Democracy is in Danger in East Africa

 By Henry Srebrnik, Saint John Telegraph-Journal

Three countries in east Africa have seen their governments engaged in measures that threaten democracy. Power has remained highly centralised in the executive, enabled by legislatures which repeatedly submit to the president.

In Kenya, President William Ruto may even be laying the ground to extend his time in power beyond 2027. Moses Kuria, one of his top advisors, in June argued that legal challenges facing the reconstitution of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) could make it impossible to hold a credible election until 2032.

Meanwhile, the country has witnessed an increasing crackdown on protests, including the killing of more than 40 people so far this summer in nationwide demonstrations against Ruto’s government. Hundreds of others have been injured or arrested, and thousands of businesses looted and destroyed in nationwide protests.

Kenya’s interior minister Kipchumba Murkomen called it “an attempted coup” by “criminal anarchists.” However, the Law Society of Kenya condemned the police for their handling of the protests and viewed it as part of a recent wave of repression. It was part of the government’s latest strategy to crush dissent over moves to increase taxes amidst a cost-of-living crisis.

Kidnappings and abductions of protesters spiked after the demonstrations, and activist groups alleged that some people remain unaccounted for, despite Ruto’s assertion to the contrary. In the absence of political challengers, protesters and youth activists have become the country’s unofficial political opposition.

Kenya has effectively became a state increasingly known for kleptocracy, corruption and abuse.

In neighbouring Tanzania, the main opposition party has been barred from participating in this year’s coming election, after its leader was charged with treason in April. It followed a rally in southern Tanzania at which Tundu Lissu called for electoral reforms. It was part of his nationwide campaign under the slogan “No Reforms, No Election.”

Ramadhani Kailima, director of elections at the Independent National Elections Commission, said that Lissu’s political party, Chadema, had failed to sign a code of conduct document, resulting in its disqualification from the upcoming October’s elections.

Lissu was expected to challenge incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, which, together with two predecessors, has governed Tanzania since independence in 1961.

When Hassan, a native of the island of Zanzibar, first came to power in 2021, after the death of President John Magufuli, she was praised for reversing some of his more authoritarian tendencies. Campaigners and opposition parties have since accused her government of an intensifying crackdown on political opponents, citing arrests and abductions of opposition members.

Lissu said that the make-up of the electoral commission needed to change and should not include people directly appointed by Hassan. His lawyer, Rugemeleza Nshala, told Reuters that the charges against him were politically motivated, adding: “You cannot separate these charges from politics.” Lissu risks being sentenced to death if convicted.

The opposition leader has been arrested on numerous occasions and in 2017 survived an assassination attempt in which his vehicle was shot at 16 times. He then went into exile, returning briefly in 2020 to run against Magufuli in that year’s election. He left after the results were announced, complaining about supposed irregularities. He returned in 2023, following changes introduced by Hassan which her government said were aimed at allowing greater opposition freedom.

But Lissu is not alone in the region in facing reprisals for political action. In neighbouring Uganda, opposition leader Kizza Besigye is facing the same charges, based on the same pretext that organising resistance against entrenched political power amounts to treason.

As well, 36 members of his opposition party Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) were arrested in July 2024. The group had traveled to the Kenyan city of Kisumu for a training course, but were deported back to Uganda where authorities charged them with terrorism-related offenses.

The suspects were accused of being “engaged in covert activities that are suspected to be subversive.” The group denied any wrongdoing, criticizing the actions of the Ugandan authorities.

“This is an absurd abuse of a judicial process to witch-hunt and torment opposition supporters,” their lawyer Erias Lukwago contended, claiming that the FDC members had travelled to Kisumu to attend a training seminar.

Opposition critics and human rights campaigners have long accused Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s government of using fabricated charges to clamp down on his opponents, including Besigye, who has run against him in four presidential elections. He rejected each result, alleging fraud and voter intimidation.

Under Museveni, who has ruled the country for almost 40 years and will seek re-election early next year, Uganda has descended into a repressive state with a long history of intimidation, harassment, arbitrary arrests, detention and torture of those who are critical of the government. 

Martha Karua, one of Kenya’s most respected human rights lawyers, believes that democracy is under threat in all three east African states. “We are staring at a regional crisis -- not at an economic crisis, not a crisis of trade, but of democracy itself.” There has been little concern about this internationally, she stated.

“The onus is on the legislators of east Africa to find their teeth,” maintains Nanjala Nyabola, a Nairobi-based political analyst. “Their job is to defend the people who elected them” and “rein in the excesses of the executive.”

Brazil’s Unsteady Democracy

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Sydney, N.S.] Cape Breton Post

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, is on trial in the country’s Supreme Court, accused of masterminding a plot to stage a coup after he lost the 2022 presidential elections to leftist candidate Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva.

It marks the first time in Brazilian history that a former head of state is being tried for attempting to overthrow the government. His supporters also stormed Brazil’s Congress building and Presidential offices in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023.

Federal police earlier this year released two reports that detailed the accusations, including that he personally edited a decree for a national state of emergency designed to prevent the election’s winner from taking office. He abandoned the plan after leaders of Brazil’s military refused to take part. If convicted, he could face up to 12 years in prison. 

Bolsonaro has already been barred from running for office until 2030, but he retains continued political influence and popularity. He is hoping that Congress will overturn his election ban. He called the ruling “a rape of democracy” and said he was trying to find a way to run in next year’s presidential election.

Two Supreme Court justices he nominated will lead the electoral court before the election. Those judges have told him, he has said, “that my ineligibility is absurd.” In March, thousands of his followers rallied at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach to protest the charges. Other supporters came together at a public demonstration in Sao Paulo in late June as well, to oppose his ongoing trial.

Meanwhile, the election’s victor, President “Lula,” as he is known, doesn’t feel Bolsonaro’s arrest has proved that Brazil’s future as a democracy is assured. In an interview with Jon Lee Anderson, published in the New Yorker magazine May 8, he feared that “the entire post-Second World War order, created largely through the intervention of the United States, seemed on the verge of collapse.”

Part of the problem is economic. “Democracy starts to fall when it no longer meets the people’s interests. Since 1980, the working people in countries that built welfare states have only lost, while income concentration has increased. So what response can we give to Brazilian society?”

This is not only a Brazilian issue. “Last year, the world spent $2.4 trillion on weapons, while seven hundred and thirty million people go to sleep every night not knowing if they’ll have breakfast when they wake up,” he said. “That should be humanity’s main concern.”

In November, Brazil will host the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, more commonly known as COP30, in the city of Belém, a location, at the edge of the Amazon rainforest, chosen to bring attention to the crisis of deforestation. Yet it is hard to imagine that it will bring radical change.

The Amazon is now close to a tipping point beyond which it may not generate enough rainfall to sustain its own ecosystem, as well as agriculture, hydropower, water supply, and industries that have fueled Brazil’s growth.

Lula has himself lost popularity. Last month Brazil’s Congress nullified a presidential decree for the first time in decades, rejecting a move by Lula’s government to hike a financial transactions tax. Lula’s allies had only 98 votes against 383 in the lower house to keep the tax increase on some transactions, including foreign exchange and credit cards. The Senate also defeated the move. It was the first time lawmakers overturned a presidential decree in Brazil since 1992, in a rebuke of Lula one year ahead of the country’s next presidential election campaign, and it signaled flagging support for his left-of-center administration.

Thomas Traumann, an independent political consultant, said the decision by lawmakers indicates Lula does “not have a stable majority in Congress. If this was a parliamentary system, it would have been the end of this government,” he asserted.

Recent polls show Lula losing to most potential candidates in next year’s election. Assuming Bolsonaro remains ineligible, the most likely winner would be the current governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcisio Gomes de Freitas, who served as the minister of infrastructure for Bolsonaro.

He defeated Fernando Haddad, a professor of political science who is a member of Lula’s Workers’ Party and the current finance minister, for governor of the state. Haddad also lost the 2018 presidential election to Bolsonaro. This doesn’t auger well for him, should he replace Lula as the party’s candidate.

 

Israel Was Damaged in its Victory Over Iran

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

The ceasefire between Iran and Israel, declared on June 24, signaled the conclusion of the most intense and severe phase to date in the ongoing confrontation between the Islamic Republic and the Jewish state.There is little doubt that Israel, supported by U.S. President Donald Trump, emerged victorious in its “Twelve Day War” over the Iranian theocracy, but it was at great cost.

Even if Iran retains a stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, which it had before the conflict and may have relocated to hidden sites, its nuclear program has been significantly set back. Although it is likely that the two enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow were not completely destroyed, they suffered substantial damage, and the elimination of more than ten senior nuclear scientists will either prevent or, at least, seriously hamper Iran’s ability to break out toward nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.

But how has this conflict, just paused rather than ended, affected Israel? After all, the war also highlighted grave problems in Israel’s defensive capability, especially given how small the nation is.

Since coming to power in 1979, the Iranian regime has sought Israel’s destruction as a matter of theological principle and a pillar of the Islamic Republic’s ideology. For decades the most powerful driver among Israel’s enemies has not been the Palestinians, but Iran, a country 75 times the size of Israel and more than 1,600 kilometres away.

Since Iran’s target is far away, it has for decades made use of skilful proxies -- the Assad regime in Syria, but also Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, who, as non-state actors, have worked to destabilise the region.

Despite that, there were no direct military confrontations between Iran and Israel until last year, when Iran twice launched missiles at Israel. They caused almost no damage -- but this time it’s been different. Throughout the recent fighting, Iranian authorities and media emphasized Israeli casualties and the scale of damage inflicted on Israel, in an effort to construct a narrative that the Islamic Republic is capable of withstanding prolonged confrontation with Israel and causing it serious harm in return.

During the current clash, Iran launched up to 1,000 ballistic missiles and drones at Israel. Despite Israel’s advanced air defence systems, it was not able to intercept them all. Some of what happened can be quantified: Of about 550 ballistic missiles fired at Israelis, 31 seem to have made it through the interceptors.

They hit important infrastructure, from the port of Haifa in the north down to Beersheba, in the Negev. Iran managed to strike Israel directly at some of its most sensitive and protected sites. Israelis fervently hoped it would end before the Iron Dome’s supply of interceptors ran out.

Iran targeted Tel Aviv and areas around it, damaging numerous apartment buildings. Many families with safe rooms spent most of the 12 days there, others would use public shelters whenever an alert was raised, and yet others headed to underground parking lots, knowing that anything above ground could be obliterated by a direct hit. One deadly missile strike destroyed an apartment building in Bat Yam, killing nine people.

Since 1948, Israel’s major cities have never faced the kind of threat experienced during this war: Over 2,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, with apartment buildings and office towers smashed, and multiple buildings reduced to rubble. As well, 29 Israeli civilians were killed and more than 3,000 injured. Some 13,000 people were left homeless, city streets were emptied, and economic activity ground to a halt.

The October 7, 2003 Hamas attack was largely perceived by Israelis as a singular catastrophe. The war with Iran, however, has chipped away at their long-held sense of security. Millions felt their sense of immunity gone. Press censorship magnified this fear: not publishing the locations of missile strikes led to a flood of rumours on social media.

One of the significant hits was the Soroka University Medical Centre, affiliated with the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba -- a strike that injured dozens. Among other targets in the Negev were the Israeli Military Intelligence School. All these and others took direct, destructive hits.

Tehran also hit the Gav-Yam Negev Advanced Technologies Park, which reportedly houses active military and cyber facilities. That blaze also reached a Microsoft office, while Israel Railways announced the temporary closure of the Beersheba North-University station due to damage sustained in the attack. Another major strike damaged the Bazan Oil Refinery in Haifa.

Especially shocking was the destruction of buildings at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, one of the world’s most prestigious research facilities. It consumed years of research in a moment -- a loss of potential cures and human innovation impossible to tally. A biochemistry professor calculated that 63 labs were gone, and that about 700 scientists and students saw their workspace, equipment, and research material destroyed in an instant.

Despite all this devastation, in bombing Iran’s nuclear sites President Trump fulfilled a decades-long Israeli aspiration. Yet the need for direct American involvement was a recognition of the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had started a conflict which Israel could not finish alone. Still, neither Israel nor the U.S. will permit Iran to have nuclear weapons. That remains the bottom line.