Archive for April, 2008
Zimbabwe still awaits for presidential results
A judge will rule today whether the electoral commission in Zimbabwe should be forced to release the presidential election results.
Morgan Tsvangira, leader of the opposition party, MDC, claims to have won the contest with more than 50% of the votes and accuses the government of keeping the ballots to rig the election’s outcome.
“They had custody of the ballot boxes for two weeks and they must have stuffed them with their votes,” MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.
African leaders meeting this week in Lusaka to discuss the political deadlock in Zimbabwe urged the government to release the results kept for more than two weeks.
Mugabe ignored his counterparts and ordered the recounting of the parliamentary ballots which result had already been published.
The parliamentary election saw Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF lose its majority.
But the majority could be recovered if Zanu-PF is awarded just nine of the 23 seats subject to a recount.
Quiet diplomacy
The meeting of Southern African Development community was expected to force Mugabe to compromise and break the political deadlock in Zimbabwe.
But the outcome was far from positive.
Mugabe refused to attend the meeting and his party refused to accept its advise.
Zimbabwean President counted with the help of the South African President PR, Mbeki, who visited Harare to say there is no political crisis in Zimbabwen democracy.
Military intimidation
While the results are unknown Mugabe military forces are reported to be intimidating the population who voted for the opposition.
A reporter from the Guardian reported Zanu’s forces are menacing the population to vote for Mugabe in the second round of the election or else they will be killed.
Without even publishing the results, the regime claims the MDC failed to win with more than 50% meaning it has to go for a second round.
The MDC refuses (video) to run for a second round. The opposition party fears the population will feel the menace from Mugabe’s forces and vote for the regime.
Mugabe rules over Zimbabwe for 20 years since independence from the UKe profile .
Add comment April 14, 2008
Europe with cold feet on biofuels
The European Union is ready to reconsider the planned increase on biofuels use over concerns that the set targets are raising food prices and harming environment, the President of the EU, Janez Jansa, announced last week.
The step back will mean a reduction in bio fuels imports from developing countries and will renew criticism against Brussels.
Free trade champions and bio fuel producers last December accused the EU using the mantra of environmentalism to disguise “a biased and protectionist” agenda when the bloc left bio fuels out of a list of environmental products exempted from trade tariffs.
Brazilian Foreign Ministry’s trade chief, Roberto Azevedo, claimed Brussels was protecting the interests of European agriculture.
“This is not an independent list”, he said. “The exclusion of bio fuels is particularly striking. It raises serious concerns about the true intentions of the proponents in relation to the environment”.
Controversy went on when the European Commission approved a sustainability criteria for bio fuels that would rule out much of developing countries’ production.
Bio fuel producers were required to agree not to destroy rainforests or other protected areas in their fuel production process.
European environment officials denied that the criteria was a form of “green protectionism” used against Latin America’s alternative energy products.
“Not by any means are sustainability criteria for bio fuels an indication of green protectionism on the part of the EU”, said Soledad Blanco, the director of international affairs in the European Commission’s environment unit, speaking at a meeting of some 61 Environment ministers form across Latin America, the Caribbean and the EU last month.
“The commission’s proposals for sustainability criteria are linked to the legitimate environmental concerns European and global citizens have”, she added.
Europe‘s step back followed warnings from environmental groups that bio fuels, far from reducing emissions, are increasing them.
“The bio fuels route is a dead end,” Dr. Andrew Boswell, a British Green Party councillor and author of a recent study on the harmful effects of bio fuels, told the Die Spiegel.
“They are going to create great damage to the environment and will also produce dramatic social problems in tropical countries where many crops for bio fuels are grown. There basically isn’t any way to make them viable”.
Critics also note that bio fuel production from crops is pushing up food prices and leaving people to starve.
Brazil is the biggest producer of ethanol from sugar cane in the world and would reap billions of dollars in revenue from widespread ethanol liberalization.
Brasilia has been publicizing its sugarcane-based ethanol around the world a cheap and eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels amid soaring oil prices and global warming concerns.
Last year, Unica denied that new areas of Brazilian Cerrado, the most biodiverse savannah in the world, would suffer more destruction as a result of increased ethanol production.
“If there will be any interference, it will be because humankind always interferes I the environment. What we have to do is to minimise it”, a spokesman said to BBC.
Add comment April 1, 2008
