MS Risk Blog

Congolese President Wins Referendum

Results have shown that more than 92% of voters in the country’s controversial referendum have approved constitutional changes to allow President Denis Sassou Nguesso to run for a third term in office.

According to figures read out by the electoral commission on radio on Tuesday, turnout in the referendum, which was held on Sunday, was 72 percent. The electoral commission further disclosed that more than 1.2 million people voted in favor of the change, while nearly 102,000 rejected it.

The opposition had boycotted the poll, with a senior opposition leader stating on Monday that the poll should be annulled due to low voter turnout. Clement Mierassa has disclosed that “from what we could see on the day of the vote, the announcement that turnout was more than 72% is extremely scandalous.”

President Sassou Nguesso, 71, is one of Africa’s longest serving rulers. He first came to power in 1979, ruling until 1992 when he lost the elections. He returned as president in 1997, after a brief civil war, and has since won two elections. He is now coming to the end of his second seven-year term. Under the current constitution, the president has been unable to seek re-election because he is over the age of 70 and has already served two terms. The presidential election is due to take place in 2016. In September, tens of thousands of people took part in a peaceful demonstration against the referendum. Last week, four people were killed and dozens left inured when security forces dispersed angry protesters in the capital, Brazzaville, as well as in the economic hub of Pointe-Noire.

Africa’s Longest-Serving Leaders:

• 36 Years – Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea) took power in a coup in August 1979.
• 36 Years – Jose Eduardo dos Santos (Angola) took over after the death of the country’s first president in September 1979.
• 35 Years – Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) won the country’s independence elections in April 1980.
• 32 Years – Paul Biya (Cameroon) took over after the resignation of the country’s first president in November 1982.
• 31 Years – Denis Sassou Nguesso (Republic of Congo) was installed by the military in October 1979. He was out of power from August 1992 until October 1997.
• 29 Years – Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) became president after his rebel group took power in January 1986.

Boko Haram Militants Seize Control of Town in Cameroon

According to security and regional sources, Boko Haram militants on Friday seized control of a town in the far north of Cameroon, which lies on the border with Nigeria.

A security source confirmed Friday that the militants “…now control Kerawa.” The information was also confirmed by another source close to the regional authorities, who indicated that an unspecified number of civilians had been killed in the assault. Local officials reported Friday that Cameroonian soldiers fought Boko Haram militants who raided a village in the Far North region, just a day after a similar attack in the area. According to one local official, “since yesterday, Boko Haram members raided the Kerawa village…They slit the throats of between three and seven people yesterday and killed others.”

Kerawa, which has 50,000 inhabitants, is located in the Kolofata district, which has been regularly targeted by Boko Haram militants. There is a military camp inside the town, which was last hit by a double suicide bombing on 3 September, which claimed at least thirty lives.

Police Seize Dozens of Kilos of Drugs in Australia

Federal authorities have seized 73 kilograms of drugs and arrested three Malaysian nationals trying to smuggle their illicit cargo through Melbourne Airport. After arriving yesterday at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, the three men attempted to pass through customs but were intercepted by members of the Australian Border Force (ABF). Their luggage was examined and a total of 55 kilograms of methamphetamine and 18 kilograms of heroin were found. According to ABF Acting Commissioner Michael Outram, the haul was one of the largest that had ever been seized at an Australian airport. “This seizure represents one of the largest seizures in Australian history through an Australian international airport, which proves law enforcement agencies are working harder than ever to keep drugs out of our community,” he said.

So far, two of the men have been charged with the importation of a commercial quantity of border controlled drugs and attempting to possess a commercial quantity of border controlled drugs. The third member of the group will be charged at a later date.

In recent years, there has been an observable tendency on the part of Australian drug users to favour amphetamine type substances (ATS) over alternative narcotics. While a large proportion of these illicit substances were once manufactured domestically, in large part because of the ready availability of precursor chemicals, the tightening of relevant law enforcement mechanisms has reduced this practice. Now, criminal groups are increasingly obliged to source precursor chemicals and drugs offshore. As a result of this, there are noticeably more narcotic and precursor chemical seizures at the border. In the 2013-14 reporting period alone, the number of ATS detections at the border increased to 2 367, the highest number on record. Interestingly, international mail accounted for the majority of ATS detections in Australia during this period while sea cargo accounted for the greatest proportion of detections by weight.

According to a recent report published by the Australian Crime Commission, China is the primary embarkation point for ATS (excluding MDMA), followed by Mexico, Hong Kong and the United States. Serious and organised criminal groups are believed at the centre of this thriving drug market.

Opposition Lawyers File New Petition to Impeach Brazilian President

On Wednesday, opposition lawyers filed a new petition to Congress for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

The authors of the filing are prominent lawyers Helio Bicudo, a founding member of the president’s ruling Worker’s Party, and Miguel Feale, a former justice minister, who are backed by the country’s main opposition party, the PSDB. The new petition reinforces an earlier one by the lawyers to include accusations that the doctoring of government accounts continued into Rousseff’s current team. It also accused the president of signing spending decrees of 820 million reais (US $210 million) with approval from Congress, which is an impeachable violation of the country’s budget laws.

If the request is taken up by the speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, who himself is under growing pressure to resign due to corruption allegations, months-long impeachment proceedings would begin, which will effectively prolong a political crisis that has deepened the country’s economic slump.

The request is considered to be the most serious attempt so far to impeach the Brazilian president as it is based on a federal audit court ruling that her government manipulated its accounts in a bid to disguise the size of the deficit and to allow for more spending in the run-up to her narrow re-election last year.

The president’s government is scrambling to block impeachment proceedings in the lower house, where the president’s opponents would require two-thirds of the votes in order to approve an impeachment trial that would be held in the Senate. Furthermore, polls have shown that two in every three Brazilians want to see the president impeached. Her approval rate has fallen to single digits in recent polls, with many blaming her for not stopping a corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras and for mismanaging the country’s once-booming economy.

If Congress does impeach the president, then Vice President Michel Temer, who is the leader of the country’s largest party, the PMDB, would serve as president of the remainder of the term. However it currently remains unclear when, or even wether, the speaker will decide to take up the impeachment request, as Cunha is battling to remain in office following revelations of secret Swiss bank accounts in his name that link him to the massive bribery and political kickback scandal at Petrobras.

Student Protests Continue in South Africa

On Wednesday, South African police used stun guns outside the parliament building in Cape Town in a bid to disperse students demonstrating against planned tuition fee hikes.

On the ground sources have reported that the violence unfolded after students pushed their way through a parliament gate and scuffled with riot police. Earlier in the day, security guards forcibly removed a group of opposition lawmakers from the parliament floor after lawmakers, who are sympathetic to the students, disrupted the debate by chanting: “Fees must fall!”

The protests are part of a wave of nationwide protests that have resulted in the closing down of many South African universities, which say they are struggling with higher operational costs as well as inadequate state subsidies. Earlier this week, Blade Nzimande, who is the higher education minister, proposed a 6 percent limit on tuition fee increases for next year. However student leaders have rejected this proposal, stating that they will continue with their protests. The University of Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg, has suspended lectures and other operations for the rest of the week. It had dropped a proposed hike of 10.5 percent in tuition fees after several days of protests. Other universities had also planned increases of at least 10 percent.