 2011. The ANC was once viewed as the South African party upholding the ideas and tenets of anti-Apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, and the DA as the party serving rich white South Africans.

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Zambian President Edgar Lungu has been declared as the winner of a closely-fought re-election contest in the South African country, amid vote fraud allegations made by the main opposition party.

The Electoral Commission of Zambia made the announcement on Monday, saying Lungu garnered 1,860,877 votes or 50.35 percent of the votes while his main rival and opposition leader Hakainde Hichilema, of the United Party for National Development (UPND), received 1,760,347 votes.

Following the announcement of the result, hundreds of Lungu’s supporters, mostly young people, took to the streets, chanting slogans and singing in celebration.

“I’m happy that Edgar Lungu can continue to be president because I see a good future with him. I want him to create jobs for young people,” said a 15-year-old reveler.

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21 cannon shots were fired Monday in N’Djamena, at the inauguration ceremony of President Idriss Deby for a fifth term as head of the country. The head of the Chadian government was sworn in before the Constitutional Council for a new mandate. Idriss Deby, 64, has ruled Chad for over 25 years and was re-elected in the first round of voting on April the 10th with 59.92% of votes. The inauguration this Monday, August 8, has handed the Chadian dictator another five years term.

Fifteen Heads of State and Government made the trip to N’Djamena for the occasion. They included Rwandan Paul Kagame, Sudan’s Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Niger’s Mamadou Issoufou, the Mauritanian Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, Egyptian Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, the Ugandan Yoweri Museveni, Nigeria Muhammadu Buhari , Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Guinea’s Alpha Conde, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali, Burkina Faso’s Roch Christian Kaboré, the Central African Republic Faustin-Archange Touadéra, Benin Patrice Talon and the Congolese Kabila. President Paul Biya of Cameroon whose country is engaged in the war against Boko Haram with the republic of Chad was conspicuously absence.

The day before the inauguration, a Chadian youth was shot dead in an anti-President Deby demonstration. During his speech, Idriss Deby announced a continuation of the military reform and the preservation of peace and security.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Secretaries from more than half of African national assemblies have met in South Africa for their annual conference. The elected representatives are to discuss the benefits of ratifying African Union treaties notably the new protocol of the Pan-African Parliament.

Earlier, members of the committee on cooperation, international relations and conflict resolutions of the Pan-African Parliament were urged to improve the continent’s response to terrorism by making it a national priority.

Professors Magloire Ondoua and Vincent Ntuda Ebode from Cameroon were guest-speakers at both events.
The Pan African parliamentarians expressed outrage at repeated armed attacks on some of their colleagues. The MPs staged a protest against the violence.

The two Cameroonian Professors, Joseph Vincent Ntouda Ebode and Magloire Ondoa educated parlementarians, Secretary Generals and Presidents of parliaments of the continent on the challenges to be surmounted in the fight against terrorism. The discourse on terrorism was in view of the full activation of the legislative powers of the continental parliament.

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African leaders arrived in the Rwandan capital Saturday to attend a major summit which is expected to be dominated by discussions about excessive focus of international bodies on abuses in Africa and the conflict in South Sudan. The main theme of discussion is expected to be Africa’s uneasy relationship with the International Criminal Court (ICC) as some countries have renewed efforts to quit the body en masse despite opposition by some countries such as Botswana. Leaders have repeatedly criticized the ICC over the past years for what they call an unnecessary ICC focus on African nations. They have called for a separate African court with jurisdiction over rights abuses.

“Withdrawal from [the] ICC is entirely within the sovereignty of a particular state,” Joseph Chilengi, an AU official, told reporters. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has been a major campaigner for the withdrawal from the ICC, recently called the court “useless.” However, the call seems to have hit a major snag, as Nigeria, Senegal and Ivory Coast have followed Botswana and pushed back as well.

Rwanda has invited Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the ICC for alleged war crimes in the Darfur region. Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said the country would not arrest Bashir despite concerns that Kigali would hand over the Sudanese leader like it did to war criminal Bosco Ntaganda of Congo in 2013.

“Africa doesn’t support criminals, but when justice is involved with a lot of politics we take a pause to separate the two,” Mushikiwabo said this week. Discussing the fresh wave of conflict in South Sudan, where deadly clashes have erupted between army factions, is also high on the agenda at the AU summit. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who is at the summit, has called for an arms embargo as a solution to the conflict which has claimed a considerable number of lives over the past days.

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Morocco is reportedly set to rejoin the African Union (AU) after leaving the pan-African organization more than three decades ago. An anonymous diplomatic source told Moroccan newspaper Akhbar al-Youm that the historic move is anticipated to be announced during the 27th AU Summit scheduled to take place in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on July 17-18.

The source refused to confirm whether King Mohammed VI would attend the upcoming AU summit starting this Sunday. However, it said Moroccan Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar has recently been on a diplomatic trip to several African capitals, including Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Senegal, Tunisia Cameroon, Cote D’ivoire and Ethiopia, to inform them all of Morocco’s decision.

Morocco has access to services available to all AU states, but remains the only African UN member not to be a member of the AU. In recent years, several African officials have urged Rabat to return to its seat at the AU. “Morocco is a fully-fledged member of the African family, and no-one has the right to exclude the Kingdom from the AU,” Senegalese Foreign Minister Mankeur Ndiaye said during King Mohammed’s visit to Senegal in May 2015, adding, “We think that now is the time for Morocco to return to the African Union.”

The AU, which replaced the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 2001, includes all 54 African states besides Morocco that are members of the United Nations. The country decided to withdraw from the continental organization in 1984 over the union’s decision to accept the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as a formal member. Morocco considers the territory as part of the kingdom and insists its sovereignty cannot be challenged. Morocco annexed the vast, mineral-rich territory of the Western Sahara after Spain withdrew in 1975. It is currently viewed as Morocco’s “southern provinces” and the government continues to carry out multi-million-dollar development projects in the area.

However, neighboring Algeria, like numerous other African countries, recognizes the territory as the SADR, and hosts the headquarters of the Sahrawi liberation movement, the Polisario Front. Morocco has offered wide-ranging autonomy for the region; but the Polisario Front movement, which claims the disputed territory belongs to the ethnic Sahrawis, insists that a referendum be held so that the local population can decide their fate. For decades, the UN has been seeking to hold a referendum on independence for the territory.

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