SIERRA LEONE: SIERRA LEONANS CHOOSE THE BALLOT OVER THE BULLET

Unsurprisingly the pattern of events which have unfolded since the outcome of national elections in Sierra Leone became known have followed a rather rancorous and familiar path. Last week’s re-election of President Ernest Bai Koroma has drawn the ire of leading figures from the country’s main opposition party who claim that the elections were flawed and rigged in favour of the incumbent. Koroma, who campaigned on the joint headers of fighting corruption and attracting investment to the country, will now serve a second term in office following his 2007 victory.

Koroma’s All People’s Congress were said to have garnered 58.7 percent of the popular vote thereby surpassing the 55 percent threshold required to claim a first round victory. The opposition party’s Julius Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) questioned the validity of elections which international observers have acknowledged as being free and fair. Bio averred that the credibility of the results had been undermined by “systemic and widespread irregularities, malpractices and injustices”.

The SLPP and Bio will meet difficulties in attempting to convince anyone but their own supporters that the elections were marred by irregularities. For one, international observers including a European Union observer mission stationed in the country during the elections have had no reasons, as far as is known, to question the polls’ credibility. The EU’s presence was supplemented by observer missions from the Commonwealth, the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU). Further, a recount of a cross-section of the votes cast and conducted by the country’s electoral commission following the aforementioned claims of voter irregularity revealed that only a handful of the sample had been ‘contaminated’ and that the numbers of ‘contaminated’ votes were insufficient in number and scale to necessitate the annulment of the election results.

If the results of this third democratic election stand, it would signal immense progress since the end of the country’s 11-year civil war between 1991 and 2002. That unsavoury period of the country’s existence saw Sierra Leone serve as venue against the background of the commission of grave breaches of human rights and war crimes. The conflict was famous for the use of ‘blood diamonds’ by rebel soldiers to acquire ammunition, the deplorable use of child soldiers and the scores of innocent civilians now living with amputated limbs, amputation being the rebel fighters’ favoured means of intimidation and punishment. Hopes however abound that the recent elections will serve as the impetus which the country needs in order to realise the potential which the wealth of natural resources it possesses could only fuel or propel. Encouragingly early indications reveal a country so haunted by its past that its people, regardless of ethnic or political affiliation, are intent on steering its path far away from the history it attempts to dissociate therefrom.

IRAN: INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY AND IRAN AGREE TALKS

News of Iran’s imminent return to the negotiating table has allayed concerns of further instability in the Middle East. The talks, which are being forced through by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are expected to take place on December 13 in the country’s capital, Tehran. The talks are being held side by side with separate discussions involving Germany, France, Britain, China, Russia and the United States, and are also aimed at defusing the rather complex Middle East powder keg.

The IAEA’s attempts to inject some calm to the tense proceedings have so far been met by strong Iranian resistance. Iran continues to assert that its nuclear intentions are pure and that its purpose for acquiring nuclear capability is non-military. Iran’s return to the negotiating table has surprisingly been met with anything but elation and optimism which most certainly owes to the fact that too many proclamations of a ‘new dawn’ have been sounded out in the past but without progress on the ground commensurate with previous shades of optimism. Dare I say that the present debacle is rather akin to the parable of ‘the boy who cried wolf’.

Matters are not made any easier by the country’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who appears to revel in the attention directed by the international media towards his region of the world, albeit for the wrong reasons. Needless to say his latest pronouncements that “the Iranian nation is not seeking an atomic bomb, nor do they need to build an atomic bond” was not only met with silence which it deserved but also derision. To many, Ahmadinejad will continue to fail in his attempts to pull the wool over the watching world’s eyes if he, on the one hand states that the country’s nuclear enrichment programme is geared towards peaceful aims, but at the same time, prevents the IAEA from visiting alleged nuclear enrichment sites and also, continues to threaten the state of Israel, for all their faults, with eternal damnation.

The restrained pronouncements in light of the latest developments by leading global figures perhaps tells its own story and buttresses the writer’s earlier assertions. Catherine Ashton, the Foreign Policy supremo of the European Union cautiously asserted that the talks “could be an initial step on the path to resolving outstanding issues.” The United States, via its State Department Spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, offered: “In the past Iran has been unwilling to do what it needs to do despite the best efforts of the IAEA. But we commend the IAEA for keeping at it and we call on Iran to do what it needs to do to meet the international community’s concerns.”

The announcement comes a week after the Pentagon reported that Iran had fired at an unarmed American drone thereby risking an international incident with the capacity to morph into a major conflict. Nonetheless and in spite of the air of pessimism which pervades, the agreement to return to the table is encouraging and signals a climb down from the ‘chest puffing’ which the conflict’s main protagonists – Iran, Israel and the United States – have so far been engaged. Liberals will argue that the sanctions regime has been effective at forcing Iran to utilise diplomatic channels to resolve the dispute while ‘hawkish Republicans’ and Benjamin Netanyahu’s – the Israeli President - supporters will state that Iran is utilising the talks as a smokescreen whilst it completes its nuclear programme. Although President Obama’s victory most certainly means that the United States will only engage militarily against Iran as a last resort, the writer however believes the threat of an Israeli pre-emptive strike still looms large and has not been allayed by Iran’s sudden and unexpected move.

SRI LANKA: U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL URGES GOVERNMENT TO INVESTIGATE WAR CRIMES

The global human rights watchdog the United Nations Human Rights Council this week pressed the Sri Lankan government to bring to book those implicated in the commission of war crimes and the violation of human rights during the course of the country’s 30-year long civil war. The allegations principally centre on the state of chaos which prevailed in the period towards the end of the civil war during which army personnel were said to have wantonly carried out mass crimes against Tamil civilians in their fight against Tamil Tiger rebels.


Extra-judicial killings, Freedom of Expression and Disappearances

Speaking in the aftermath of the Council’s latest meeting, the U.K’s ambassador Karen Pearce made reference to allegations that lawyers, activists and journalists who have dared to highlight continuing violations of human rights have faced persecution from the authorities. Mrs Pearce urged the Sri Lankan government to ensure the discontinuance of “reprisal attacks against any individual including for cooperating with U.N. mechanisms”. In adding her own two cents to the debate, the U.S. ambassador Eileen Donahoe revealed the unfortunate truths that threats to freedom of expression, disappearances and extra-judicial killings still exist in the post-war Sri Lanka. Addressing the alleged violations of human rights and international law, Mrs Donahoe stated that Sri Lanka needed to “end impunity for human rights violations and fulfil legal obligations regarding accountability by initiating independent and transparent investigations”.


Government Denials

As expected, the latest developments have been met with concrete denials by the Sri Lankan government as has been the case since the allegations first surfaced at the end of the war about three years ago. The special envoy of the President on human rights matters, Mahinda Samarasinghe said that his country was taking matters seriously as evidenced by the fact that the country’s courts were already investigating crimes committed against civilians during the war. Samarasinghe referred to the country’s Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), akin to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has played a significant role in the country’s healing process following the war. To this end Samarasinghe averred: “Protection of civilian life was a key factor in the formulation of government policy for carrying out military operations and the deliberate targeting of civilians formed no part in that strategy…If reliable evidence is available in respect of any contravention of the law, the domestic legal process will be set in motion.”


Report of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)

Try as it may the Sri Lankan government’s protestations have not been persuasive enough to shake off the claims. The contents of the recent report of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) titled “Authority without Accountability: The Crisis of Impunity in Sri Lanka” provided a damning indictment of the government’s efforts to bring the alleged perpetrators of the crimes to book. The report accused the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa of being in serious breach of its international obligations to protect and promote human rights by purposefully failing to bring to justice the alleged criminals. The ICJ also highlighted evidence of intimidation of members of the judiciary, media and human rights groups who have shouldered responsibility for bringing the said criminals to book in the absence of effective and coordinated government action.


Sound-off

Long-term observers of political affairs relating to the Asian sub-continent will agree that the Sri Lankan government is currently in denial and could have achieved more than it currently has in terms of bringing the key protagonists in the country’s darkest period to book. Its recent actions are also at odds with its persistent pronouncements of innocence. This week the President instigated a motion in parliament aimed at the removal of the chief justice, Shirani Bandaranayake. At the time of writing no reason has been provided for the move although some claim that it is evidence of the campaign of intimidation which awaits individuals who fail to toe the government line. Rajapaksa should best beware that the eyes of the international community are, from this point on, permanently trained upon him and its stares will not be diverted until the subject of accountability is nudged towards the crest of his political agenda.