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Friday 11th of January 2019 |
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Exclusive: China to set lower GDP growth target of 6-6.5 percent in 2019 - sources @Reuters Africa |
The proposed target, to be unveiled at the annual parliamentary session in March, was endorsed by top leaders at the annual closed-door Central Economic Work Conference in mid-December, according to four sources with knowledge of the meeting’s outcome. Data later this month is expected to show the Chinese economy grew around 6.6 percent in 2018 - the weakest since 1990. Analysts are forecasting a further loss of momentum this year before policy support steps begin to kick in. “It’s very difficult for growth to exceed 6.5 percent (this year), and there could be trouble if growth dips below 6 percent,” said one source who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.
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The Neighborhood Mario Vargas Llosa Africa |
From the Nobel Laureate comes a politically charged detective novel weaving through the underbelly of Peruvian privilege. In the 1990s, during the turbulent and deeply corrupt years of Alberto Fujimori’s presidency, two wealthy couples of Lima’s high society become embroiled in a disturbing vortex of erotic adventures and politically driven blackmail. One day Enrique, a high-profile businessman, receives a visit from Rolando Garro, the editor of a notorious magazine that specializes in salacious exposés. Garro presents Enrique with lewd pictures from an old business trip and demands that he invest in the magazine. Enrique refuses, and the next day the pictures are on the front page. Meanwhile, Enrique’s wife is in the midst of a passionate and secret affair with the wife of Enrique’s lawyer and best friend. When Garro shows up murdered, the two couples are thrown into a whirlwind of navigating Peru’s unspoken laws and customs, while the staff of the magazine embark on their greatest exposé yet. Ironic and sensual, provocative and redemptive, the novel swirls into the kind of restless realism that has become Mario Vargas Llosa’s signature style. A twisting, unpredictable tale, The Neighborhood is at once a scathing indictment of Fujimori’s regime and a crime thriller that evokes the vulgarity of freedom in a corrupt system.
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In Politics if Not Art, Realism Trumps Magic for Mario Vargas Llosa @nytimes Africa |
“The Neighborhood,” Vargas Llosa’s 20th novel, is a political mystery of the kind he regularly turns out between his more monumental historical productions. The tone, perfectly conveyed in Edith Grossman’s virtuoso translation, is amused and theatrical — realism that never asks the reader to forget it has been neatly contrived.
The subject, however, couldn’t be more serious. The story takes place in Lima shortly before the downfall of the Fujimori regime in 2000. The cast of characters includes the star reporter of a vile tabloid magazine who is “nourished” by “finding out other people’s secret shames,” her flashy, unscrupulous editor, an impoverished old man who worked in show business until the editor destroyed his career and two complacent, upper-class couples who are also best friends. The wives pass the time shopping, decorating and bossing their servants around while secretly conducting a passionate lesbian love affair. The husbands make the money that keeps their bubble from bursting — one is a lawyer at Peru’s most prestigious firm; the other owns a mining company and has extensive international connections, as well as an engineering degree from M.I.T. Vargas Llosa’s portrait of the couples is ambiguous: At one moment they are worldly sophisticates doing their best to operate productively in the political barbarism of Peru; at the next they are vulgar members of an elite for whom “culture comes down to two words: whiskey and Miami.” In the background, bombs explode at all hours, guerrillas kidnap businessmen, government death squads murder indiscriminately and workaday life somehow manages to grind on.
The plot slips into gear when the tabloid editor tries to blackmail the mining magnate with explicit photographs from an orgy. Vargas Llosa knows how the levers of power in his country work, and he uses his story to anatomize the degradation of civic life under Fujimori. Vladimiro Montesinos, who was the head of Fujimori’s secret police, emerges as a character in the novel, buying the support of journalists and opposition leaders with bags of cash and videotaping the bribes from his compound. In these scenes, the novelist need hardly invent a word: The real-life Montesinos is currently serving time for bribery in a maximum-security prison he himself built for his enemies.
To tell his story, Vargas Llosa employs the familiar telenovela technique of alternating chapters among different characters, allowing the destinies of the lowborn and the high, the powerful and the powerless, to intersect in ways they themselves never see. In a diseased body politic, he seems to say, no one is exempt from infection, and the sanity of every citizen is dependent upon that of his neighbor.
The novel’s hero arises unexpectedly from the lowest depths of the gutter press, “an inconsequential girl, a nobody” who, “on the basis of pure courage,” changes the lives of Peruvians. This seems fitting; those toiling in the muck, without illusions, are best prepared to beat the government at its own game.
The book’s “happy” ending reflects its author’s belief, perhaps, in the power of individual morality and will. In “Sabers and Utopias” Vargas Llosa approvingly quotes Karl Popper’s dictum that “optimism is a duty. The future is open. … We all contribute to determining it by what we do.” His steadfast liberalism in the face of state terror, military dictatorships, violent liberation movements and collapsed economies is his ultimate expression of that duty.
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The real reason Donald Trump lies @FinancialTimes Law & Politics |
We all lie, but we don’t lie like President Trump. He is the most extravagant, reckless, inexhaustible fibber of our era — the panjandrum of porky pies. Because we all lie, we may be tempted to think we understand why Donald Trump does, or even that he lies for the same reasons we do. He doesn’t. Last April, a 34-year-old woman I’ve been working with for several years told me that she hadn’t been honest with me. “Not big lies,” Ms A said, “I just couldn’t tell you certain things.” It took us some time to understand why she brought herself to her psychoanalysis in this particular way. When she was a child, Ms A’s parents saw her as an extension of themselves — they experienced her successes and failures as theirs. Ms A could not, for example, be sad or cry without making her much-loved mother unhappy and unsure of herself. She had to be sunny. As a child, Ms A discovered that lying to her parents allowed her to feel separate from them, self-contained, a bit free. Her deceits felt more hers than the real world. Lying allowed her a private self. She lied to feel independent. Most of us lie to avoid causing painful feelings in others, and ourselves. Sometimes, like Ms A, we lie to protect some sense of self. Trump’s lying is different. It’s not just a departure from the norms of the presidency — it’s a departure from the norm. There are so many examples — The Washington Post’s Fact Checker estimates that during the two years of his presidency, Trump has told some 7,600 lies — but let this one suffice. On Boxing Day last year, during an unannounced visit to Iraq, Trump spoke to US troops about a pay rise. “I got you a big one. I got you a big one.” He continued, “They said: ‘You know, we could make it smaller. We could make it 3 per cent. We could make it 2 per cent. We could make it 4 per cent.’ I said: ‘No. Make it 10 per cent. Make it more than 10 per cent’.” The future pay rise is 2.6 per cent. Think about what is happening here: a lie — easily discredited — is being made, with complete shamelessness, to people most of us would regard as heroes. When he told the troops about the pay rise, they must have gone wild. For the briefest moment, Trump will have been applauded, celebrated — but then what? How can someone be so oblivious to the consequences of deceit? Born to parents who, by some accounts, left him feeling deserted and bereft, Trump has been a loner most of his life. At school and university, he seems to have made no friends he kept. While he does collect celebrities, for the most part his friendships seem to be perfunctory, fleeting. Averse to shaking people’s hands, phobic of germs — whatever the origins of his behaviour, many psychoanalysts would describe Trump’s way of relating as “avoidant”. “One of the loneliest people I’ve ever met,” biographer Tim O’Brien said in an interview. “He lacks the emotional and sort of psychological architecture a person needs to build deep relationships with other people.” Given this apparent lack — and the effect his lying has on us — my view is that Trump may abuse the truth so we take notice of him, think about him, become emotionally involved with him. Because he’s in no one’s heart, he wants to be in all our minds. More and more, I’m convinced that his greatest ambitions are neither financial nor political — they’re psychological. He wants us never to take our eyes off him. A psychic imperialist, he aims to colonise our minds. He wants to dominate the external and internal landscape. The word famous has its roots in the Latin fama — rumour, reputation, or renown. Initially, fame was linked to deeds, actions. Over the past hundred years, that link has been broken. Nowadays, if you’re discussed, you’re famous. Much of what presidents do isn’t very interesting — so Trump doesn’t bother. He does things to get people talking about him. Threats and rows get him attention. Shocking, melodramatic, confounding lies work too — he’d rather be infamous than forgotten. Between 1980 and 1990 Trump spoke to some reporters pretending to be a “John Barron — spokesman for Donald Trump”. During these conversations, Barron would praise Trump — inflating his wealth and business success, describing how beautiful women were sexually attracted to Trump, and so forth. Whatever its beginnings, “John Barron” gives us a sense of the vehemence of Trump’s self-doubt, his craving to be famous. “John Barron” is a fiction that Trump created because, I presume, he thought no one else would come to his defence or applaud him. This creation may well be the result of child-Trump being disregarded, neglected, unloved. In 2006 Trump and Melania named their only child Barron. I find this poignant — it suggests to me that Trump wanted to bring his imaginary friend to life. In giving his son the name Barron, he may have been trying to make his fiction real. Does Trump’s invention feel to you — like it feels to me — a male thing? Let me pose a connection between Trump’s lying and masculinity. Masculinity is complex. For the most part, all of us, male and female, start life loving our mothers. But love is not simple. When a boy loves his mother, he will empathise with her thoughts, feelings and desires. He identifies with her. At times, he will even wish to be her. Because Trump’s in no one’s heart, he wants to be in all our minds One classic study asked three-to-eight-year-old boys and girls whether they wanted to be fathers or mothers when they grew up. Unsurprisingly, boys four or older wanted to become fathers, and girls four or older wanted to become mothers. Three-year-old boys and girls were different. As expected, most of the girls wanted to become mothers. But, unexpectedly — so did the majority of the boys. In other words, for a period of his childhood, a boy will want to be a woman. And it is upon this foundation — the desire to be a woman — that masculinity is built. In our “girls like pink, boys like blue” world, a boy quickly learns that he is expected to feel whole and confident of his masculinity. His feelings may be conflicted, shifting, but he is expected to conceal this internal struggle from others as well as himself. A “sissy”, “mama’s boy” or “wimp” will be shamed and humiliated, sometimes assaulted. To have a masculine identity, a boy must reject what he once loved. The upshot of all this is that a boy’s development leaves him with the fear that there is something feminine in him, that he’s not a real man — at any moment, he can be exposed as a fake. Trump makes heavy use of this fear. To show you how, let me take you on what may seem like a digression — Trump’s love of professional wrestling. Before throwing his hat into the political ring, Trump threw it into the wrestling arena. Between 1988 and 2013, he ran wrestling events, appeared ringside (notably in the Battle of the Billionaires), and was even inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame. Despite being presented as a competitive sport, professional wrestling is scripted. The competitors, results, pre-match and post-match interviews — all of it is make-believe. The broadcasters give their audience all the things you’d expect in a work of fiction: backstory, suspense, symbolism and so forth. In wrestling, as in literature, names are never neutral. Naming a character is an essential part of creating them. There’s always a “face” (short for babyface, or hero) and a “heel” (villain). Hulk Hogan and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson are faces. Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Rick Rude are heels. Wrestling pits good against bad, a genuine he-man against a phoney rascal. To emasculate his opponents, Trump uses this trope: “Low Energy Jeb”, “Mr Magoo” (Jeff Sessions) “Lyin’ James” (Comey), “Rat” (Michael Cohen), “Highly Conflicted Bob Mueller”. As part of his two-fisted swagger, Trump tweets in wrestling-speak: “Lightweight Marco Rubio was working hard last night. The problem is, he is a choker, and once a choker, always a choker! Mr. Meltdown.” It’s not just men — Trump labels groups of people as double-dealing wimps: “fake CNN”, “Fake news”, “Fake & Corrupt Russia Investigation”. “It’s like a manhood thing — as if manhood can be associated with him — this wall thing,” leader of the House Nancy Pelosi said in December. The next day, publicly clarifying her private remark, she said, “there is no justification for this wall. It is not the way to protect our border . . . in terms of factual data.” For Trump and many others — precisely because it is a manhood thing — the “factual data” doesn’t matter. In professional wrestling, fact and fiction are worked together to create storylines that connect with the audience’s feelings. Wrestling’s good v bad, real v fake storylines provide clarity. What’s vital is this — fictional storylines can unleash genuine emotion. For the wrestling fan, as long as it feels true, it doesn’t matter that it’s fiction. Facts are beside the point. Feeling true is more important than being true. Many of Trump’s big political lies work this logic. President Obama’s birth certificate, or, more recently, the invading caravan of “criminals and unknown Middle Easterners” — these storylines have been fact-checked and discredited. There may be data proving the wall isn’t the best way to secure the border, but for many Trump supporters, those facts are irrelevant. For his enthusiasts — especially those who share his anxieties — Trump’s lies feel truer than the truth. Outrage at Trump’s duplicitousness is a dangerous pleasure, in a Trump-like way, self-satisfying — what Philip Roth called “the ecstasy of sanctimony”. While it is comforting that journalists are fact-checking Trump, this exercise too may be worse than pointless. If my analysis is correct, outrage and fact-checking will certainly not stop his dishonesty. These acts may even help Trump to have what he wants — forever, to be in our minds.
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"Problems," the Cardinal said with contempt, "are not there to be solved, but to be placed on someone else's doorstep. It is only your problem if you are lazy and stupid enough to let it be your problem." @asiatimesonline Law & Politics |
“Problems,” the Cardinal said with contempt, “are not there to be solved, but to be placed on someone else’s doorstep. It is only your problem if you are lazy and stupid enough to let it be your problem. Make it the problem of the Turks, and the Iranians, and the Syrians, and the Kurds.” “How can we make it someone else’s problem?” “Use your brain, if you have one,” said Richelieu. “The Kurds will not go away merely because a few American soldiers leave Syria. They have been there for two thousand years, they have a taste of nationhood in northern Iraq, and they have the best ground troops in the region. “The Turks say they are terroriste? Eh bien, keep them at arm’s length, but keep the Germans training them with anti-tank missiles. Even better, let a few MANPAD’s salvaged from Qaddafi’s arsenal fall off the back of a truck. That will teach the Turks not to use helicopters in the north of Syria. With good reason, the Turks fear them, and Erdogan cannot persuade his best generals to march against them. When the Turks protest, deny everything. “There are seven million Kurds in Iran, suffering under the hard hand of the Persians. Tehran already thinks of them as a Fifth Column, and there is no reason not to make the mullahs’ nightmare come true.” “But if we abandon the Kurds,” I protested, “why should they fight for us?” “That is a stupid question,” hissed the specter. “For whom shall they fight? Their need for the United States is existential – they shall never have a legitimate state without American support. America’s need for the Kurds is a matter of convenience. They need you more than you need them. “They have bled before. If they want a state they shall have to bleed for some years to come. It is not your blood! Why do you care? As it is, the Kurds of Turkey have three children, while the ethnic Turks have one or perhaps two, so the natural increase of their population will give the Kurds the upper hand in a quarter century.” “But what do we do about the Iranians in Syria?” “That is why you have allies in the region. There is only one reason to have allies, and that is to have others do your dirty work for you. You do not wish to bomb the Revolutionary Guard troops in Syria, but the Israelis will do it. “Jerusalem, to be sure, was not pleased that you withdrew troops from Syria, but it made clear that as long as Israel had a free hand in Syria and Lebanon, it did not much matter. And do not forget the Turks: They have been rivals to the Persians for a thousand years, and do not want Tehran to repopulate Syria with Shi’ite settlers. “But Excellency, what do we do about the Russians?” “What do you want to do about the Russians?,” the Cardinal asked impatiently. “They want the war in Syria to end, so long as their friend Assad remains the victor, and so long as they keep their naval station at Tartus. Syria is a Petri Dish for jihadists, including tens of thousands of exiled Muslims from the Russian Caucasus. “Putin sleeps better after the suppression of ISIS. You cannot ruin the Russians, so you must negotiate with them. They have no interest in Persian hegemony in the region.” Let them fight each other “If I understand you correctly,” said I, “you want us to keep everyone in the region fighting everyone else!” “Bingueaux!” said the Cardinal. “That is just what I did during the Thirty Years War, and by doing so I ruined Spain, Austria and the German Empire. France became the dominant land power in Europe from the Battle of the Dunes in 1658 to Napoleon’s retreat from Russia in 1812.” “But you reduced the population of Central Europe by two-fifths!” I protested. The Cardinal shrugged his gelatinous shoulders. “You have forgotten what I told you the last time you came here. I supported the Protestants of Germany against the Austrian Habsburgs, and then I backed the Danes, and when the Hapburgs beat them, I backed the Swedes.” He had turned translucent and his voice started to break up. I braced myself for the return of the Gallic horde of ghosts, the grenadiers and grisettes and guilloteeners, but something worse appeared. Colored objects were flying around the walls of the dank chamber in circles that tightened around me. In horror I recognized one of them. “Pikachu!” I shrieked. Behind him hurtled Raichu and Sandslash and a hundred other apparitions of Pokemon Go. They infiltrated the sewers with the tour group and somehow breached the ectoplasmic barrier between the upper and lower worlds. Grinning fiendishly they circled closer. I slapped at them helplessly, spun around and blacked out. I awoke next to an empty bottle of Maotai and a week-old copy of the China Daily.
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No One's Really Freaking Out About a Slowdown in Europe @business International Trade |
Europe is the epicenter for recession fears -- but investors are cheering. The continent’s biggest companies have started to outperform their U.S. peers on a forward-earnings basis, the cost of insuring against corporate defaults has fallen this year and traders are betting that volatility will decrease. What makes this pivot towards optimism striking is that it runs against recent data. From flagging industrial output in Germany and France to worsening consumer confidence, official measures seem to indicate the economy is facing a rough patch. Investors have so far resisted the downward pull of bad macro news, possibly because they expect corporate results to tell a different story. “There’s value in European equities,” said Chris Bailey, a European strategist at Raymond James in London. “I think European corporate earnings are going to beat the U.S. this year because the U.S. is late-cycle, tax cut benefits are rolling off and earnings are coming down from a very high base.” Valuations for European shares, based on expected earnings, lagged their U.S. counterparts most of last year -- but the mood started to shift in December with the ratio between the two metrics hitting the highest level in more than two years. It remains elevated compared with recent readings. And options traders are taking a similar bet. Implied volatility has dropped below historic volatility, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the first time it’s happened since August, and could be a sign December’s wild swings are a thing of the past. “Eurozone assets, on top of being cheap, have benefited from the improved sentiment,” said Sophie Huynh, a cross asset strategist at Societe Generale in London. That partly reflects hopes of political calm, with “Yellow Vests” protests easing in France, Italy’s budget no longer dominating headlines and signs of a thaw in the trade war between the U.S. and China. The improved sentiment has seen investors rotate back into cyclical stocks, with an index tracking their performance rising at the fastest pace since 2016. Not all is rosy, though. The soft data may temper the European Central Bank’s ability to raise interest rates in the fourth quarter. That may put a drag on banks and the euro. JPMorgan Chase & Co. pushed back its hike forecast by three months to December. Yet look to corporate debt markets, and fear seems to be on the wane. Credit-default swap indexes are tightening this year, in marked contrast to 2018’s surge, signalling investors see credit risks dissipating.
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Congo's election result is no victory for Joseph Kabila @FT's @davidpilling Africa |
Joseph Kabila, a man who has spent more than a third of his life as president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has had to settle for Plan C. Plan A had been to disregard or overturn the constitution and remain leader of the largest country by area in sub-Saharan Africa and one with a population of 80m long-suffering people. Waves of street protests, civic pushback and a hardening attitude from western powers meant that idea had to be abandoned. After two years of time wasting, elections were held last month and Plan B came into action. That was to bestow power — ostensibly through the electorate — on Emmanuel Shadary, a pawn who could keep the presidential seat warm pending a constitutionally permissible return to power in five years. In smug interviews with the foreign press, Mr Kabila made it clear that he was not going anywhere. The election campaign saw to Plan B. Mr Shadary bombed. In spite of having the weight of the haphazard Congolese state at his disposal, the little-known politician’s campaign never took off. Though Mr Kabila, locked away for most of the time in his riverside palace or on his sprawling farm, might not want to hear it, Congo’s electorate was in an anyone-but-Kabila mood. And so we come to Plan C. Bestow victory upon Felix Tshisekedi, son of Etienne, the country’s most famous opposition leader. The elder Tshisekedi was so charismatic that, though he died in 2017 in Belgium, his corpse was considered too much of a rallying point to be allowed back into the country. If he had been permitted a grave — parental pride aside — he might be rolling in it today. Few believe Mr Tshisekedi won Sunday’s election. According to the country’s Catholic bishops, just about the only institution trusted by the people, Mr Tshisekedi came nowhere near victory. The Conference Épiscopale Nationale du Congo, or Cenco, based its assessment on 40,000 election-day observers. Instead, Mr Kabila appears to have chosen Mr Tshisekedi — with the help of a shamefully pliant electoral commission — because of his apparent willingness to cut some kind of deal. The two held not-so-secret meetings last week. Presumably the president has received assurances that the new government will not delve too deeply into his or his entourage’s pecuniary affairs. Having ruled the impoverished country for 17 years, he and his cronies have squeezed out fabulous wealth by selling off the country’s crown jewels, its dazzling reserves of cobalt, diamonds, gold and so on. The likely real winner, according to the Catholic bishops’ briefing of foreign diplomats, was Martin Fayulu, a former ExxonMobil executive who came from nowhere to inspire widespread enthusiasm. That he was backed by two wealthy businessmen-cum-politicians helped. That he was the most credible anti-Kabila figure swung things his way. Much will depend now on what Cenco chooses to do with the information in its possession. If the Catholic bishops publicly denounce the result and if people are convinced they have been robbed of their vote, violent protests — and even more violent suppression — will almost inevitably follow. The role of the international community will be important. If past African elections are anything to go by, foreign diplomats will not kick up too much of a fuss. That would make a mockery of the Congolese people, whose integrity on election day contrasted so vividly with the deliberately shambolic process. There may be some consolation still from this sorry affair. The process has shown that Mr Kabila has not been able to have things all his own way in the face of the people’s protests. Plan A did not stick. Nor did Plan B. Mr Kabila’s Plan C could yet unravel, or twist in unpredictable directions. Once Mr Tshisekedi makes it to the presidency — assuming he makes it to the presidency — who knows what will happen? Mr Kabila might think he has played his difficult hand with craft. But Plan D could yet spell defeat.
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@CENCO__RDC Catholic Church rejects Congo vote result, loser decries "coup" @ReutersAfrica Africa |
“The results from the presidential election as published by CENI do not correspond to the data collected by our observation mission from polling stations and vote counts,” the National Episcopal Conference of Congo observers said Both France and Belgium expressed doubts. And three diplomats briefed on the findings of the 40,000-strong Catholic observer mission told Reuters they showed Fayulu winning. He said Kabila had engineered an “electoral coup” to deny him the presidency. Nevertheless, supporters of Congo’s president-elect were celebrating their unlikely win. “We will never accept this nomination. It’s not a victory for Felix. CENI has appointed him,” said Georges Bingi, a member of Fayulu’s party in the eastern city of Goma. “Of course we are not happy as our candidate lost, but the Congolese people have chosen,” Shadary spokesman Barnabe Kikaya Bin Karubi told Reuters. Fayulu, however, is backed by ex-rebel Jean-Pierre Bemba and former governor Moise Katumbi, two of Kabila’s fiercest rivals. The inauguration had been scheduled for Jan. 18. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian demanded clarity on results “which are the opposite to what we expected.” And former colonial power Belgium said it would use its temporary seat on the U.N. Security Council to also seek clarification.
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What are the chances that Felix @fatshi13 really won? @africaarguments Africa |
Early this morning, the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) finally announced official but provisional results from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s presidential elections held on 30 December 2018. Against all available independent evidence, CENI announced Felix Tshisekedi of the opposition Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social (UDPS) as the winner with 38.5%. Martin Fayulu, of the Lamuka opposition alliance, was said to have obtained 34.7% of the votes. The regime’s candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, garnered 23.8%. The participation rate was 47.6%. While rumors of a possible Tshisekedi victory had been swirling around the capital Kinshasa over the last few days – fed in part by alleged negotiations between his camp and the regime as well as the candidate’s recent benevolent declarations towards the outgoing President Joseph Kabila – the results are nonetheless highly implausible. Broadly reliable polling data by Congo’s BERCI and France’s IPSOS for the Congo Research Group (CRG) in December and actual voting count data by some 40,000 observers from the Catholic Episcopal Commission (CENCO) point instead to a solid and statistically robust victory by Fayulu. As a matter of fact, and as explained in detail below, CRG’s data suggests that the probability Tshisekedi could have scored 38% in a free election is less than 0.0000. There is a 95% chance his real numbers would be somewhere between 21.3% and 25%. If the regime cheated, why let Tshisekedi, the son of the late historic opponent Etienne Tshisekedi, win? Here, we can only hypothesise. However, it certainly looks like it would have been all but impossible to tweak, massage or even invent numbers to the scale necessary to give the regime’s candidate Shadary a victory. Even his official result, at 24% already probably padded, is dismal. It means that fewer than one in four Congolese supports the regime, a rejection of stunning proportion for an incumbent (but not a surprise, so incompetent and callous Kabila’s rule has been). One possibility for today’s result is that once the regime saw the catastrophic mistake Kabila had made by nominating Shadary, it scrambled to come up with a Plan B. Enter Tshisekedi and his accomplice, Vital Kamerhe, a former Kabila ally. The last two prime ministers of Kabila both came from Tshisekedi’s UDPS party. While the party excluded them as a consequence (resulting in as many as four different UDPS factions), Tshisekedi himself has wavered at times in his opposition to the regime and is far from having his late father’s intransigence.
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Disputed Congo Election Result Leaves Country on Edge @nytimes's @kimidefreytas Africa |
“If I am elected, there will not be revenge,” said the candidate, Martin Fayulu. The president-elect, Felix Tshisekedi, declared that his predecessor, President Joseph Kabila, who agreed to step down only with the utmost reluctance after 18 years, will be an “important partner” in the transition. Mr. Tshisekedi’s comment reinforced speculation that his campaign had reached some kind of power-sharing agreement with the Kabila government. “We find that the results of the presidential election,” the bishops group said, do not “match the data collected by our observer mission.” Neither Mr. Tshisekedi nor Mr. Fayulu was the first choice of President Kabila, who had thrown his weight behind a top aide. But that candidate drew so few votes that Mr. Kabila and his allies pivoted to Mr. Tshisekedi, whom they regarded as less adversarial. “The credibility of the elections will be there only if the Congolese themselves recognize this credibility,” Foreign Minister Didier Reynders of Belgium, one of the Security Council’s new members, told the Belgian radio station RTBF on Thursday.
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Nigeria voters must choose between pro-poor or pro-business agendas @BDliveSA @RonakGopaldas @Pol_Sec_Analyst Africa |
Jaded businesses and investors are approaching the 2019 election in Nigeria with a sense of trepidation due to a lack of clarity over what it means for the economy. The key questions revolve around who will win, what a change of leadership could mean, and whether the election will be the catalyst for economic growth or a continued period of under-performance. The two candidates in question — incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari and former vice-president Atiku Abubaker — are both known entities, but their economic approaches differ markedly. Yet, despite these stark differences, the business community in Nigeria is curiously split on which candidate would be better for the economy. Buhari swept to power in 2015 on a message of change, prioritising a security and anti-corruption agenda. However, economic performance under his tenure has been a disappointment, to say the least. Although there was nothing that could be done about the oil-price rout that started in late 2014 and drastically impacted Nigeria’s economic health, much of this malaise has been self-inflicted. For one, Buhari took 166 days to appoint a cabinet. The resultant uncertainty squandered much of the goodwill of the political dividend and forced many foreign portfolio investors to sit on the sidelines while they awaited major appointments and clarity on policy direction. The president’s unilateral approach to the economic crisis didn’t help matters either, and the country soon found itself in a recession. Investor perceptions of Nigeria were further damaged by the central bank’s management of the naira and the new administration’s lack of progress on economic reforms. In addition, regulatory fines for foreign entities — as was recently highlighted with MTN — brought heightened attention to the overall risk of the operating environment in Nigeria. These own goals were regrettable, but wholly avoidable. Atiku’s nomination sets the stage for an election featuring two clearly distinct policy options,” says analyst John Ashbourne of Capital Economics. “Mr Abubakar has promised sweeping economic reforms, including a floating exchange rate and privatisation of the state oil company. He would also almost certainly appoint a new governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, which could move the bank away from its current unconventional policy mix.” However, the clearest indicator of Nigeria’s potential economic trajectory under Atiku’s stewardship was outlined in the launch of his highly ambitious election policy document. As per his blueprint for the Nigerian economy, Atiku intends to increase Nigeria’s GDP to $900bn by 2025. Interestingly, he also pledged that his government would offer the lowest corporate income tax rate in Africa — a move intended to make Nigeria the most attractive country on the continent for foreign investment. While certainly striking all the right chords among the business community, Atiku’s policies have been described as aspirational at best and utopian by more realistic commentators. Less generous analysts have outright dismissed it as a work of fantasy. Indeed, there is a major disconnect between his stated aims and what is realistically possible. The elephant in the room, of course, is the price of oil. Should prices again flirt with 2014 lows, the country will find itself in deep trouble, regardless of who is in power. Against this backdrop, the choice for investors is as follows: stick with the suboptimal status quo, or hang their hats on the hope of change, albeit with a recycled candidate?
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Ghana Said to Target Swift Sale of $3 Billion in Eurobonds @business Africa |
Ghana is favoring a sale of as much as $3 billion in Eurobonds this quarter as the country seeks to finance its budget and reduce borrowing costs, according to two people familiar with the matter. While the West African nation’s budget requires net foreign financing of 9.8 billion cedis ($2 billion), it will seek an additional $1 billion if it’s able to issue debt at lower rates than what it’s paying for some existing bonds, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The finance ministry will begin to appoint transaction advisers later this month, said the people. Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta didn’t answer calls seeking comment. Ghana wants to return to the market at a time when U.S. rates are near one-year lows, even though an ongoing trade war between the world’s biggest economies is curbing appetite for risky assets. The average yield on dollar bonds of African countries climbed more than 90 basis points since Ghana’s last issuance of $2 billion in bonds in May. Yields on the nation’s $1 billion of securities due in 2030, which were sold at 10.75 percent four years ago, rose seven points to 8.84 percent in London on Thursday.
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