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MONDAY APRIL 4, 2016 ˾ T H I S D AY
INTERNATIONAL
email:foreigndesk@thisdaylive.com
Parliament to Debate Zuma’s Impeachment Motion Tomorrow South Africa’s parliament will tomorrow debate a motion to impeach President Jacob Zuma, National Assembly Speaker, Baleka Mbete said, after a top court ruled the president had violated the constitution. South Africa’s constitutional court ruled on Thursday that Zuma had failed to uphold the constitution by ignoring orders from the public protector that he repay some of the $16 million in state funds spent to renovate his private residence at Nkandla. Since Thursday’s ruling, opposition party leaders, ordinary South Africans and even an anti-apartheid activist jailed alongside Nelson Mandela have called on Zuma to step down. Mmusi Maimane, leader of the opposition party Democratic Alliance (DA), tabled the motion to have Zuma impeached, and Mbete told reporters yesterday that “the debate on that motion has been scheduled for tomorrow’s afternoon.” The Africa National Congress majority in parliament will almost certainly give Zuma political cover against the at-
tempt to impeach him. But the judicial rebuke may embolden anti-Zuma factions within the ruling party to mount a challenge. The unanimous ruling by the 11-judge constitutional court also criticised parliament for passing a resolution that purported to nullify Public Protector Thuli Madonsela’s findings on the state spending on Zuma’s private residence. DA Parliamentary Chief Whip, John Steenhuisen, said Mbete should also resign for her and parliament’s complicity in the Nkandla matter. Mbete said she would not step down, but acknowledged the issue could have been handled differently in parliament. The scandal is arguably the biggest yet to hit Zuma, who has fended off accusations of corruption, influence peddling and rape since before he took office in 2009. On Friday, the 73-year-old president gave a televised address to the nation in which he apologised and said he would pay back some of the money, as ordered. He said that he never
Trump Predicts ‘Very Massive Recession’ in US Republican presidential frontrunner, Donald Trump, predicted that the United States is on course for a “very massive recession,” warning that a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slump. “I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble,” the billionaire businessman said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday. Coming off a tough week on the campaign trail in which he made a series of missteps, Trump’s latest comments bring him back into the limelight ahead of Tuesday’s important primary in Wisconsin where he trails in the polls. The former reality TV star said that the real U.S. jobless figure is much higher than five percent number released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “We’re not at 5 percent unemployment,” Trump said. “We’re at a number that’s probably into the twenties if you look at the real number,” he said, adding that the official jobless figure is “statistically devised to make politicians — and in particular presidents — look good.” Trump said “it’s a terrible time right now” to invest in the stock market, offering a more bleak view of the U.S. economy than that held by many mainstream economists. The interview was bylined by the Post’s Robert Costa and famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward. A real estate magnate, Trump has made appealing to bluecollar workers a hallmark of his bid for the Republican
nomination for the Nov. 8 presidential election, often blaming unemployment on the outsourcing of U.S. jobs and facilities to countries such as China and Mexico. Trump vowed in the interview to wipe out the more than $19 trillion national debt “over a period of eight years,” helped by a renegotiation of trade deals. “I’m renegotiating all of our deals, the big trade deals that we’re doing so badly on,”he said. After making controversial statements about abortion last week, Trump has shown little sign of heeding calls from fellow Republicans to adopt a more presidential tone so as to avoid alienating voters in the November general election if he wins the nomination. On Saturday, he questioned close U. S. ties to Saudi Arabia and again accused U.S. allies of not pulling their weight in the NATO military alliance. Trump told a campaign rally in Racine, Wisconsin that partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization “are not paying their fair share” and called the 28-nation alliance “obsolete.” “Either they pay up, including for past deficiencies, or they have to get out. And if it breaks up NATO, it breaks up NATO,” Trump said. Tuesday’s Wisconsin nominating contest could be a turning point in the Republican race. Trump, 69, trails his leading rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, 45, of Texas in the state. A Cruz win would make it harder for Trump to reach the number of 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the Republican national convention in July. The winner will get to claim all of Wisconsin’s 42 delegates.
knowingly or deliberately set out to violate the constitution. The president travelled to his home province of KwazuluNatal yesterday to launch a
relief programme as part of government efforts to support areas affected by South Africa’s worst drought in more than a century.
He told a cheering crowd that he was still South Africa’s leader and joked about how youthful he was, but made no specific mention of the
Nkandla matter, the pending impeachment motion or calls for him to step down as he addressed the gathering in Zulu, his native language.
BRAVE ACTION
Cambodian police officers holding a python before handing it to members of the NGO WildAid, after it was recovered from smugglers, in Kandal province, outside Phnom Penh, CambodiaÖ yesterday
Burundi Accepts UN Police Deployment Burundi has accepted the United Nations security council’s resolution to send in police, the foreign affairs minister told Reuters on Saturday, after months of political tension. The 15-member council unanimously adopted on Friday a French-drafted resolution asking U.N. SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon to offer options for a police deployment to Burundi, where violence threatens to spiral into ethnic conflict. President Pierre Nkurunziza said last April he would seek a third term, which his opponents said was
illegal. Since then, at least 439 people have been killed and more than 250,000 have fled. “This U.N. resolution is fine for us since it takes into account everything we have been saying,” Alain Nyamitwe, Burundi’s foreign minister, told Reuters. “We have always been open to experts but never to sending of peacekeeping troops in Burundi,” he said, adding “a few” U.N. police could help stabilise the country. But Leonce Ngendakumana, chairman of the opposition FRODEBU party, criticised the resolution
for failing to call for the deployment of peacekeepers. “That U.N. resolution brings nothings to us,” he told Reuters.“We don’t want U.N. police but U.N. peacekeepers who would prevent Burundi from sliding into another civil war.” The opposition wants the peacekeepers to be deployed to disarm the different armed groups including the militia allied to the ruling CNDD FDD party, known as “Imbonerakure”, Ngendakumana said. “We need forces capable of restoring our army,” he said, citing last month’s
assassination of a senior army officer and rising cases of desertion by troops. Tom Malinowski, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labour, accused the government of going back on its commitment to resolve the crisis through dialogue. “Denouncing everybody from the Catholic church, to the media... to foreign countries as enemies of the people of Burundi is not going to get us to a successful dialogue,” Malinowski told a news conference in Bujumbura.
Syrian Forces Seize Islamic State-held Al-Qarytain Syrian and allied forces, backed by Russian air strikes, drove Islamic State militants out of the town of al-Qaryatain yesterday, Syria’s military command said, after gradually encircling it over the past few days. Surrounded by hills, al-Qaryatain is 100 km (60 miles) west of the ancient city of Palmyra, which government forces recaptured from Islamic State last Sunday. Al-Qaryatain had been held by the militant group since late August. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been trying to retake al-Qaryatain and other pockets of Islamic State
control to reduce the jihadist group’s ability to project military power into the heavily populated western region of Syria, where Damascus and other main cities are located. Syrian state television said the army and its allies “fully restored security and stability to al-Qaryatain after killing the last remaining groups of Daesh terrorists” in the town, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. In a statement read out on Syrian television, the military command said this was a strategic victory which secures oil and gas routes between
the Damascus area and oilfields in eastern Syria. It also disrupts Islamic State supply routes within Syria. Government forces entered the town from a number of directions, Syrian media said. A Syrian military source told SANA state news agency the army had cleared areas northwest of the town of explosives planted by Islamic State. Islamic State militants retreating from Palmyra laid thousands of mines which the Syrian army is now clearing before civilians can return. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
government forces had taken over half the town and that fierce fighting continued between Assad’s troops and Islamic State to the north and southeast of al-Qaryatain. The Britain-based Observatory, which monitors the five-year-old Syrian conflict through a network of sources on the ground, said more than 40 air strikes by Russian and Syrian planes hit areas near the town on Sunday. Islamic State still has complete control over the city of Raqqa, its de facto capital, and it controls most of Deir al-Zor province in eastern Syria, which borders Iraq.