confidentially speaking
The Africa Confidential Blog
Liberia sets an example
Blue Lines
Presidential and parliamentary elections in Liberia on 10 October raise
again the matter of presidential term limits.
After a crowded career in commercial and development banking as
well as director of the United Nations Development Programme in Africa,
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf
told us that, for her at least, two
terms in the presidency was plenty.
Over two decades into what is known as Africa's second liberation
– the collapse of most one-party regimes and their replacement by some
form of pluralist politics – Johnson-Sirleaf's view is far from
universally shared on the continent. Last week, parliamentarians in
Kampala clashed after an ugly debate in which some political hacks
tried to push through a bill abolishing the age limit of 75 for
presidential candidates. Its aim was to clear the way for Ugandan
President Yoweri Museveni, in
power for 31 years, to stand for yet
another term in three years' time. This week grenades were thrown at
the houses of two of the MPs who opposed the measure.
In Kinshasa,
multiple rebellions, several of them urging Congo-Kinshasa President
Joseph Kabila to stand down as
the constitution specifies, are
gathering force. And in the second-longest presidency on the continent,
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, 93, speaks
confidently of winning
another term next year. His deputy and putative successor, Emmerson
Mnangagwa, claims to have been poisoned by a rival.