Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

The Olympic flame relay descended into near-chaos for a second successive day as officials in Paris were forced to extinguish the torch three times so it could be taken aboard a bus to avoid protesters today.
Security officials extinguished the torch moving it, under police escort, aboard the bus to keep activists protesting against China's recent violent crackdown in Tibet away from it.

Despite a huge security presence in the French capital, where at least 3,000 officers were deployed, at least two activists got within little more than an arm's length of the flame before being stopped by police.

One protester threw water at the torch, but failed to extinguish it and was carried away. Five people were arrested.

Police tackled many other demonstrators to the ground and used tear gas to disperse those blocking the relay's route.

Demonstrations in Paris began only hours after the relay's procession through London had degenerated into a series of skirmishes between protesters and police.

Activists began targeting the flame before it had even left the Eiffel Tower for the planned 17-mile journey to the Charlety stadium on the edge of the city.

The scale of protests further along the route forced officials to put out the Olympic torch and take it aboard the vehicle.

Live TV footage showed the extinguished torch being put into the bus alongside tracksuit-wearing Chinese security staff.

The torch is lit from permanent flames enclosed within special lanterns carried with it. Designed to be carried on buses and planes, they are used to keep the flame intact overnight.

It was extinguished for the first time amid protests on a road alongside the River Seine, according to the Associated Press news agency. ...

Labels: China, democracy, dictatorship, Olympics, Summer Olympics

With counting from Monday's election nearly complete, the two main opposition parties won a total of 154 of the 268 contested seats, according to the Election Commission.

The pro-Musharraf party trailed with 39 seats, and the group's leader acknowledged the loss.

"We accept the election results, and will sit on opposition benches," Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, chairman of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, told AP Television News. "We are accepting the results with grace and open heart."

"All the King's men, gone!" proclaimed the headline in the Daily Times as jubilant voters danced in the streets, sang and fired celebratory bursts of gunfire into the air.

"It turned out to be a referendum on Musharraf," said analyst Irfan Husain. "I don't give him more than a few months, unless there is pressure from the US."

The main winner was the Pakistan People's party (PPP) of murdered opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, which polled the most seats. But the surprise performance came from Sharif, a former prime minister, whose party finished a close second.

Neither party has an outright majority. Bhutto's husband, Asif Zardari, and Sharif arrived in Islamabad for power-sharing talks last night. The horse-trading was widely welcomed as dire predictions of vote rigging and violence failed to materialise. Although there were localised complaints of irregularities they were not enough to halt the opposition surge.

Sharif, ousted by Musharraf in a 1999 coup, ran a campaign dominated by one unflinching demand: the removal of "dictator" Musharraf. Now he has his chance.

Ecstatic loyalists chanted "The lion is coming again!" outside Sharif's Lahore home, where the bullish opposition leader recalled an old Musharraf promise. "He would say 'when people want, I will go'. Now the people have given their verdict," he said, vowing to work out a plan to "say goodbye to dictatorship forever".

In a striking sign of the retired general's faltering authority, lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, who has been under house arrest for over three months, welcomed the media to his home. Ahsan said his phone was re-connected as the results streamed in on Monday. Yesterday, jail officials assigned to guard him failed to show up for work.

Labels: democracy, news and current affairs, Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf

(BBC) Thirty Kenyans including many children have been burned to death in a church, after seeking refuge from the mounting violence over last week's elections.
A mob set fire to the church in Eldoret where many people from President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe were sheltering.

A Kenyan government spokesperson has accused supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga of carrying out "ethnic cleansing" against the Kikuyu.

Both President Kibaki and Mr Odinga have called for the killing to stop.

President Kibaki, who was sworn in on Sunday following an election that opponents claim was rigged, said political parties should meet immediately and publicly called for calm.

But Mr Odinga said he would only hold talks once the re-installed president "publicly owns up that he was not elected".

Pressure is growing on the Kenyan government both inside and outside the country to accept an international review of the election.

EU observers said the poll "fell short of international standards", and four Kenyan election commissioners have joined calls for an independent judicial body to re-examine the process. ...

About 400 people were said to be taking refuge in the Kenya Assemblies of God church when the attack took place at about 1000 (0700 GMT).

A pastor from the church, Jackson Nyanga told the BBC that many of the people were beaten before the building was set on fire.

"After torching the church, children died - around 25 in number - four elderly people. And our men and our people who tried to confront them were injured," he said.

Eldoret, in the Rift Valley, has witnessed some of the worst violence since last Sunday's controversial poll and has a history of inter-ethnic tension.

Correspondents say that over the past few days hundreds of Kikuyus in the Eldoret area have been taking shelter in churches and around the town's police station.

Eldoret resident Bernard Magamu told the BBC News website that many houses and businesses have been torched, and that roads in and around the town have been closed.

Tribal violence erupted across Kenya Monday, claiming the lives of at least 124 people, after widespread accusations that President Mwai Kibaki rigged an election to defeat opposition candidate Raili Odinga.

... While both sides pleaded for calm, there were fears the violence could aggravate an enduring national tribal split between Luos, who support Odinga, and Kikuyus, who back Kibaki. The two groups co-exist in an uneasy rivalry in Kenya. On Monday, crowds of Kikuyus in the west of the country were reported to be fleeing across the border to Uganda, while six Kikuyus were hacked to death in the popular tourist port city of Mombasa. Police, given orders to shoot rioters on sight, imposed a curfew at locations across the country and barred people from leaving the slums, a tactic which may have contained the violence but also kept innocent people from fleeing. KTN, the national broadcaster, said 124 people had been killed, but other media tallies put the death toll closer to 150. ...

The chaos represents Kenya's biggest domestic political crisis since independence from Britain in 1963. It was also a major disappointment for a country that had been considered a bright spot in the troubled region of East Africa. The economy, particularly tourism, is booming and Kibaki was considered to be an improvement over his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi, whose Kanu party regime was seen as autocratic and corrupt. Five years ago when Kibaki won election as head of the Democratic Party on promises to clean up the massive corruption of the Moi era, crowds of close to 1 million cheered at his swearing-in ceremony.
Since then his image has slipped from that of a capable reformer to an aging and fragile stereotypical African "big man." The 76-year-old was sworn in Sunday in a hasty ceremony attended by party loyalists, less than an hour after the Electoral Commission of Kenya pronounced he had beaten Odinga, 62, by just 230,000 votes. (Odinga had led most pre-election polls in the weeks leading up to the election.)
Kibaki banned live television and radio broadcasts Sunday, and on Monday afternoon, at the height of the crisis, KTN aired children's shows in which smiling children sang "Paddycake, Paddycake." Political activist and anti-corruption campaigner Mwalimu Mati said: "It was really one man swearing in himself and using his presidential appointees to do it. That's the scary bit — our institutions have failed us."

Labels: Africa, democracy, elections, Kenya

Benazir Bhutto's 19-year-old son Bilawal was catapulted into the maelstrom of Pakistani politics yesterday, appointed leader of her party just three days after the assassination that plunged the country into chaos.
It is arguably the most perilous job in Pakistani politics. Bilawal's grandfather died at the gallows, his mother following last week's bomb and bullet attack. But his leadership will be initially symbolic because the party will be stewarded by his father, Asif Zardari, until his studies at Oxford are over.

"When I am at university my father will take care of the party," said Bilawal at his maiden press conference at the family estate in Naudero.
"The party's long struggle for democracy will continue with renewed vigour," he said. "My mother always said, democracy is the best revenge."

It was a remarkable day for Bilawal, described by relatives as a polite, somewhat bookish young man who just one week ago was a university student on Christmas break at the family home in Dubai.

Now, barely coming to terms with the assassination of his mother, he has become the titular head of Pakistan's greatest political dynasty as the country staggers towards turbulent elections.

Labels: Benazir Bhutto, democracy, dictators, Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf

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