Kenya: General Elections on March the 4th, 2013?

Kenya polls body sets elections date

 Monday, March 19  2012 at  00:00

The Monitor

In Summary: Voting date. The electoral commission has announced that the general elections will be held on March 4.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has announced that the next General Election will be held in March 2013.

IEBC chairman Issack Hassan said his Commission has been “compelled” to set the March 4 date since President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga have failed to agree on a date as set out in a court ruling.

“....the Commission hereby announces that the general elections will be held on Monday, March 4, 2013,” said Mr Hassan during a news conference in Nairobi on Saturday.

He said before setting the date, the IEBC had consulted widely including approaching the principals with a view to them agreeing, in writing, to dissolve the Coalition Government and precipitate an election within 60 days. However, Mr Hassan said, the President and Mr Odinga differed.

“The Commission has consulted widely within and without, and in particular, it has consulted the two Principals with a view to actualise Option A of the Court Judgement,” said the IEBC boss.

“It should be understood that this Commission has repeatedly stated that it is ready to conduct the general elections in December 2012. However, after these consultations, it has become clear to the Commission that there is no agreement between the Principals as required by the Court Judgement under Option A.”

“In the circumstances, the Commission is compelled to proceed with Option B of the Court Judgement which requires that we fix an election date within 60 days from the expiry of the term of the 10th Parliament,” said Mr Hassan.

He said in setting the March date, the Commission had considered several electoral processes including requirement that political parties comply with the Political Parties Act 2011 by April; need for public officers intending to contest in the polls to resign at least eight months before elections; mapping of new electoral units; voter education; inspection of voters’ register and procurement of electoral material.

“We appreciate and understand that there are Kenyans who may have preferred an earlier election date, but we call upon Kenyans to be understanding and support the commission in delivering a peaceful, free, fair and credible election,” said Mr Hassan.

The electoral commission’s announcement came just hours after Mr Odinga said he preferred a December election.

In a statement, the premier said calls for elections next year in March were misplaced and such a move would prolong the life of Parliament beyond its current term.

“The Prime Minister prefers December to any other date for elections because it is a date Kenyans are familiar with and used to. All elections since 1992 have been held in December,” said Mr Odinga Saturday.

Narc Kenya leader Martha Karua also disagreed with the IEBC date saying it had pre-empted a pending appeal over the matter in court.

“Announcing a March poll when the appeal against election ruling is a few days away is a move to influence the outcome of the appeal,” Ms Karua said on Twitter.

 

First night in Monrovia

A new hotel room is never the best place to sleep soundly. 

We arrived in Monrovia Roberts International Airport - a corridor with lots of slow security checks but no chair or waiting lounge - in the middle of the night, via a Royal Air Maroc flight transiting in Casablanca.

The heat and the humidity are often the welcoming signs of tropical cities down the water; Monrovia is no exception, even at 4 am. But we were lucky enough to be properly welcomed in person by the TV direction of LBS, Liberia Broadcast Service, a charming and knowledgeable journalist of 29 years of experience who lived in exil in the USA during the Liberian War.


There are no street lights outide Monrovia's city centre, so no night picture this time...

We are taken along the dark main road from the airport to the Golden Gate Hotel, who partly holds the right name for it is definitely gated... A heavy military-like gate and trucks and security agents guard the entrance. 

As usual, while travelling, while arriving in a new place, I cannot sleep well, though I know we have a busy six-day-work-week ahead of us. Too much to anticipate, to much to compare from the read and listened to knowledge of Liberia I have had for years and what began tonight to be a reality I am experiencing of this very special country.

Liberia, the word carries this strange mix of Liberty and USA, like the country's flag displays stripes and a star... And yet what most people know of Liberia is the monstrous civil war than turned the nation into bloodsheds of nightmare. The country is Africa's oldest republic, founded by former American black slaves and local indigenous populations in order to built a new kind of nation. And yet again, as other striking exemples of hope around the world, it had to go through a dark and wounded path. I cannot say I am not thinking of other countries I know toO well... 

You are never more alive than after death and a rebirth...

--


Nevertheless, when arriving in Monrovia what dominates the senses is the striking sunlight and the humid warmth, aren't those a source of life and joy?


Later today we are to meet our fellow journalist again and to talk about visiting the national radio newsroom and meeting the future TV staff team. I hope we will also so have time to have a glance on Monrovia's streets, the one I dreamt about all of last year, in Nairobi, while daily passing by on Monrovia Street, the heart of the Kenyan capital's city centre...

 

Back on the African trail

I am based in Europe but I work and write about Africa.

The recent video Kony 2012 sparked a crazy and bubbling spell of reactions on Uganda and the LRA but really, it is difficult to write an article on the issue that could now bring a little more clarity, or to find one!

I have been to Uganda twice, last year during the presidential election in February and later in April, I visited the NorthErn towns of Lira and Guru where the LRA used to be active. All I can say here is that the area is now living again a normal daily life, where farmers have started to grow organic vegetables in order to feed their families and to earn a living. The LRA time is behind them, even though not forgotten or forgiven, but as we can all see from recent interviews, the people of Northen Uganda do not endorse the Kony 2012 video and do not trust those kinds of movements to do any good for their country.

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In the meantime, I am myself writing a story on Algeria, ahead of the 50th anniversary of its independence from France. I should be able to post a link this week. March 19th commemorates the Evian agreements that put an end to the Algerian war. It will be the first time I write an article about it, a first breach into the mysterious and thick past... I hope it will help some to get a better insight into French-Algerian relations today.

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Then it will be time to leave for Africa again. This time, I am heading to Liberia, Monrovia for twelve days.

I will get back to it.

''Africa is the future''...

On David Hockney

Melissa Chemam on Twitter (@melissachemam)
3/15/12 8:42 AM

I loved it so much, i wrote about it. RT via @laboiteasorties La Royal Academy de Londres consacre David Hockney – tinyurl.com/7zabvbq

My recent article on the Royal Academy of Arts' exhibition of David Hockney's recent painting. It is in French for a website dedicated to culture and arts...

http://toutelaculture.com/2012/03/la-royal-academy-de-londres-consacre-david-hockney-critique/

LA ROYAL ACADEMY DE LONDRES CONSACRE DAVID HOCKNEY – CRITIQUE

15 mars 2012

Première rétrospective du genre consacrée aux toiles récentes de l’artiste, l’exposition de la Royal Academy consacrée au peintre britannique contemporain David Hockney signe une consécration sans égale pour l’artiste de 74 ans, encore très prolifique. Elle rassemble des œuvres achevées entre 2006 et fin 2011, célébrant l’éternel motif paysager et la gloire des couleurs, dans une pulsion créatrice enthousiaste aux croisements de l’art contemporain et des traditions impressionnistes et « maitres anciens ». Une des grandes expositions qui a donné le coup d’envoi de l’année culturelle olympique de la capitale britannique – à suivre.

Les grands artistes bénéficient souvent du temps, pour jouer de leurs tournants et revirement et régulièrement se réinventer. David Hockney, icône britannique du Pop Art dans les années 1970, orfèvre du paysage sur toile géante, apparaît désormais aussi comme un maitre du figuratif, renouvelé par un regard rétrospectif sur son pays d’origine, le Yorkshire. Après avoir passé plusieurs décennies à Los Angeles à partir de 1964, Hockney s’est inspiré ces dernières années des paysages champêtres de sa campagne anglaise natale dans laquelle il s’est réinstallé en 2005. Mais à travers ces toiles – présentées en ce moment à la Royal Academy of Art de Londres, l’artiste dépasse largement le figuratif pour transcender l’art de la représentation paysagère via son gigantisme et ses couleurs audacieuses. Datant essentiellement de 2006 à décembre 2011, soit pour certains seulement quelques semaines avant l’installation de l’exposition, ces tableaux offrent un exemple de cohérence picturale, dans les thèmes comme dans les choix esthétiques, d’une intensité rare.

La plupart des salles présentent de très grands formats de Hockney, reposant souvent eux-mêmes sur un principe de composition de plusieurs toiles assemblées en modèles géants, composés comme A Closer Winter Tunnel de six tableaux, ou encore dans le sublime Sermon on the Mount – A Bigger Message (salle 10 de l’exposition, 2010) de trente toiles assemblées en une massive œuvre… La plupart de ces tableaux étant d’ailleurs exposés pour la première fois. Le musée britannique a également réunis des aquarelles – des paysages aussi inspirés par la campagne du Yorkshire – ainsi que des carnets de croquis de l’artiste, des vidéos et des dessins réalisés – dernier cri de modernité – sur une tablette numérique. La dernière salle réunit enfin des toiles d’envergure inspirées par les paysages éternels du parc américain du Yosemite, dans le grand ouest états-unis.

Le but de la Royal Academy est d’ainsi mettre en avant « l’engagement émotif » de l’artiste dans des paysages qu’il connaît et a côtoyés depuis sa plus tendre enfance. Né en 1937 à Bradford, dans l’est du Yorkshire, Angleterre, David Hockney a en effet grandi dans la région avant de se rendre au Royal College of Art de Londres en 1959. Il a alors connu le succès dès le début des années 1960, participant ainsi aux débuts du British Pop Art. La fin des années 60 le voit installé pour un bon moment en Californie et dans la veine colorée et lumineuse mais déjà paysagiste de ce mouvement bruyant et mondialement exploré.

A travers cette dernière exposition, les figures de l’arbre, du sous-bois, de la floraison, et des chemins étroits jonglent avec la thématique des quatre saisons, triomphant dans le projet de la salle 9 de l’Académie consacrée à l’étude de l’arrivée du printemps, The Arrival of Spring in Woodgate, comprenant 51 imprimés et une toile géante composée de 32 tableaux. Ils ont été réalisés entre début janvier et fin mai 2011 à partir de la représentation d’un seul et même chemin de la petite bourgade de Woodgate, évoluant sous les pinceaux de Hockney de la mortification de l’hiver à l’éblouissement d’une nature pré-estivale. Le tout offre également un triomphe visuel des couleurs qui virevoltent entre les verts les plus variés et se mêlent de lavandes subtiles, de violets éclatants et d’ocres intenses dans un défilé à la palette aussi large qu’imaginable.

La toile titre Winter Timber, le ‘bois d’hiver’, aux couleurs criardes et aux traits lourds, et la série inspirée de la toile biblique du français Claude Lorrain datant de 1656, Le Sermont sur la montagne, viennent apporter une vague d’hétéroclisme à ce cheminement champêtre.

Le tout donne un immense défi à l’histoire de la peinture contemporaine récente, nie les excès de l’abstraction et du Pop Art dont Hockney lui-même a été l’un des totems vivants…

A presque 75 ans, David Hockney présente ainsi un visage plus que jamais décomplexé et maitrisé de ses œuvres, d’ailleurs au sommet de leur énergie et de leur élan, et une créativité à l’opposé de celle des Young British Artists qui font la jeune génération d’artistes du pays emportée par le mondialement connu Damien Hirst – qui fera lui l’objet d’une exposition au moins autant attendue à la Tate Modern à partir d’avril prochain .

Melissa Chemam

Photo : David Hockney, ‘Woldgate Woods, 21, 23 & 29 November 2006’, 2006. Oil on 6 canvases. 182 x 366 cm. Courtesy of the Artist. © David Hockney. Photo credit: Richard Schmidt

Hello London Folks!

It's almost spring and it's a blooming artistic season so what else than a little London break for this week?

On my to-do-list, friends and art galleries, among which Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery, German art at Saatchi Gallery and the latest events at the Whitechapel. A little tour from Hampstead to Kensington via East London.

That's for today. Tomorrow is another day and should be enlightend by David Hockney at the Royal Academy.

Join me if you can...

March 8...

Paris, France, March 8, 2012



After a short break in Berlin, an intense trip to Kenya, and a marvellous discovevy of the Southeastern part of India, I am now back in my hometown, Paris, France. And it is a time of many anniversaries.

As you know, March 8 is the International Day of Women. I do believe that picking one day to celebrate and defend half of humanity is ridiculous and even insulting, but if some intitiatives can help some women somewhere, why not?

As for me March 8 was absolutely a day of liberation, once, in 2002, when I pass the written test to enter in Sciences Po Master of International Relations and Journalism, thanks to a history dissertation on Women in the political and social scene in France throughout the 20th century...

Since then, March 8 remains a special day for me and a metaphor of personal empowerment. As you may imagine, few people at the time thought I could pass the test, as a humble granted student from a low incomes immigrant family... But the topic of women in French history came just on time on the right day to help me show the French University world that it was actually possible.

 Then again, early March brought me another breakthrough in 2008. It is the date when I moved to the US, to Miami specifically, to be on the continent during the presidential campaign that brought Barack Obama to the White House and myself on the roads of the world. The best decision I ever took was to leave the France 24 newsroom in Paris and to become a foreign correspondent! I thus managed to make my dream of a life of travels come true.

So today I'm in Paris but it's only my base for now.

 This weekend I'll be back in London and next week I'll be back in Africa if all goes well.

And there are only more travels ahead...

"I must be gone and live, or stay and die"... On travels and literature

     Travels are privileged times. And reading is the ultimate privilege of patient travellers.

While on the roads of South India, I took many buses, on rides that took hours and even nights, and I stayed alone in quite a few guesthouses and restaurants. Therefore my cherished companions were mainly books, novels, guides and one travel literature masterpiece.

--

My first choice was a personal one, a novel by Jack Kerouac I came across on a London bookshop, down the Old Street Tube Station, Camden Locks Books. Not 'On the Road', his well-know masterpiece, but 'The Subterraneans', a short novel remaining as a embodiment of the unique Beat Generation writing years. Its unseen and revolutionary style, its singled out voice and its peculiar topics - unprecedented for the times - are more than ever noticeable nowadays and made the novel become right away one of my favourite texts of the American literature I came across.

--

The second one started with a memorable quote: "I must be gone and live, or stay and die" (Romeo, in 'Romeo and Juliet', Act 3, Scene 5, by William Shakespeare). As in the Epigraph of 'The Way of the World', by Nicolas Bouvier.

Nicolas Bouvier was a Swiss traveller and writer who wandered on the Eastern routes in the 1950s, crossing the Balkans, Turkey, Iran and India, while the Cold War was only starting. And from these journeys, he brought back some amazing words. 'The Way of the World' was published in 1963 and written in French, and is still considered as a masterpiece of travel literature. It recounts of a journey taking Bouvier and his painter friend Thierry from Serbia to the gates of India, mainly through the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus and Iran.

I can confirm there is a great feeling of inspiration coming from reading travel literature on the road. For at least you know one person understood the depth than can come from what others only sees as a running-away bad habit... For most people believe, as a French man once told me, that "to leave is to die a little", as the Edmond Haraucourt's (1857-1941) poem 'Rondel de l'adieu' stated in its first verse, becoming a common French adage. I, on the contrary, strongly believe there is no life without movement, and travel is an essence of life. 

--

Stopping for a while in Auroville, Sri Aurobindo and Mira Alfassa's dreamt and utopian city located in the very heart of India's Tamil Nadu, I encountered a new classic, the 'Letters from Africa' by the great Isak Dinesen, aka Karen Blixen. The correspondence of the Danish writer with her mother, her brother and her closest ones in Denmark offers a direct insight into Blixen's life in her African farm on the Ngong Hills in Kenya from the 1910s to the 1930s and marvellously complete her unforgettable novel 'Out of Africa'. 

Since Nairobi has become one of my favourite places among all the cities I have been lucky to live in, this text could only feel very special to me. Reading them while away on my first trip to Asia, a few weeks away only from my latest journey in Kenya - last January - these letters have open a long list of reflections in my thoughts and considerations of this new year, a year already dedicated to travelling and reading and writing... 

Discovering South India

Some trips are simply eye-opening. I was expecting a lot of a first journey to India. First because I had been willing to travel to India since I was 19 years old... Secondly, because a dear friend of mine has been living in South India, near Pondicherry, for years. 

Towards the end of 2011, I decided 2012 would be a wonderful year of travels. It was my first resolution for the new year. In January and February, I had already traveled to Berlin, Nairobi, London and Paris, but it was not enough. The year had to start with the greatest travel of all, and it was time to make room for 'Incredible' India.

In order to spend some time in the legendary Auroville where my friend lives, I then flew to Chennai (ex-Madras) mid-February and scheduled to spend some time in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

We started the journey with my friend in Mamallapuram / Mahabalipuram, near Chennai, on the Indian Ocean for a short introduction to Tamil Nadu heat and sun and temples...

Tamil Nadu is a very special state of India, very traditional and out of time, so spiritual and colourful, I was lucky enough to travel from Chennai to Pondicherry via Auroville.

While Auroville is so uneasy to define with common words, for its unique social and spiritual experience and its international gathering of people from all over India and the world, Pondicherry is the charm itself of a middle-sized city along the ocean, enlighted by historical and especially French influences, which remain today as a positive and lovely impact.

There is nothing more agreable than a walk in the middle of Pondicherry's main market, more colourful than possible, or a ride through the white streets of the French quarter.

Before spending more time discovering more in depth Auroville, I took a week to travel to the rest of India and decided to ride by bus around Karnataka, to reach the holy temples of Hampi and the Maharajar's palace of Mysore, north and south of Bangalore.

                                                           (Hampi's main temple)

Hampi was quiet, hot and warm and so historical.

Mysore is on the contrary very busy and extremely dynamic.

Getting back to Tamil Nadu through Bangalore, I came back to spend the third week of my journey in Auroville.

But that's already another story.

More soon....

Time to fly

We are mid-February and after three weeks in Europe it is now time to fly again. 

I am going to Asia for the first time and will be away for three weeks.

See you soon folks,
M

My latest article for Think Africa Press: Review of 'Getting Somalia Wrong? ' by Mary Harper

Review: Getting Somalia Wrong?

Mary Harper challenges the international media's portrayal of Somalia.

Article | 7 February 2012 - 1:13pm | By Melissa Chemam 

Think Africa Press

http://thinkafricapress.com/somalia/review-getting-somalia-wrong

Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State by Mary Harper is released by African Arguments, Zed Books today.

By Melissa Chemam

Somalia is a considered a failed state by many international bodies and governments. And it has been over 20 years since the fall of its former dictator Siad Barre in 1991. When Somalia is mentioned, it is most likely as a threat whether to itself, its neighbours or the wider world. In recent years, it has become notorious for the rise of Islamic extremism and for the piracy attacks off its coast. It is even considered by some specialists of international relations as a new “southern front” in the global war on terror.

The difficulty of covering events in Somalia has left the country surrounded by many misunderstandings and misconceptions. Mary Harper’s work Getting Somalia Wrong?, published this month by Zed Books, in their the African Arguments series, seeks to shift a narrow vision of the country and broaden understandings Somalia’s situation.

As a BBC journalist and currently Africa Editor at the BBC World Service, Mary Harper has been reporting from Somalia since the outbreak of civil war in 1991 as well as from other war zones across Africa, including Sudan, Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her interest in Somalia, however, also has a personal dimension. Her mother worked in Somalia as a nurse in the early 1990s and introduced the country to her daughter in a sensitive and detailed way, above and beyond the descriptions offered by short news bulletins. After years of reporting in the Horn of Africa, Harper has developed a rare proximity to the Somali people.

Pride and prejudice

Harper is well aware of the prejudices surrounding Somalia. She writes in her introduction that she realises the country “ticks all the boxes for an African disaster zone”. “It has war, it has hunger. It provides perfect images for the media: gun-wielding, drug-crazed teenagers race around in sawn-off Land Cruisers, while skeletal women clutch starving children, flies buzzing around their faces.” Such images that have recently dominated world television networks during the famine of the past year.
But the whole point of the essay is to show how those images and clichés are barriers to other ways of fathoming a country in crisis but also in constant evolution. Indeed, despite two decades of conflicts,
Somalia has still managed to develop its economy via improvements in technology and money transfer. It has also grown through drastically-changing political phases.

Harper even argues that the rest of the world has a few things to learn from Somalis’ resilience and capacity to reinvent themselves. Alternative systems of business, justice, education and local politics have survived and evolved in the country.

Misunderstanding the situation

It is difficult to talk about a political system when dealing with contemporary Somalia, but even in this area, the country has found its own pattern, insists Harper. Somalia has no central government and is made up of a combination of regions which have more or less achieved semi-autonomy, like Somaliland and Puntland. The boundaries between these territories and the rest of Somalia – “south central” as it is often referred to – are blurred, disputed and shifting. But in many ways, this partition has benefited the population, since there is no conflict in the northern regions of country, while south central Somalia is still undergoing civil war.

What the book demonstrates best is how foreign powers involved in trying to resolve the conflict have often exacerbated the situation. When the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) took control of most parts of Somalia in 2006, ''The USA and its allies misinterpreted these events”, comments Harper. “They mistakenly equated a home-grown form of political Islam with the international al-Qaeda franchise and, by doing so, inadvertently advertised the country as a promising new battle front for jihadists from across the world''.

In reality, what happened in Somalia at that time was that Sharia courts were providing stability, some safety and a form of justice to the people after years of absolute chaos. And the US misinterpretation of the movement encouraged the UIC's fall in 2007 and the rise of al-Shabaab militias, who are violent and represent an actual threat for the country and the whole region.

According to Harper, Somalia has been ''squeezed into the dominant Western post-9/11 narrative'', but it happened without realising that the country would not let itself turn into a field of experimentation for the Western world's war on terror.

Harper admits that Somalia has always been difficult to comprehend for outsiders. But the foreign powers involved in the Horn of Africa nevertheless must now have a better look at its history if they want to understand it.

Looking back

The second chapter of the book gives the readers a short history of Somalia. Plunging into Somalia's clan-like structure and complex history of invasions and cultural exchanges with its neighbours through the first and second chapters, Harper describes a very complex, mostly nomadic and oral society, as developing its own political models and religious patterns.

The third chapter, dedicated to Islam in Somalia, is particularly striking. Harper reports some of her hard-won interviews with current and former al-Shabaab leaders in order to better understand the interactions between politics and Islamism in today's Somalia. This includes the Islamic leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys and former leader Al Ahzari, as well as child soldiers living in Mogadishu or hidden as runaways in Nairobi.

Failed state, failed society?

Harper also describes how much Somalia has evolved into developing its own political and social systems, which are, despite the West's criticisms, somehow functional. Broken into more or less autonomous sub-regional and local entities, Somalia is not actually a state as modern political theories define it, but a collection of different clan and regional organisations. The example of the region of Somaliland shows, according to Harper, a form of possible stability for Somalis.

Also focusing on the issues of piracy in the Horn of Africa and the relations between Somalia and the outside world, the book describes how the country may be considered as a failed state, but is far from being a failed society. Harper concludes that to view Somalia through the prism of al-Qaeda is only a source of further destabilisation of the country and the entire Horn of Africa.

With a provocative analysis, Getting Somalia Wrong? argues that the international community needs to start getting Somalia right, or the consequences might end up being devastating, and not just for Somalia, but for major parts of the world. It is also wonderfully written, appealing and engaging, with numerous references to Somali traditions and poetry, rare virtues for such a serious topic.



Getting Somalia Wrong? Faith, War and Hope in a Shattered State by Mary Harper is released by African Arguments, Zed Books today.