WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-04-05 Time: 06:00:16 Posted By: News Poster
By Tony Okerafor
Lagos – Someone would argue that the notion of power-sharing governments has come to the African continent to stay. The fact about coalition governments in Africa is that they are more a notion. If describing them as a phenomenon is being too mild about the whole business, then, they can be best referred to as conflict resolution in a continent that is wrecked by intra-national conflicts, military interventions, as well as political-cum-constitutional crises.
In other parts of the world, power-sharing arrangements are known to be relatively less prevalent, compared to what obtains in Africa. In Europe, for example, the only place where a unity government has been created purposely to resolve conflict or to stop a political crisis in its tracks is the British province of Northern Ireland, where a seventy-seven-year-old conflict between the Roman Catholic minority, who mostly want to be re-united with the Irish Republic, and the Protestant majority, who want to remain under the British flag, was resolved in 1998. In the so-called Good Friday Agreement of April 10, that year, all the parties on either side of Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide reached a deal, more or less a self-governing arrangement, in which the D.U.P., the main pro-British party, and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the republican I.R.A., formed the mainstay of a power-sharing government.
Another place, outside Africa, where the power-sharing phenomenon grabbed the international headlines is the former British colony of Nepal in South Asia. There, Maoist rebels, who fought for decades for the overthrow of the monarchy, entered into a unity government with the anti-monarchy, democratic opposition, in a successful move to end the civil war and replace monarchical rule with constitutional order.
Africa’s case is peculiar. It’s both a widespread phenomenon and one that has almost always hinged on resolving a crisis in governance or designed to end or forestall a blood-bath. On the list are the likes of the Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Madagascar, Sudan, Guinea and Burundi.
The current power-sharing arrangement in Ivory Coast, for example, is a child of the five-year-old civil war, which divided the former French colony into the government-controlled, predominantly Christian south and the rebel-held, mainly Moslem north. Northern-born military officers led a coup in May, 2002, in botched attempt to over-throw the southern president, Laurent Gbagbo, and the crisis degenerated into all-out war. The north were protesting the introduction of constitutional amendments which barred leading northern politicians from standing for president, as well as categorizing most of the north’s 10-million-strong population as either half Ivorian or immigrants.
The antecedents to Zimbabwe’s own power-sharing deal may not have been as bloody, but, they are no less complex or bewildering. After winning a combined total of ten (successive) presidential and parliamentary elections, President Robert Mugabe and his ruling ZANU P.F. party lost the presidential polls of April, 2008, to the veteran opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai of the M.D.C. Mugabe was going for his sixth consecutive six-year term as leader. But, since Mr. Tsvangirai could not pull off the fifty-plus-one per cent of the popular vote that would have avoided a run-off election, a second round of polling was called.
The opposition leader boycotted the run-off, citing intimidation and killing of M.D.C. activists and supporters by ZANU P.F. faithful. Victory was therefore handed Mugabe on a golden platter. Yet, a serious political crisis, characterized by a lot of violence, ensued. Last year, the political lockjam was broken somewhat, as the international community, led by South Africa, mediated a power-sharing deal between ZANU and the two factions of the M.D.C.
In Kenya, the crisis stemmed from an allegedly stolen presidential election, thought to have been won originally by the main opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, of the O.D.M., Orange Democratic Movement. The December 27, 2007, poll, which the election commission gave to the ruling party candidate, President Mwai Kibaki, of the P.N.U., Party for National Unity, led to several weeks of bloodshed between supporters of the two sides. Nearly 1,600 Kenyans were killed, 4,000 injured and another half a million were displaced, as a result. In May, 2008, an arrangement to share power between P.N.U. and O.D.M. was notched, following tortuous negotiations mediated by the former U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan. Kibaki retained the presidency, while Mr. Odinga took up the newly-created post of prime minister, with either party providing officials to fill ministerial and other cabinet jobs.
Madagascar’s own power-sharing deal, if it can now be called that, followed an army-backed coup by the former mayor of Antananarivo, Andde Rajuoline. The overthrow of the island-nation’s democratically elected leader, Marc Ravulamanana, had come hot on the heels of daily opposition protests, led by Mr. Rajuoline. That was early last year.
A powerful resurgence of support for Mr. Ravulamanana among the general populace was to create a near state of ungovernability in the country. By the end of the year, the government had dropped its opposition to calls from the international community to share power.
Over two decades of north-south conflict in Sudan formally came to an end in January, 2005, with the signing of the so-called comprehensive Peace Agreement, C.P.A., between President Al Bashir of the northern-based N.C.P., National Congress Party, and the former southern rebel movement, S.P.L.M., the Sudan’s Peoples Liberation Movement. There were several aspects to the C.P.A., one of the most prominent being the creation of a unity government, so that N.C.P. and S.P.L.M. members were given portfolios in the government.
Burundi’s own power-sharing arrangement only became a viable option after it became clear that the country’s Hutu majority and Tutsi minority were tired of decades of ethnic conflict, which had consumed hundreds of thousands of lives. The Tutsis had been dominating power since independence. But, following the assassination of the country’s first elected Hutu president in October, 1993, by Tutsi officers, the subsequent seven years unleashed on Burundi its worst ever era of violence and bloodshed. Hutu rebel movement mounted a bitter campaign to wrest back control of the government from the minority Tutsis, who controlled the army at the time. For period of thirty-six months, beginning in 2000, more and more Hutu and Tutsi movement joined a power-sharing government, whose leadership alternated between a Tutsi and a Hutu every eighteen months.
Five years ago or less, the great Lakes country held its first multi-party polls since the formal conclusion of the civil war, and although the current constitution has made a clear evidence of the majority of the Hutu ethnic group, there remains a (subsisting) power-sharing arrangement enshrined in the same constitution that aims at making the Tutsi minority very relevant in the governing of the ex-Belgium colony.
What about Guinea, the country where the army took power after the death of long-running president, Lansana Conte, back in December 2008? Due to growing international pressure, plus an internal political crisis sparked by the massacre of civilian protesters on September 28, last year, as well as the attempted assassination of the military leader, Captain Mousa Dadis Kamara, the military junta, now led by General Sekouba Konate, agreed to set up a transition government. Handed the task of preparing Guinea for general elections, now scheduled for June, the new interim government is, in essence, a power-sharing arrangement between members of the C.N.D.D. ruling junta, which General Konate heads, and the political opposition, which the newly-appointed civilian prime minister heads.
TO BE CONTINUED
Original Source: 
Original date published: 3 April 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201004050206.html?viewall=1