Archive for September, 2008

Tone deaf in Sarajevo, blind in Brussels

Eric Witte September 25th, 2008

Local elections will be held in Bosnia next month, and election season means that although a majority of Bosnians rate their top concerns as jobs and other bread-and-butter issues, their political class again is feeding them a steady diet of ethnic fear-mongering.  Nationalist politicians are literally scaring-up votes, and will, as always, be rewarded for it at the polls.  It’s a feature, not a bug of the Dayton constitution, which itself was designed by nationalist leaders of all three main ethnicities to suit their interests.   The dynamic will remain this way until officeholders are no longer elected from constituencies largely defined as mono-ethnic.  Mutual communal fear provides the best chances for Bosniak, Croat, and Serb nationalists to win under these circumstances, so they have a common vested interest in stoking it.

In typical fashion, Tuesday saw Haris Silajdzic, the Bosniak member of the country’s ridiculous tripartite, tri-ethnic presidency, addressing the UN General Assembly, where in thinly veiled terms he called on the world body to abolish the Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s Serb-dominated half).  While I share Silajdzic’s view that the RS was born of genocide, ending what Silajdzic termed “ethnic apartheid” will require political compromise with Serbs and Croats.  It cannot be done with fist-pounding demands to undo history.  Under the logic of Dayton politics, these only provide more fodder for Serb nationalist politicians, whose fierce reactions will scare more Bosniak voters to Silajdzic.

Miroslav Lajcak, the international community’s High Representative and EU Special Representative for Bosnia, made just this reasonable argument to the largely Bosniak readership of a Sarajevo daily yesterday: “You cannot state that you are pro Bosnia-Herzegovina, while treating one half of the country as hostile.”  So far, so good.  However, Lajcak went on to raise the specter that unless this changed, Bosnia could go the way of Czechoslovakia and Serbia-Montenegro:

“I have seen the same atmosphere that I see today in the Sarajevo-Banja Luka relations twice in my life. I saw it first in the Bratislava-Prague relations, and then in those between Podgorica and Belgrade, and we all know how that turned out.”

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This would not be a bad message for Bosniak politicians behind closed doors, but uttered for the media has only encouraged RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik’s hope for his entity’s secession.  So rather than amplify the message that Bosniaks need to think about a future Bosnia that assuages the political fears - and indeed, meets the political needs - of other communities, Lajcak has actually contributed to the tedious, inflammatory campaign debate on RS secession vs. RS-abolition.

In the same interview Lajcak repeated the tired mantra that Bosnia’s politicians need to lead the way out of the crisis: “The international community, especially the EU, expects that 13 years after the war, Bosnia-Herzegovina should take matters into its own hands.”  This expectation completely ignores the rewarding of nationalist candidacies ingrained in the Bosnian election system.  Thirteen years after Dayton, the people of Bosnia might expect the EU and the broader international community to understand that if a new political compromise is to be achieved, the impetus will never come from Bosnian politicians whose interests are tethered to the status quo.  The EU, whose mission soon will be leading the international presence in Bosnia, has yet to demonstrate that it has any workable strategy to address the constitutional crux of Bosnia’s problems.  Worse, it often appears that the EU doesn’t even understand the problem.

Reflections on Ukraine’s sorry politics…

Kurt Bassuener September 23rd, 2008

Iryna Chupryna wrote an insightful analysis of the political situation on Ukraine as an issue of DPC Analyst, posted today.  The collapse of the “Orange” coalition of President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko seems destined to lead to new parliamentary elections - the third in three years, as Iryna noted.  Ukrainian voters, especially those who had high hopes from the victory of December 2004, are beginning to despair; many are tuning out of politics altogether.  Given the fact that the election results will probably not deliver a fundamental change to political order, but merely reshuffle the existing deck, it is easy to sympathize with their frustration.  Only Ukrainians, primarily in the east and south of the country, who voted for the Party of Regions, headed by Viktor Yanukovych, do not feel disappointed or let down by their leaders, and they form the largest single bloc.  Given the fact that Yanukovych not only conspired with President Kuchma and his chief of staff Viktor Medvedchuk (with considerable assistance from Vladimir Putin and now-President Dmitri Medvedev) to steal the 2004 election, this is a nearly incomprehensible result.  But it is nonetheless true.  What was won in the cold streets of Kyiv’s Maidan

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 in November and December seems to have been mortally wounded through infighting, ego battles, and and unwillingness to put the public interest first.

No one side in the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko conflict is solely guilty.  My own view is to have more disappointment in Yushchenko, since I expected better from him, while Yulia Tymoshenko’s brand of populism proved to be a double-edged sword, but a known one throughout.  The pairing was absolutely essential during the presidential campaign after Yushchenko was poisoned, with Tymoshenko taking on the heavy travel schedule that the Yushchenko campaign planned to circumvent the media blockade against it until Yushchenko could return.  Tymoshenko was also very insistent on the monitoring the vote count.  She was a crowd-pleaser on the Maidan, and judging from the reception on New Year’s 2005 (where Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who once studied in Kyiv and speaks fluent Ukrainian, also spoke) at the Maidan, the bigger star. 

The coalition was difficult from the start, given so many egos and interests to balance.  Even from Spring 2005, it appeared that Yushchenko didn’t have a strong enough grip on his administration and government.  And it went downhill from there.

What didn’t happen, but must if Ukraine is to prosper and progress toward integration with the EU (a door which still remains closed for the moment, unfortunately - the EU has enormous capacity to use conditions for membership to spur the necessary reforms to Ukraine’s still sclerotic governance and administration) is some effort to bridge the east-west divide in Ukrainian politics.  This divide began to be ameliorated during Kuchma’s presidency, and the great perversity of his attempt to retain power vicariously was that he was willing to scuttle his greatest achievment as president for a decade - an otherwise increasingly corrupt and sordid reign.  Nonetheless, due to the combined factors of incoherence in the ruling coalition, the fact that the Party of Regions is still led by the polarizing Viktor Yanukovych, an increasingly polarized international political situation and a lack of EU strategy toward Ukraine, the country remains split essentially along the lines of the 2004 election.

There was talk when I was in Ukraine a year ago, before parliamentary elections, that sub rosa efforts were ongoing to hive off the main body of the Party of Regions under Donetsk-based tycoon Rinat Akhmetov, and then forging a Our Ukraine coalition with this party, leaving a rump PoR and the Tymoshenko Bloc out of power.  Odd as it sounds, many “Orange” veterans were in favor of such a coalition, for only an easterner could sell NATO membership the the south and east, but generally for the potential to knit the country back together behind a common agenda to pursue EU membership.

It remains to be seen what that United Center party will accomplish, but it is hard to see a way out of the current impasse without new players and new ideas.

Kgalema Motlanthe and Zimbabwe

Eric Witte September 22nd, 2008

Yesterday, Kurt wondered how Thabo Mbeki’s resignation as South African president would affect the tenuous power-sharing agreement in neighboring Zimbabwe.   Today we learn that the African National Congress has chosen party deputy Kgalema Motlanthe to serve out the rest of Mbeki’s term, until elections due next April. 

Motlanthe appears to be more than a mere place-holder for ANC leader Jacob Zuma, who is widely tipped to win the coming presidential elections.  Zuma’s faction of the ANC is reported to have favored the current Speaker of Parliament Baleka Mbete for the post of caretaker president and may be disappointed that she was passed over.  Motlanthe is regarded as a party moderate who has tried to be a peacemaker between the Mbeki and Zuma factions.

For years Mbeki has been notoriously soft on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, even as Zimbabwe’s economic implosion has been a drag on the South African economy.  Rival Jacob Zuma, with a background in the labor movement, has shown greater sympathy to Zimbabwe’s current prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, himself a union activist and the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change.  Kgalema Motlanthe also has a labor background, having served as the secretary general of South Africa’s mineworkers union. What do we know about his views on Zimbabwe?  A cursory search reveals the following:

  • In 2000, Motlanthe penned a newspaper article in defense of Mugabe’s land redistribution policies, prompting Morgan Tsvangirai to complain: “The ANC’s endorsement of Zanu-PF is counter-productive.  We would have hoped they would have done all in their power to back a free and fair election.”
  • Last year, when UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown was threatening to boycott the planned summit between African Union and European Union leaders, Motlanthe argued that the summit should proceed without London and not be “imprisoned and paralysed by dangerous and destructive neo-colonialist ambitions”.
  • Motlanthe was one of the South African officials who participated in July talks with the parties in Zimbabwe, pressuring both sides to compromise.

With regard to Zimbabwe, at first glance it appears that South Africa’s new president may be much like its last.

DPC Analyst: Ukraine after the coalition collapse

admin September 22nd, 2008

DPC Senior Associate Iryna Chupryna has written the second issue of “DPC Analyst”, our occasional series of longer analytical pieces.  In “The Ruling Coalition in Ukraine is Dead… What Next?” [PDF], Chupryna argues that Ukrainian political stability requires a new political consensus - one less polarized along regional lines.

Will Mbeki’s resignation affect Zimbabwe deal?

Kurt Bassuener September 21st, 2008

South African President Thabo Mbeki, who was elected in 1999 to succeed Nelson Mandela and was re-elected in 2004, resigned this evening after a long and bitter battle with African National Congress President Jacob Zuma that ended in the ANC asking him to step down.  Mbeki denied accusations that he or his government interfered in the judicial process against Mr. Zuma, whose corruption charges were dismissed last week.  His successor until next year’s elections will have to be selected by the parliament - and Jacob Zuma cannot immediately succeed as he is not an MP.  The populist Mr. Zuma will almost certainly run as the ANC candidate in the upcoming presidential election.  What his ascendancy means for South Africa’s domestic and international policies is an open question.  Mbeki’s fall has been described by some African commentators as “regicide,” and certainly falls outside the African norm.

In his resignation speech, he cited progress in economic development, including toward the Millenium Development Goals, as achievements he was proud of.

Mbeki was the SADC mediator for the Zimbabwe political crisis, and was widely criticized, including by the authors of this blog, for not being nearly as proactive and supportive of democratic and civic forces in Zimbabwe as he could have been.  But despite his shortcomings, the relative weight of South Africa in regional and continental affairs cannot be denied, and his personal role in brokering the Mugabe - Tsvangirai power-sharing deal, which appears stalled, was critical.  It is not readily apparent who, if anyone, can fill the void.  One of SADC’s most vocal critics of Mugabe, at least from the electoral crisis on, was the late Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who died a month ago.  Botswana, including Foreign Minister Pando Skelemani and parliamentarian Duke Lefkoho, has been notably vocal for some time within SADC on Zimbabwe.  But in terms of leveraging pressure, the role of South Africa is essential.  The timing of South Africa’s internal turmoil could hardly be less opportune for ensuring that Mugabe stick to the deal and hand over sufficient powers to Prime Minister-designate Tsvangirai.   It is hard to see the AU or SADC as a collective filling this void.

Putin snubs French - again

Kurt Bassuener September 21st, 2008

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin today met with French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, and was adamant that only the “states” of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, together with Russia, would determine Russian force levels in the two breakaway regions of Georgia.

“As you know, we recognised South Ossetia’s and Abkhazia’s independence in the same way as many European countries recognized Kosovo’s independence,” he told Russian TV.

“The question of our armed forces’ presence on these territories will be agreed on bilateral basis, in line with international law and on the basis of agreements between Russia and the states in question.”

This was another humiliation for France, as it directly contravened a six-point ceasefire deal hammered out by President Sarkozy between Georgia and Russia. 

As part of the deal Russia agreed that its troops should return to pre-conflict positions.

Moscow has already announced plans to keep about 8,000 troops in the regions - far more than were there previously.

Today South Ossetian forces paraded in captured Georgian military equipment, including US-manufactured Humvees, in commemoration of its independence day.

Aside from Russia, only Nicaragua recognizes South Ossetian or Abkhazian independence.  An effort last month by President Medvedev to get the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes Russia, China, and Central Asian states to endorse Russia’s action did not achieve the desired result for Russia.  Even Belarus, which was chastised by Russian diplomats for being insufficiently supportive of Moscow’s invasion, has yet to recognize the two regions as independent, though it claims it intends to do so.  One wonders where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who just hosted a pair of Russian Tupolev “Blackjack” bombers, and Cuban leader Raul Castro are on this…

The case for western pressure on Georgia

Eric Witte September 21st, 2008

Douglas Muir makes a good point regarding the war in Georgia over at A Fistful of Euros:

What’s interesting - and sort of depressing - is that the war seems to have damaged the prospects for liberal democracy for all four parties. Not that those prospects were bright in Russia or South Ossetia anyhow, but still: all the participants are seeing a tightening of press controls, a strengthening of the nationalist line, and a general boost to the authoritarian pretensions of the current ruling class. And this is likely to get worse before it gets better… if it ever does get better.

Indeed, the prospects for democracy in Russia, South Ossestia and Abkhazia have long looked bleak.  And Muir is right that Georgia has undergone democratic setbacks as well, dating to before the Russian invasion. 

With the West hoping to stave-off Russian control of Georgia, President Mikheil Saakashvili is probably much less likely to come under western pressure with regard to his own democratic shortcomings.  That seems to be a natural reaction to increased polarization and tension between the West and Russia.  But does it make sense?  With Saakashvili’s dependence on the EU and US greater than ever, Washington, Brussels, and European capitals have greater theoretical leverage to insist that he consistently adhere to democratic ideals.  In the end, ensuring that the moral divide between Tbilisi and Moscow is not muddied by Saakashvili’s authoritarian streak would help Georgia to sustain greater sympathy in the West.

The devil is in the details - Zimbabwe

Kurt Bassuener September 18th, 2008

As I wrote on Monday, the landmark power-sharing deal between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and opposition MDC leader and now Prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai drew only lukewarm plaudits from the democratic world, which preferred to see it operationalized and implemented.  A wait-and-see attitude seems to have been the right approach, given the fact that the talks on the structure of the cabinet have now deadlocked over apportionment of ministries.  The MDC claims ZANU-PF wants all the most powerful ones safely in its hands.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said talks on Thursday had been “inconclusive”.

Zanu-PF was “claiming all the powerful ministries” but discussions were continuing, Mr Chamisa said.

“It was a deadlock and has been referred to the negotiating teams for further work to try and find common ground,” he told the Reuters news agency.

Under the terms of the power-sharing deal signed on Monday, Mr Mugabe is to retain control of the army. Mr Tsvangirai is understood to want control of the police by holding the home affairs portfolio.

On Tuesday, Mr Tsvangirai told the BBC that he was working to reassure President Mugabe that he had nothing to fear.

But as was apparent in his “look back in anger” speech Monday, Mugabe is having difficulty with the concept of sharing power with anybody:

Earlier on Thursday, Mr Mugabe described the power-sharing deal as a “humiliation” that would not have happened if the party had not “blundered” in the March elections.

But he said Zanu-PF nevertheless remained “in the driving seat”.

“We are still in a dominant position which will enable us to gather more strength as we move into the future,” he said, according to the state-run Herald newspaper.

Before the parties met, an opposition source said Zanu-PF wanted control of powerful portfolios such as finance, defence and information, while the MDC wanted an “equal share”.

This would include three posts for one of the MDC factions, whose leader Arthur Mutambara will be deputy prime minister.

The African Union and SADC, who got the Kenya-style arrangement they were aiming for from the beginning of the electoral crisis (look for more of this split-the-difference and worry about the details later model in the future), now need to press Mugabe to give the MDC, which has more democratic legitimacy, a greater share of real power.

Do aid cuts to Mauritania hurt Mauritanians?

Eric Witte September 18th, 2008

IRIN news takes a look today at the potential long-term effect of a broad freeze in western development aid to Mauritania following the August 6 coup.  Some of that aid, for example from France, is already in the pipeline and continues to be disbursed, while other aid has stopped cold.  IRIN reports that an EU-funded road project is on hold, and World Bank staff have left the country.  The head of the EU delegation in Nouakchott is quoted as saying:

“It will take at least six months to one year for these aid cuts to really affect state operations [under the control of coup leaders]. And this is even truer as we anticipate a rise in oil revenue in the coming months. I think therefore military leaders can, withstanding everything else, survive the shock of this belt-tightening [reduction in donor assistance], which will not affect the everyday lives of Mauritanians.”

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On the other hand, the UN chief in Mauritania warns: “With the potential cutbacks, in the medium to long term, there is potential for greater hardship and more vulnerability [in Mauritania] to humanitarian crises.”

This may well be true, but because international emergency and humanitarian assistance is continuing, there is no short-term humanitarian crisis.  Despite significant popular support for the coup, Mauritanian development is best served in the long-term through democratization, including establishment of the rule of law.  The more pressure the international community can bring to bear on the revenue streams of the junta in the short term, the greater the chances that the democratic order can be restored, and medium-to-long-term suffering of the Mauritanian people averted.  There is a clear correlation between undemocratic rule and corruption.  If the junta is allowed to continue in power, Mauritania’s medium-to-long-term development can be expected to suffer, as it has for decades.  In short, accomodating the new regime in the name of humanitarianism would be self-defeating. 

It should be noted that the coup plotters accuse deposed president Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi of rampant corruption.  If Abdallahi is restored to power, the opposition can pursue legal options against him, perhaps even leading to his ouster. As part of the deal for Abdallahi’s restoration to the presidency, the international community perhaps could provide material support to any investigation of the allegations against him that is conducted in compliance with the Mauritanian constitution. 

Meanwhile, however, the pressure should mount for the junta to give up power.  The IRIN report linked above cites the EU representative in Nouakchott as saying that no EU funds have been paid for the lucrative EU-Mauritanian fishing deal that had been due to take effect at the end of August, and which I blogged about again yesterday.  That’s good news, but there’s still no word on official suspension of the deal, which EU Aid and Development Commissioner Louis Michel requested last month.

France and EU warming to Mauritanian junta?

Eric Witte September 17th, 2008

As I noted last month, EU Aid and Development Commissioner Loius Michel was requesting suspension of a 75 million Euro/year fishing agreement with Mauritania in a bid to step up international pressure on the illegitimate regime following the August 6 coup.  The issue was set to be discussed by the Council of the European Union this month.  The September meeting of EU foreign ministers has come and gone, and it appears that the fishing agreement remains intact.  In place of anything consequential, EU foreign ministers did agree, however, to begin “consultations” and a “constructive dialogue” with the Mauritanian junta. 

Meanwhile, representatives of the French EU presidency met with Ramtane Lamamra, the African Union’s Commissioner for Peace and Security.  According to a statement by EU Presidency, they agreed on these points:

- the need for the immediate release of President Abdallahi and for the institutions to resume normal operations;

- the need to work towards a solution to the crisis with the agreement of the different Mauritanian parties;

- the readiness of the African Union, the European Union, and the International Organization of la Francophonie to accompany Mauritania’s efforts in this direction.

That’s thin gruel compared to last month’s tough talk about withdrawal of the lucrative fishing deal.  Is it too cynical to recall in this context that France is one of the five EU member states whose fishing fleets are allowed access to Mauritania’s rich waters under that deal?

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