Sue Witmer, who teaches at Northeastern High School in Pennsylvania, pointed me to a Wall Street Journal article that featured a good background on Nigerian politics while, appropriately for the WSJ, highlighting the supply and demand for brooms.
At a political rally last week, one of many during this country's fevered election season, several hundred supporters of the Action Congress of Nigeria political party waved their brooms in the air to symbolize their aim to sweep away corruption.
"We intend to sweep all the evil things out," ACN District Chairman James Odunmbaku said as the rally kicked off. "All political parties with no vision, we will sweep them out of our domain in totality."
All this figurative sweeping has been great for Nigeria's broom business, better even than the real thing.
But housewives in Africa's most populous country are bristling. The price of brooms has more than tripled in some places. In parts of Lagos, it's difficult to find any brooms at all, illustrating the unwelcome intrusion of Nigerian politics on the home front…
Corruption runs deep in Nigerian politics. The World Bank has estimated that over $300 billion in government funds has been stolen by politicians over the past 30 years…
The ACN, which was formed in 2006, has tapped into the anger over corruption in particular. In the April 9 parliamentary elections, the ACN won a number of seats from the ruling People's Democratic Party. It's now the second biggest party after the ruling PDP.
The broom hasn't proved a magic wand for all the party's politicians, though. ACN presidential candidate, Nuhu Ribadu, who made a name for himself as the anti-corruption czar targeting billions of dollars secreted into foreign bank accounts, didn't fare well in April 16 elections. Mr. Ribadu won a single state out of 36.
Still, ACN supporters have latched onto the broom as a symbol for cleaning up just about any kind of political mess. The party's posters and advertisements carry slogans like: "Let Us Sweep Away Your Power Problems!," referring to electricity. Some Lagos neighborhoods can go weeks without a single hour of electricity…
Voting in the two northern states most beset by violence took place two days after most governors were elected. Voters were scarce, according to reporters.
Comments about attacks on traditional rulers in the north are new to me and might be a sign of important change in the political culture.
And while we looking at these results, you might ask your students to compare the results of governor's election to the results of the presidential election. Colored maps would be a good way to do that.
Small crowds of voters nervously cast ballots Thursday in two states in oil-rich Nigeria hit hard by religious rioting that killed at least 500 people following the nation's presidential election.
The polls remained calm in Bauchi and Kaduna states, though noticeably fewer voters turned up to take part in the delayed gubernatorial elections…
The gubernatorial races carry tremendous importance because governors represent the closest embodiment of power many ever see in a nation of 150 million people. The positions provide many politicians with personal fiefdoms where oil money sluices into unwatched state coffers that exceed those of neighboring nations…
But the roots of the sectarian conflict across the north often have more to do with struggles for political and economic dominance. Opportunities remain few for those in the arid north, as jobs are scarce and a formal education remains out of the reach of many in a nation where most earn less than $2 a day.
Many burned the homes of traditional rulers across the north in the postelection violence, something once unthinkable in a region that values the advice of elders.
"They feel their leaders betrayed them," said Aliko Mohammed, a leader in a forum of northern leaders.
Most states taking part in gubernatorial and local elections cast ballots Tuesday. Initial results announced on the state-run Nigerian Television Authority showed opposition parties took at least two states from ruling party People's Democratic Party, while it picked up Kano state...
Against expectations of serious opposition challenge during the gubernatorial election, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has won several states in the northern part of the country and regained control of Kano State, a hitherto All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) stronghold.
The PDP won in Kebbi, Katsina, Kano, Kwara and Jigawa states, while the opposition ANPP retained control of Borno and Yobe states.
The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) perceived as a major challenger to the PDP has so far won only Nasarawa State in the North central zone.
Meanwhile, in the South-West zone, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) swept Ogun and Oyo states and retained control of Lagos State, now a traditional stronghold of the party.
In the South-East, the PDP won Enugu and Ebonyi states and is expected to retain control of Abia state.
The PDP also posted resounding victories in Rivers and Akwa-Ibom states in the South-South zone of the country.
Okay, if you're teaching an Advanced Placement course, you can probably save this bit until after the exam. But if you want a good explanation of alternative voting from a proponent of the system, this is great.
There may or may not be political friction between the Russian president and the premier, but there is obviously friction among the political elite in Iran. This is a good case study of the complexity of politics and the difficulties caused by oversimplification.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received a public rebuff Wednesday when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, confirmed that the intelligence minister, whom Ahmadinejad had dismissed Sunday, is to keep his job.
In a letter carried by all Iranian news agencies, Khamenei told Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi and his officials to “continue their work,” effectively ending three days of uncertainty over Moslehi’s fate and the reasons for his apparently forced resignation.
It is rare for Khamenei, who generally supports the government’s policies, to step in and modify the president’s decisions…
The controversy over the key ministry post has flared against a backdrop of public tension about what high-ranked officials described as the growing influence of Ahmadinejad’s closest aide, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, in the country’s affairs…
Mashaei’s promotion of Iranian culture over Islamic culture has angered hard-line Shiite clerics, who say they would prefer to see him leave. But analysts say the aide still wields considerable influence on the president, whose son is married to Mashaei’s daughter…
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has come under pressure to reinstate intelligence minister Heidar Moslehi in an apparent internal power struggle.
Mr Ahmadinejad accepted Mr Moslehi's resignation on Sunday, but Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei quickly ordered that he stay on in the job.
Over two-thirds of Iran's 290 lawmakers signed a statement on Wednesday warning Mr Ahmadinejad to obey the order.
Analysts say Iran's clerics view Mr Ahmadinejad as grabbing too much power…
Although no official reason was given, correspondents say Mr Moslehi appears to have been sacked after he dismissed an official with close ties to Mr Ahmadinejad's confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei…
The current tensions show a potentially widening gap between Mr Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamenei, who has shown displeasure with the president's overreaching ambitions in the past.
But the Iranian president still has highly influential backers, including the Revolutionary Guard, which has sway over crucial areas such as Iran's nuclear programme and oil industry.
A bit of analysis by the BBC's James Reynolds accompanies the news story.
Analysis
Iran's supreme leader is meant to spend his life at an Olympian altitude far above the scrubland of day-to-day politics. Ayatollah Khamenei rarely gets involved in the firing and re-hiring of ministers. So when he does, the country's politicians take notice.
Analysts see it as a sign that he is trying to curb the power of President Ahmadinejad. Since Mr Ahmadinejad's re-election in 2009 following the disputed presidential vote, the president has fought his rivals in the conservative movement for power. He wants more of it. They want him to share it with parliament…
Iran’s president on Wednesday shunned a Cabinet meeting for the second consecutive time this week, apparently showing his discontent over a recent government appointment by the country’s supreme leader…
Ahmadinejad’s gamble appears to be aimed at setting up a confidant to become the next president, analysts say. He needs to control the Intelligence Ministry in order to influence the next parliament as well as who becomes the next president, they say.
Khamenei is believed to be intent on helping shape a new political team, absent of Ahmadinejad loyalists, to lead the next government.
Without meaningful political parties in Iran, unpredictable political factions and groups have emerged before elections. Khamenei, analysts say, feels threatened by a single political faction remaining in office for more than eight years.
The third set of elections in Nigeria were not quite nation-wide and not quite as popular. But, the governors are important positions in the regime. This report is from the Daily Independent in Lagos. Results later.
Nigerians in the South savoured the long Easter holiday, five days at a stretch, and on Tuesday trooped out in peace and with patience to vote for Governors and state lawmakers, without a major hitch; they just wanted to get on with it and get their lives back from today…
The story is slanted in the North, however, as voter apathy reigned – except in Kwara where people turned out in large numbers, fuelled by a Governorship fight between the PDP and the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) that is down to the wire…
The Governorship vote took place in only 23 states, based in part on the verdict of April 15 by the Appeal Court that extended the tenure of the Governors of Adamawa, Bayelsa, Cross River, Kogi and Sokoto. Governorship elections also did not hold in Ekiti, Ondo, Edo, and Osun.
Ballot will hold in those states on different dates in 2012.
Besides, voters in Anambra and Ekiti would not have the opportunity to elect new Governors until 2014…
For years, many farmers in rural China have staged protests — sometimes violent — against government policies, high-handed administration, and continued poverty down on the farms. But most of them have taken place far away from non-Chinese reporters and cameras. What happens when the protests take place in an urban environment where Western reporters are close enough to describe and photograph protesters and police responses? (Well, the official news agency knows nothing about any protests and online reports have quickly disappeared.)
Chinese police have clamped down on a protest by hundreds of truck drivers upset over rising fees and fuel prices.
Truckers blockaded a dock in the eastern Pudong district of Shanghai – China's busiest port city – on Wednesday, according to a logistics company employee…
The protest comes as China's communist leaders try to defuse mounting public frustration over inflation that spiked to a 32-month high of 5.4% in March, driven by an 11.7% jump in food costs…
Authorities reacted quickly to the Shanghai truckers' protest, deploying police and removing accounts of the unrest from Chinese websites…
Employees who answered the phone in the government press offices in Baoshan and Pudong and at the Shanghai city hall said they had no information on the protests or the arrests described by the trucking company owner…
The protest reflects the growing tensions over the gulf between China's tiny elite and its poor majority. Incomes are rising, but inflation is squeezing families and small businesspeople such as self-employed truckers, while profits at major state-owned companies are at record highs.
Higher costs have also hit farmers. In eastern China's Shandong province this month a 39-year-old farmer hanged himself because he could not sell his six-acre cabbage crop and had no way to take care of his family, state media said…
Russia watchers have been commenting, writing, blogging, and tweeting about nearly every statement and action of President Medvedev and Premier Putin. They are watching for signs of a split between the two and signs of their intentions about running of president in 2012.
I'll join in and suggest, from this report, that Putin has given his first campaign speech. It's full of lofty and goals and empty of details. Is this a sign of real political competition?
Vladimir Putin has promised to spend £32.5bn on increasing life expectancy and boosting Russia's flagging birthrate by up to 30% in the next four years.
The prime minister made the pledge in a bold address to parliament on Wednesday in which he appeared to make a play for his return to the presidency.
During his two-and-a-half-hour annual speech to the state duma, Putin boasted of the country's economic recovery and promised rapid military expansion while announcing many populist measures aimed at elderly and provincial voters…
Putin employed his traditional statist rhetoric to promote a strong, confident Russia, able to see off its enemies but unfettered by democratic change.
"This country requires decades of steady, uninterrupted development," he said. "Without sharp changes in course or ill-thought through experiments based so often in either unjustified liberalism, or on the other hand, social demagogy."...
Joshua Tucker quotes Alexandra Scacco, an assistant professor at NYU (whose book in progress is about ethnic conflict in Nigeria) on the violence and the recent presidential election. There are some worthwhile notes here.
Nan Wright who teaches at St. Thomas' Episcopal in Houston added this PPT slide to the assertion that Iran's supreme leader spoke holy words upon emerging from the womb.
When Ali Khamenei was chosen as supreme leader in Iran, he was not the first choice of the Assembly of Experts. Other, more renowned and revered ayatollahs did not want to be involved in politics. Most Shiite ayatollahs regard political involvement as beyond their religious duties.
Khamenei, a secular politician and former president, was only named an ayatollah after the death of Khomeini. His choice as supreme leader was controversial.
Now, it seems, his religious credentials are being polished.
Unlike most babies who cry at birth, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei improbably voiced the name of the first Imam of the Shiites immediately after he left his mother’s womb, the Friday prayer leader of the Iranian holy city of Qom said. Ayatollah Mohammad Saeedi appeared in a video, circulated by the Iranian opposition, in which he is telling an audience that Ayatollah Khamenei’s half-sister said that the supreme leader said “Ya Ali” right at birth. The midwife responded saying, “May Ali protect you.”
Ali refers to Ali ibn Abi Taleb, a cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Ali is believed to be the first Shiite Imam…
Ayatollah Saeedi was appointed as the leader of Friday prayer in Qom by Ayatollah Khamenei following the controversial presidential elections in 2009, which led to the country’s worst social unrest in three decades.
Ayatollah Saeedi also leads Qom’s cultural council and the committee to revive “the propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice.”…
There are 131 videos (9 hours of video) "posted by Nigerian users and media outlets during the 2011 National Assembly, Governorship and Presidential elections…" The clips range from network news reports to amateur video. If each student looks at one and reports on it to your class, the class can attempt generalizations about the coverage and the events.
Long ago events sometimes have an impact on politics today in China. Watch for events on May 4th, in memory of the student movement of 1919. Watch what the government does to prevent commemoration of June 4, 1989. And, whose ancient feud led to the disappearance of the statue of Confucius near Tiananmen Square?
When politics and government are not transparent, observers can jump to all kinds of explanations for the results.
“When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them,” Confucius once said.
Apparently, someone extremely powerful has taken the saying to heart, having decided that a 31-foot bronze statue of the ancient Chinese sage that was unveiled near Tiananmen Square four months ago did not belong on the nation’s most hallowed slice of real estate.
The sudden disappearance of Confucius, which took place under cover of darkness early Thursday morning, has stoked outrage among the philosopher’s descendants, glee among devoted Maoists and much conjecture among analysts who seek to decipher the intricacies of the Chinese leadership’s decisions…
The statue’s arrival in January at the museum entrance, cater-corner from the iconic portrait of Mao Zedong, set off a maelstrom of speculation, with many scholars describing it as a seismic step in the Communist Party’s rehabilitation of Confucianism.
In his day, Mao condemned that system of philosophical thought as backward and feudal; during the decade of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards were encouraged to deface Confucian temples and statues. The scholar’s ancestral home was destroyed, and bodies of long-dead descendants were exhumed and publicly displayed.
But that was then. Eager to fill the vacuum left by the fading of Maoist ideology, the party in recent years has been championing Confucianism as a national code of conduct, with special emphasis on tenets like ethical behavior, respect for the elderly, social harmony and obedience to authority…
A video report and an interview with John Campbell, former US ambassador to Nigeria offer background and summary to the presidential election and the reactions to it.
Many thanks to Jeff Silva-Brown, teacher at Ukiah High School in California, who pointed linked to this report from his Facebook page.
“Roughly 17,000 people fled their homes in eight northern Nigerian states as violence erupted after presidential elections in Africa's most populous nation, the Nigerian Red Cross said Tuesday. Incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, who was declared the winner Monday, appealed for unity as the breadth of the unrest sounded alarms for the government.”
Amidst mounting violence, I asked John Campbell, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria from 2004-2007 and is now the Ralph Bunche Senior Fellow for Africa policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, for background and perspective. What are the roots of the violence? Will it get worse?…
One of Goodluck Jonathan's big promises in his campaign for president was to fix the Nigeria's electrical problem. Ever since independence, the country has been plagued by a shortage of generating capacity and an incredibly unreliable distribution system.
Everyone who can afford one, owns a generator to provide power when the "lights go out." Businesses have to have generators to survive.
Past efforts to build new capacity have been noted for providing great opportunities for wealth, but few signs of real progress. The governments have spent huge amounts of money, and built little more than foundations for power plants.
It might seem trivial given the deadly post-election rioting and the thousands of homeless refugees right now, but actually building (or finding private investors to build) a real electrical grid might be a giant leap forward for Nigeria.
Millions of voters across the UK will go to the polls on 5 May in national and local elections as well as the referendum on the Westminster voting system. Here's a rundown:
Referendum on changing Westminster parliament voting system
Scottish Parliament elections
Wales: National Assembly elections
Northern Ireland Assembly elections and Local council elections
England: Local council elections and By-election and mayoral elections
The big loser in Nigeria plans to challenge the results of the presidential poll. Well, if your opponent won 98% of the vote in a state, wouldn't you challenge? Similar challenges after the previous presidential election (by all reports much more suspicious than this one), went nowhere.
[BTW, if you go to the BBC News site, the map includes great illustrations of the coinciding cleavages that reinforce each other and keep Nigeria divided.]
The runner-up in Nigeria's presidential poll, Gen Muhammadu Buhari, has said there were widespread irregularities in Saturday's election.
There were areas in the south where his supporters were not allowed to vote, the ex-military leader told US radio.
But he said his party would challenge the result legally and urged calm after riots broke out in the north when Goodluck Jonathan, a southerner, won...
The judge in last year’s politically charged trial of the former oil tycoon Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky openly admitted that the verdict would be dictated to him by his superiors, a former court official charged in an interview published on Friday…
[Former official] Igor Kravchenko is the second court worker to discuss official interference with the Khodorkovsky trial. In February, a former court assistant, Natalya Vasilyeva, said senior officials had put persistent pressure on Judge Danilkin during the course of the trial.
Judge Danilkin said it was not true, and a spokeswoman for the Moscow City Court repeated that on Friday…
Mr. Kravchenko said that during the trial, Judge Danilkin was frequently summoned to the Moscow City Court for impromptu meetings, and that the judge was clearly exasperated by the demands of senior officials…
Here's the text of Jonathan's acceptance speech. What issues does he outline for his new term? What obstacles does he foresee? What promises does he make?
This is a new dawn! Our nation has spoken. At the end of intense and hard fought campaigns by all the political parties, our people spoke through the ballot. In every city, town, village, ward and voting unit, Nigerians stood in the sun, some in the rain, some walked long distances and all waited patiently, to vote.
With a heart full of gratitude to Almighty God, I want to thank Nigerians for the great sacrifice and overwhelming national mandate you have just given to me, to preside over the affairs of this nation for the next four years…
Dogs are “unclean” and should be banned from society. That is what 39 Iranian legislators have proposed to the country’s 290-member parliament, known as the Majlis…
First-time offenders will be fined five million riyals (approximately $4800); they will be given 10 days to get rid of the dog…
The campaign against dogs isn’t new, however. In June 2010, Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi sent a message that the practice of keeping dogs as domestic pets must stop. He issued a fatwa (religious edict) stating that “Friendship with dogs is a blind imitation of the West.” The Grand Ayatollah added: “There are lots of people in the West who love their dogs more than their wives and children.” He did not elaborate on that statement.
He acknowledged, however, that the Quran does not explicitly prohibit contact with dogs. Rather, the Grand Ayatollah said, such forbidding of contact with dogs was in keeping with Islamic tradition. “We have lots of narrations in Islam that say dogs are unclean,” he said…
The Nigerian elections have apparently been pretty honest and relatively peaceful. However, the old divisions are still evident, as this report from Next makes clear. (And as a treat to political science students and teachers, the headline writer uses the concept of "nation" correctly.)
There are reasons to be proud of yesterday’s presidential election. But these reasons, strong as they are, do not include the voting pattern.
The relative lack of violence, the large voter turnout, apart from in the southwest and the manifest integrity of the process are causes for cheer.
There was a strong desire by Nigerians to defy authority, to conquer apathy and to change their destiny. In the north where women usually take little interest in politics, yesterday’s election showed a clear change of attitude. Many men went hungry as their wives abandoned domestic chores to cast their vote, a process so cumbersome that in some cases required spending the whole day at the polling unit. Some took permission to travel to their villages on the eve of the election to avoid the curfew…
All over the country, women and youth seemed to have taken keener interest in the democratic process and reports of how they had waited the whole day to ensure the sanctity of the exercise were many. But the way they voted showed that not much has changed about the psyche of the Nigerian voter.
Although it initially appeared that these formerly apolitical groups were going to help unite the country by voting across religious and cultural lines; this initial hope was dashed on the hard back of primordial interests…
Saturday’s presidential election, in which President Jonathan beat Mr Ribadu in the southwest and Buhari won practically all the states in the northwest, showed how little things have changed. Everybody won their home turf; Moslems mostly voted Buhari and Christians voted for Jonathan: no surprises anywhere…
There are, of course, Nigerians who voted their conscience and supported candidates from ‘the other side.’ But they were too few to change the pattern.
So we may have made progress in the organisation of elections, in the sensitization of voters to come out and defend their rights, but we have failed where it really mattered – in making Nigerians vote for the best candidate, wherever they come from.
Won in: 23 states, including 16 out of 17 southern states and seven Northern states (Kwara, Kogi, Nasarawa, Benue, Plateau, Adamawa and Taraba), plus FCT
It's a maybe-possible marriage that has kept Mexico's political world aflutter: leftists and conservatives joining hands in a pivotal state before next year's presidential vote.
But the wedding is off.
After months of speculation, the parties will field separate candidates for governor in the state of Mexico, rather than team up against the reigning party there, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.
The incumbent PRI governor, Enrique Pena Nieto, leads polls assessing the prospective field for the presidential run, and analysts say the gubernatorial race will help shape the presidential contest. Some saw an alliance of opposites as a way to beat the centrist PRI and slow Pena Nieto's momentum.
In the end, however, the bedfellows were apparently just too strange. Over the weekend, national leaders of the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party, or PRD, facing a possible party split over joining with conservatives, formally voted down the idea.
The decision leaves a three-way contest in the July 3 election, probably helping the PRI at a key moment. Since the party's founding eight decades ago, it has never lost the governorship in Mexico state, which hugs Mexico City…
In the always "in the present" world, I'd forgotten to pay attention to the results of last week's legislative elections. Most of the media did. There was a partial report in the Christian Science Monitor, but I had to dig up this Reuters report to find anything substantial.
It appears that the PDP is likely to retain majorities in both houses of the Nigerian Congress, but it won't have the overwhelming majorities it had in the last Congress.
Keep in mind that the voting is not over. Voting has been postponed in some districts because of logistical problems.
Below is a table of the latest available results from constituencies declared in Nigeria's national assembly elections.
The figures show the number of seats won by party, the percentage of constituencies declared so far that represents, and the percentage of seats each party held in the outgoing parliament.
Results are still awaited from some regions where they were contested or where voting was delayed. The Independent National Electoral Commission has yet to collate national figures.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
PDP has won 123 seats (53%). It controlled 77% in the last Congress.
CPC has won 30 seats (13%). It controlled 0% in the last Congress.
ACN has won 47 seats (20%). It controlled 7% in the last Congress.
ANPP has won 25 seats (11%). It controlled 15% in the last Congress.
APGA has won 6 seats (3%). It controlled one seat in the last Congress.
Labour has won no seats (0%). It controlled two seats in the last Congress.
Others have won 3 seats (1%). They controlled one seat in the last Congress.
Number of constituencies declared: 234
*No voting took place in 48 of the 360 House of Representatives constituencies because of organisational delays.
SENATE
Number of Percentage of Outgoing
seats won those declared parliament (%)
PDP has won 45 seats (63%). It controlled 85% in the last Congress.
CPC has won 5 seats (7%). It controlled 1% in the last Congress.
ANC has won 13 seats (18%). It controlled 6% in the last Congress.
ANPP has won 7 seats (10%). It controlled 7% in the last Congress.
APGA has won 1 seat (<1%). It controlled <1% in the last Congress.
Labour has won no seats (0%). It controlled no seats in the last Congress.
Others have won 1 seat (<1%). They controlled no seats in the last Congress.
Number of constituencies declared: 72
*No voting took place in 15 of the 109 Senate constituencies because of organisational delays.
Nigerians voted in masses on Saturday in what they hope will be their first credible presidential election for decades and could set an example across Africa.
Queues formed early across Nigeria, including the village of tin-roofed shacks in the Niger Delta where front-runner President Goodluck Jonathan voted and the dusty alleyway in the northern village of Daura where his main rival, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, cast his ballot.
Across most of the country of 150 million there was no sign of the chaos and violence that has dogged past elections although two bombs panicked voters in the troubled northeastern city of Maiduguri. There were no reports of casualties…
The stakes are higher in the presidential race than the parliamentary election and the security agencies are on high alert. Land borders were closed and a curfew imposed overnight.
"If Nigeria gets it right, it will impact positively on the rest of the continent and show the rest of the world that Africa is capable of managing its electoral processes," said former Ghanaian President John Kufuor, who is leading an observer mission from the African Union.
"If Nigeria gets it wrong, it will have a negative influence on the continent with dire consequences," he said.
This report by the BBC's Dan Isaacs, talks about traditional rulers in the north of Nigeria, but their counterparts in the south wield similar powers. And the role of British imperialism in creating those local powers was arguably greater in the south.
Does this doom democratic government or guarantee it?
[O]ne institution that has played an important stabilising role has been that of the traditional rulers of kingdoms large and small across the country.
While traditional leaders hold few constitutional powers, no politician is wise to seek office without his blessing.
In pre-colonial days, kings ruled with absolute power across what is now northern Nigeria. Their origins pre-date even the arrival of Islam some 200 years ago.
Under British rule, these northern emirates were adopted as an integral part of the colonial administration and they became increasingly powerful.
Today, despite attempts by successive governments to marginalise them from the political process, traditional leaders continue to exert significant influence.
"They continue to yield so much power in who gets what political appointments, although most of this influence remains behind the scenes," explains Kabiru Sufi, a political scientist.
This remains so particularly in the mainly Muslim north, where they are seen as custodians of both religion and tradition…
At the end of a week of cyberattacks on popular, freewheeling Russian Web sites, which bloggers have blamed on shadowy government agencies, a top official with the federal security service on Friday proposed a ban on Skype, Gmail and Hotmail here because their use is “uncontrolled.”…
The foreign e-mail and communications Web services use encryption technology that makes them inaccessible to the security agency, said Alexander Andreyechkin, head of the FSB’s information and special communication center. That, he said, represents a threat to national security…
The Internet in Russia is a raucous and — so far — unfettered gathering place. Denial-of-service attacks have targeted LiveJournal sites and that of Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s most outspoken newspaper. Bloggers say the attacks are an effort to bring the Web here under control, a suspicion heightened by Alexander Andreyechkin's remarks (he's head of the FSB’s information and special communication center)…
While most of the news comes from cities and focuses on powerful men, especially leading up to the elections, it's worth stocking your frame of reference with these facts about Nigeria.
Researchers working with the Voices for Food Security (VFS) said a study they conducted reveal that there are more women farmers than men in Nigeria.
One of the researchers, Dr. Adamu Wude said special attention needs to be given to the concerns of women farmers since they constitute 81 percent of the farming population…
Presenting the findings of the research, Dr. Orji Ogbureke said agriculture is the best way to reduce poverty considering that about 70 percent of the nation's population engages in one agriculture venture or the other.
Preliminary parliamentary poll results revealing big losses for the ruling party show Nigeria "has changed", an analyst has told the BBC…
High-profile PDP casualties include speaker of the lower house Dimeji Bankole and ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo's daughter in the senate.
Despite some violence, observers said Saturday's poll was well-conducted…
With more than 70% of preliminary results announced at a state level, President Goodluck Jonathan's People's Democratic Party (PDP) has suffered significant losses.
The party that has dominated politics since the military returned to barracks has so far taken 59 seats in the 109-member senate and 140 seats in the 360-member House of Representatives.
Correspondents say it is not clear whether the PDP will lose its absolute majority in both houses as voting in some 13-14% of parliamentary constituencies - where polling had begun on 2 April - has been delayed until 26 April.
The party has lost out to two newly formed parties, the opposition Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in the south-west and to the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) in parts of the north...
A student in one of Kevin James' classes at Albany High School (California) pointed out the Iranian government's efforts to take control of NGOs. Thankfully, the message got passed on via the AHS Comparative Government blog. That's how I heard of it. Thanks to both of you.
The press release comes from Amnesty International in the UK.
Amnesty International and NGO Arseh Sevom have called on the Iranian Parliament to scrap a draft law which would effectively deregister all non-governmental organisations (NGOs) currently operating in Iran.
The Bill requires all NGOs wishing to continue or commence work to register via a new supervisory structure. This structure will allow bodies affiliated to the Intelligence Ministry and the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, to make key decisions on the operation of all NGOs.
Amnesty International and Arseh Sevom said that the Bill on the Establishment and Supervision of NGOs was a setback which would be yet one more nail in the coffin of the right to freedom of association in Iran…
Amnesty International and Arseh Sevom said that the Bill would sound the death knell for civil society in Iran, which has been under considerable pressure from the authorities since the election of President Ahmadinejad in 2005. Civil society activists have faced harassment, threats and arrest in connection with their work, and their organisations have been closed down, often without a court order. Some have been sentenced to prison terms or flogging, and many have taken the reluctant decision to flee the country, fearing for their safety…
I keep searching for information about government and politics in Mexico. My handicap is that I don't read Spanish. However, when looking at recent headlines from reports in the Los Angeles Times, there's a pattern that does not bode well for either government or politics in Mexico. (Even with the media tendency to report on conflict and violence before other things.)
Those seem to be the initial words used in reporting on the Nigerian election. Early reports of results indicate that the PDP's dominance may be weakening.
The INEC National Commissioner in charge of Kogi, Plateau and Nasarawa States, Dr Abdulkadir Oniyangi, has expressed delight over the massive turnout of voters for Saturday's National Assembly polls.
Oniyangi who spoke to newsmen after monitoring the election in Lokoja, Okene, Ogaminana, Adavi, Itakpe and Osara on Saturday, was particularly happy over the peaceful and orderly conduct of voters at all the polling centres visited…
Jos, Nigeria — In this central Nigerian city with a history of inter-communal strife, the delayed kick-off of Nigeria's three-week long elections process was greeted by long lines of determined, hopeful voters. Despite logistical confusion at some polling sites throughout the day - and reportedly across the country - counting that appeared transparent, if often hectic, was underway at multiple vote "collation centers"…
[T]he mood at polling stations was jubilant. Voters, a couple of whom flashed thumbs-up signs at Nigerian and international journalists, endured scorching sun throughout a near day-long voting process…
Imnakoya, a Nigerian living in the US, expresses optimism about Nigerian elections based on reports from friends and family in Africa. This is from his blog, Grandiose Parlor.
From the Oyinbo-land I live in Upper Midwestern U.S, one could easily be made to believe that the election in Nigeria on Saturday April 9 may not be any different from previous ones marred with widespread violence and electoral fraud. This may not be the case this year. It does appear the violence is limited to just few areas, and the election has been relatively free and fair.
Earlier today, I did get word from the home country that many polling stations in Ondo State that recorded blatant fraud and violent disturbances were peaceful. People came out to vote, voted, and even waited for the votes to be counted, without being intimidated by gun-trotting hoodlums, as was the case 2007. This appears to be the case across most South-western region of the country. This is a significant shift from the last election…
[T]he ground may have shifted, positively, in greater parts of Nigeria. And I must say also that this is expected, given the intense efforts that went into sensitizing the public, intellectually and psychologically.
It is a delight to see at last the use of social media in election process. Several of the candidates featured pages on Facebook and authored blogs. Perhaps, the most significant of these efforts, is the use participatory media and crowd-sourcing in news reports and election monitoring…
Are these activities traces of a new dawn for Nigeria? I do hope so, and I’m excited. While the few evil–mongers may want to throw all the bombs they can, in Nigeria, the tide will certainly turn for the better, just a couple of elections to go…
Polling has begun in Nigeria in parliamentary elections marred by bloody attacks and chaotic delays…
Security was tight in many cities following sporadic violence during the campaign and a deadly bomb attack in the central town of Suleja on Friday…
Despite the delays, our correspondent says, many people see these polls as a chance for Nigeria to escape the troubled days of vote rigging and violence that have plagued previous elections held since the end of military rule in 1999.
Politically the stakes are high, she says, with this being seen as a test of whether this government can hold a credible election…
Legislative elections, initially due last Saturday, are to be postponed for a third time in some parts of Nigeria, the election chief has announced.
Attahiru Jega said the new delays would affect 13-14% of electoral districts, where voting started last week before the first postponement was heard about.
It was not possible to replace these ballot papers in time, he said.
The delays have raised new doubts over whether this month's round of national elections can be free and fair.
Previous elections held since the 1999 end of military rule have been characterised by allegations of widespread fraud and violence…
The culture police have limited the subject matter allowed in movies and on television in China — once again. This time the censors are worried about the past. No more time travel to pre-revolutionary eras where life wasn't all bad. Only the Party, it seems, is allowed to fictionalize history. Oh, and by the way, no more cinematic versions of the Four Great Classical Novels.
Remind everyone what George Orwell said. "Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present, controls the past." So, no more time travel.
Now there’s an interesting trend in China’s film and television industry: more and more time-travel themed dramas are made and aired. In these time-travel based TV plays, usually the protagonist is from the modern time and for some reasons and via some means, travels through time and all the way back to the ancient China where he/she will constantly experience the "culture shock" but gradually get used to it and eventually develop a romance in that era. Though obviously the Chinese audience is found of this genre of shows, the country’s authority -General Bureau of Radio, Film and Television, to be exact, is not happy about this trend and calls a halt to the making of this type of drama…
The Television Director Committee [said], "The time-travel drama is becoming a hot theme for TV and films. But its content and the exaggerated performance style are questionable. Many stories are totally made-up and are made to strain for an effect of novelty. The producers and writers are treating the serious history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore."...
I am grateful that someone sent me the link to the Brookings Institute article below by Cheng Li and John L. Thornton. I am ashamed that I've lost the e-mail and the name of the person who found the article. It's good. (And the Wikipedia article that's linked following it was pretty good when I read it on April 5. Of course, no one knows what it looks like now or will look like when you see it.)
In the often-contradictory foreign analyses of China’s 17th Party Congress, there was a surprising level of consensus that the composition of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China (CPC), especially its Standing Committee, is a crucial factor in determining the political trajectory of the country. This explains why considerable media attention has been given to personnel changes in these leadership institutions. In fact, one notable phenomenon at the Congress is Chinese authorities’ growing emphasis on “collective leadership.” As General-Secretary Hu Jintao stated in his report to the Party Congress, the CPC should improve the system of “collective leadership with division of responsibilities among individuals” in an effort to “prevent arbitrary decision-making by an individual or a minority of people in the Party.”
The most important development coming out of the 17th Party Congress is the new succession model with two candidates rather than one designated “heir apparent.” Two front-runners in the so-called fifth generation of leaders, 54-year-old Xi Jinping and 52-year-old Li Keqiang, were elevated to the Politburo Standing Committee. Meanwhile, another six members in their 50s obtained seats on the Politburo and/or the Secretariat. These eight rising stars collectively have formed a “succession team” set to take over from the fourth generation of leaders in 2012-2013. All of these developments seem to indicate that the country has entered a new era of collective leadership. Consequently, the rules and norms of Chinese elite politics are likely to change profoundly. What does collective leadership mean for China’s future? Is it a cause for celebration or anxiety?
The transition in China from an all-powerful single leader to collective leadership has been a gradual process. Mao Zedong wielded enormous power as a god-like figure, especially during the Cultural Revolution, treating succession as if it was his private matter. During the Deng Era, political succession and generational change in the Chinese leadership became a matter of public concern. Yet, because of his legendary political career and his formidable patron-client ties, Deng Xiaoping maintained his role as China’s paramount leader even when he did not hold any important leadership position following the Tiananmen incident. Both Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao are technocrats who lack the charisma and revolutionary credentials of Deng, but both have had broad administrative experiences and are good at coalition-building and political compromise. Nevertheless, both Jiang and Hu had the endorsement of Deng. The evolution of the four generations of Chinese leaders illustrates a consistent trend towards a more collective leadership, and away from “strong-man” politics.
The profound shift in the source and legitimacy of leadership becomes even more salient for the emerging fifth generation of leaders. Many of the rising stars of the new generation share similarities in terms of leadership credentials, but differ significantly with respect to socio-political backgrounds and career paths. For instance, frontrunners Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang both joined the CPC in the mid-1970s, hold Ph.D. degrees, have been on the Central Committee of the CPC for ten years, and have served as Party secretaries for two provincial level administrations. Yet, Xi was born into the family of a prominent Communist veteran leader whereas Li comes from a humble family background. Xi made giant strides in his career through urban economic administration while Li advanced his political career largely through the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL). While Xi ran some of the most advanced economic regions in the country such as Fujian, Zhejiang, and Shanghai, Li’s provincial experiences were spent first in poor and agricultural Henan and then in rustbelt industrial-base Liaoning…
Chinese elite politics is no longer a zero-sum game. China’s collective leadership is crucial not only because it prompts concrete direction about the so-called intra-Party democracy, but also because it reveals how the governance of the most populous country in the world is changing and evolving. Given China’s long history of arbitrary decision-making by one individual leader, collective leadership represents a big step forward.
Because both the Communist Party of China and the People's Liberation Army promote according to seniority, it is possible to discern distinct generations of Chinese leadership. These groups of leadership have each promoted an extension of the ideology of the former, which in some cases influenced the direction of national development…
Let's be clear. The Chinese government works hard to make it difficult for people in China to freely access information. And, others in China work hard to make that information more accessible.
WiTopia… provides ways of bypassing blocks imposed by internet firewalls. Like others that help people in China escape internet censorship, it has recently found its services disrupted by what looks like a new kind of attack by China’s censors.
Since the Arab awakening, officials have gone to lengths to stop dissidents from trying to foment similar unrest at home. Controls on people attempting to “leap the wall”, as internet users describe the process of evading their censors’ firewall, have got tighter… It marks a change of tactic by China’s internet police. For years they have largely turned a blind eye to paid-for services, such as WiTopia’s, which provide virtual private networks (VPNs) enabling encrypted connections to the many websites blocked by the firewall. Such VPNs are mainly used by foreigners in China, less likely to be trouble-stirrers. (Fee-free VPNs are routinely blocked.)...
China’s new tactic, as far as experts can guess, is to make the use of Gmail and paid-for VPN services more inconvenient, but not to cut off access altogether. Google says the government is disrupting its e-mail service, while making it look as if the problem lies with Gmail. Users in China are having intermittent problems accessing the Gmail service…
A former student in one of my comparative politics classes, now a CNN reporter in Beijing, demonstrates, in this video, how a VPN provides access to the Internet for someone in China. Of course, she's a foreigner in Beijing, not a citizen.
While the inevitable rumors of conspiracies and fraud circulate, there are official and mainstream media explanations for the delays in Nigerian elections. The first report comes from Leadership in Abuja. The second is from All Africa.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) yesterday bowed to pressures from stakeholders, principally political parties to reschedule the 2011 general elections…
Rising from a close-door meeting with Nigeria's political parties Sunday evening, INEC chairman Professor Attahiru Jega announced a sweeping change in all the election dates. According to him, rescheduling of the National Assembly elections would have implication for the schedule of all the other elections.
National Assembly elections will now hold on Saturday, April 9, presidential on Saturday, April 16, while gubernatorial and the state assembly elections will hold on Tuesday, April 26…
Parties roundly embraced the new election dates.
National chairman, Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) Tony Momoh, said: "The logo of some political parties are missing, many names are not there (on the ballot papers), there are shortages at polling stations and lots and lots of problems and these cannot be addressed within 24 hours. There is enough time now to make the necessary adjustments and we believe that Jega can handle the issue."…
The acting national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Haliru Bello, said: "If they (INEC) say they are not ready now, we are willing to wait for them to get ready because we want free and credible elections."…
As Nigeria's attempt to hold parliamentary elections—the first round of a three-stage vote set for this month in Africa's most populous nation—floundered this weekend, there was no shortage of opinions from would-be voters across the country as they reacted to vote…
Many Nigerians were shocked when the respected chairman of the commission, Professor Attahiru Jega, announced on live television that he was postponing the National Assembly elections after they were already under way, particularly because Jega had declared on Friday, on the eve of the vote, that his commission was completely ready.
"I never in my wildest dreams imagined a postponement," said Jude Ado of the Open Society Institute in Abuja… Ado noted that there are several schools of "thought and legend" about what went wrong within the commission, but one gradually emerging theory is that the seemingly chaotic series of events over the weekend were a "calculated plan" to oust Chairman Jega, whose sheer integrity poses a threat to Nigeria's established political order, which is maintained by the elite no matter the human or economic cost to everyday, largely impoverished citizens…
Many Nigerians seem willing to give the commission another chance, but others point their finger squarely at the chairman for not being better informed about a critical element of the voting process—the delivery of materials. "Jega had all the time to prepare for this election, this is total ignorant on his part," said a Nigerian who gave the name "Endurance" on a comments section of a local newspaper article…
BBC reporter Steve Rosenberg's thesis is that this is part of a growing rift between Medvedev and Putin leading up to next year's presidential election. It could be other things like real reform or the "demotion" of a rival to both the president and the premier. In the opaque world of Russian politics, we may never know for sure.
Nigeria has postponed its parliamentary election until next Saturday - the second such delay in two days.
The vote was initially due to take place on Saturday, but staff and papers failed to materialise at polling stations around the country…
The election commission's decision means presidential and state elections have also been pushed back.
The BBC's Caroline Duffield in Lagos says the country's political culture of vote-rigging and violence has made it difficult for people to accept the official explanations for the delay.
She says many voters - and some politicians - think political interference caused Saturday's chaos.
The elections are seen as a vital test of Nigeria's democratic credentials…
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If you go to the "Discussions" section, you'll see discussion areas for important topics. If you're looking for information or if you ask questions in the relevant topic area, others will be more likely to answer and find the wisdom you have to share. Teaching Comparative blog entries are indexed. The Fourth Edition ofWhat You Need to Knowis available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Every weekday for the next 3 weeks, I'll post a practice Free Response Question (FRQ) on the Studying Comparative blog. I think the questions are realistic. All three types of FRQs are included.
Look at the question. Decide how many things you're being asked to do (that's how many points will be on the scoring rubric). Try to do them.
Not only was there an election for a vacant seat in the House of Lords, it was an election for one of seats held by an hereditary peer. If that's not strange enough, the winner was required to be a Labour peer.
BY-ELECTIONS are often dramatic referendums on the government of the day. Yet on March 22nd, a by-election was held to choose a new parliamentarian, and barely a soul noticed. There are two good reasons why. First, the vote was for a new member of the House of Lords rather than the Commons, and by an odd procedure that strains even Britain’s notoriously elastic constitutional arrangements. Second, the result was known in advance…
[The] vote was caused by the demise of Lord Strabolgi, a well-liked figure who sat in the Lords for half a century. He died, aged 96, a couple of days after his last appearance in the Lords. Though pretty posh (his title dates back to 1318), he… was a Labour peer, and via the “usual channels” party bigwigs let it be known that they expected him to be replaced by another Labour peer. In theory, there were 24 candidates… In practice… everyone knew it was a choice between two Labour hereditaries.
Unfortunately for one of them, his résumé includes a short spell in prison for assaulting a psychotherapist with a spanner. This being frowned upon, only the other Labour candidate, Lord Hanworth—known to one sceptical elector only as “some man whose name begins with H”—was left…
It is assumed that these hereditary by-elections will be swept away if the government ever gets round to reforming the Lords. If that happens, Lord Strabolgi may be cheering from another place: in his last parliamentary intervention he called for the House of Lords to be replaced by an elected senate. Being democratic, said that wise old peer, such a body would be a stronger bulwark against an over-mighty executive.
John Unruh-Friesen, who teaches at Hopkins HS in Minnetonka, Minnesota, posted a link to a BBC backgrounder on the Nigerian elections that I'd missed. After the main article, there are links to several other good BBC reports. Check them out.
Three rounds of national elections start on 2 April [postponed until 4 April] in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Members of the National Assembly are to be chosen first, followed by the president a week later and then the 36 powerful governors of Nigeria's states on 16 April…
Maybe they should have hired the logistics experts that UPS keeps bragging about in their TV ads. Not all ballots got to the right places, so legislative elections have been delayed in Nigeria (after some of the polling places had opened).
Nigeria postponed its National Assembly elections Saturday as ballots and tally sheets remained missing from polling places throughout the nation, a worrying sign as the oil-rich nation faces a month of crucial polls.
Election chief Attahiru Jega told voters in a nationwide radio address that the country faced "an emergency" and extraordinary measures needed to be taken to ensure a free and fair election. He said polls are rescheduled for Monday…
Saturday's election was to decide who should occupy seats in the country's National Assembly, positions worth more than $1 million in salaries and perks. It also was the true test for Nigeria's electoral commission to prove it could overcome the nation's history of flawed polls…
It's a short (2-minute) report on women candidates in Nigeria's upcoming elections from Al Jazeera, but it's more than we're likely to hear from other sources. It's worth checking out.
Locked in a grueling and bloody war with drug cartels, Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Thursday replaced the nation's top legal official, whose lackluster stint had failed to improve paltry narcotics conviction rates or stem human rights abuses.
Atty. Gen. Arturo Chavez Chavez stepped down after 18 months on the job. Calderon nominated Marisela Morales, head of the high-profile organized crime unit of the prosecutor's office, to replace Chavez…
Calderon, in a public appearance announcing that he had accepted Chavez's resignation, credited the outgoing attorney general with the capture of several top drug lords and the confiscation of weapons, illicit properties and drug profits. He said Chavez was key in toughening laws against kidnapping, a booming crime in Mexico…
Morales, if confirmed, would be the first woman to serve in the post. She wins high marks from U.S. officials, and last month received the 2011 International Women of Courage Award in a ceremony in Washington headed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and First Lady Michelle Obama…
The size of the workforce and the size of the dependent population are important determinants of the capacity of the state. The news from the latest Russian census is not good.
Russia’s population declined by nearly 3.4 million over the past decade, according to census figures released Monday, adding to fears that an aging and decreasing population will sap economic growth. A census carried out in October 2010 showed that the population had fallen to 142.9 million…
China's leadership pledged Monday to improve the selection, training, evaluation and supervision of city-level top officials, including Party chiefs and mayors.
High-quality city officials are needed to improve governance, realize stable and fast economic growth, and long-term stability, said a statement issued after a meeting of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee Political Bureau, presided over by Chinese President Hu Jintao…
A city head should be loyal to the Party, the state and people, the statement said.
He or she should have a good understanding of governance, the perspective and quality of being a team leader, adopt a democratic style of decision making and behave according to the rules and laws, it said…
The country will reform the evaluation system of its officials so as to help them better understand the principles of Scientific Outlook on Development and competently self assess their work, it said…
Teaching (and learning) comparative government and politics is a complex and demanding task. We can all use all the help we can get. This cyber place is somewhere to facilitate helpful interactions.
