West African regional leaders have failed to convince Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh, who has lost and rejected the results of a recent presidential election, to allow power transition. Political upheaval erupted in Gambia after the presidential election on December 1, when opposition leader Adama Barrow was declared the winner. Incumbent Jammeh, who has ruled Gambia for 22 years and was seeking re-election, first conceded defeat but then backtracked, calling for a re-vote.

Gambian military forces, professing loyalty to the president, seized the headquarters of the national elections commission on Tuesday and blocked staffers from entering the office. Leaders from a regional bloc known as the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, traveled to Gambia in a failed attempt to strike a deal with the president to make him leave power. “It is not time for a deal. It is not something that can happen in one day. It is something that we have to work on,” said Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who led the ECOWAS delegation.

The regional leaders will meet again on Saturday, in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, to further seek a solution to the crisis. ECOWAS president Marcel Alain de Souza warned on Tuesday that military intervention could be considered if the Gambian president avoided to step down. Head of the president’s party, the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction, has filed a petition with Gambia’s Supreme Court demanding a fresh vote with a re-validated voter registry.

The document, which was filed against the election commission and Gambia’s attorney general on Tuesday, said the recent election should be invalidated because, it said, the vote was not conducted fairly. “The petition prays that it be determined that the said Adama Barrow was not duly elected or returned as president and that the said election was void,” read the petition.

But it was not clear what the filing of the petition with the Supreme Court would entail, as some of the institution’s judges have been dismissed by Jammeh himself in a previous row. “The only recourse when you have any problems with the results of the elections… one has to appeal to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has been dormant since May 2015,” said the election commission’s chairman, Alieu Momar Njie, referring to the time when Jammeh dismissed the judges.

Barrow has denounced Jammeh’s rejection of the vote results and said the president lacks the constitutional authority to call for a new vote or to invalidate the election. The United States, the United Nations Security Council, and international organizations have also called for a peaceful transition of power.

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Gambian military forces have taken over the office of the Independent Electoral Commission amid a dispute over the result of a recent presidential election. Alieu Momarr Njai, the chairman of the commission, said on Tuesday that security forces had entered the commission’s building. “The military came to my office and said I am not to touch anything and told me to leave,” Njai said, adding, “I am worried for my safety.”

The raid comes amid increasing disagreement about the result of the recent presidential election. President Yahya Jammeh, who reportedly gained 208,487 votes or about 40 percent, had initially conceded defeat against Adama Barrow, who obtained 222,708 votes or over 43.3 percent. However, Jammeh later changed his mind after the commission revised some results.

Njai rejected Jammeh’s worry about the validity of the revised outcome. He said Jammeh would go nowhere by challenging the outcome. “The election results were correct, nothing will change that,” Njai said, adding, “If it goes to court, we can prove every vote cast. The results are there for everyone to see.”

Heads of state from several countries in the West African region began arriving in the Gambia on Tuesday in a bid to persuade Jammeh to relinquish power. Marcel de Souza, the president of the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS), who leads the initiative to make Jammeh leave office, said ECOWAS may even be forced to send troops to the Gambia.

“We have done it in the past,” he said, adding, “We currently have troops in Guinea-Bissau with the Ecomib mission. We have had troops in Mali. And therefore it is a possible solution.”

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Gambia’s long-time President Yahya Jammeh has rejected the results of the country’s recent presidential election a week after conceding defeat to his rival. “I hereby reject the results in totality,” Jammeh said in a televised address late Friday, insisting that investigations since the December 1 poll have revealed a number of voting irregularities, which he described as unacceptable. “Let me repeat: I will not accept the results based on what has happened,” added Jammeh, who has ruled the West African country for more than 22 years.

During the address, the Gambian ruler further underlined that some figures in the election results had been transposed and that voter turnout had been suppressed. “Our investigations reveal that in some cases voters were told that the opposition has already won and that there was no need for them to vote and, out of anger, some of them returned home,” Jammeh said.

The remarks came just a week after he was shown on state television calling opposition candidate Adama Barrow and cheerfully wishing him the best. “You are the elected president of The Gambia, and I wish you all the best,” Jammeh said to Barrow at the time, adding, “I have no ill will.” The striking turnaround is expected to incite indignation among the opposition as well as a large number of Gambians living in exile abroad. This is while in the week since Jammeh conceded defeat, dozens of political prisoners had already been set free on bail.

It remains to be seen whether the small African country of only 1.9 million people would tolerate Jammeh’s renewed rule. Following news reports about his defeat last week, Gambians reportedly took to the streets – singing, dancing and shouting “Freedom!” Western governments have been especially critical of Jammeh’s rule in Gambia pointing to his directives to quit the commonwealth of former British colonies and the Western-led International Criminal Court (ICC). In quitting the Commonwealth in 2013, Jammeh described the organization as a “neo-colonial institution.” He also announced in October that Gambia would leave the ICC, which he dismissed as the “International Caucasian Court.”

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President Paul Biya secretly sent an emissary to Libreville to congratulate Ali Bongo for his re-election. The Minister of the Economy and Finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey was the Biya acolyte who traveled to Gabon with the message to the Gabonese president.

Cameroon Concord News informant in the Gabonese capital hinted that Minister Alamine Ousmane Mey also met with senior cabinet ministers of the Gabonese administration.

By Chi Prudence Asong

“It would be better to accept dialogue with President Bongo for an honorable exit” This was the last statement on the Gabonese situation from visiting French Prime Minister in Abidjan.  Manuel Valls has made the French position clearer after a failed French attempt to oust President Ali Bongo.

In an interview with the French state media Radio France Internationale, Prime Minister Manuel Valls explained that his country had recognized the results of the Gabonese presidential elections and opted for dialogue initiated by President Ali Bongo. Said the prime minister “I would say it simply: France had recognized the results of the election. There is a president, there will be parliamentary elections.”

It now remains to be seen whether this reversal of the French position on Gabon will be enough to calm down the happenings in Libreville.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Gabonese opposition leader Jean Ping has vowed not to abandon his pursuit of presidency soon after the Constitutional Court upheld the narrow victory of incumbent President Ali Bongo in last month’s presidential election and dismissed Ping’s appeal.

“This decision does not bring the Gabonese people together and it does not appease them because they don’t recognize it, nor does the international community, which gives it no value,” Ping said on Saturday, hours after the court declared its final decision on the August 27 election.

The opposition leader said the court ruling was “miscarriage of justice.” Ping had declared himself the rightful president and called for a vote recount over alleged electoral fraud days after Bongo won the election with a razor-blade margin.

In its final decision, the high court acknowledged that the 57-year-old Bongo had garnered 50.66 percent of the votes against 47.24 percent for the 73-year-old Ping, while partially changing the results of the close vote by putting the margin at 11,000, almost doubling the 6,000 margin that was initially announced.

“I will not retreat. (As) president clearly elected by the Gabonese people, I remain at your side to defend your vote and your sovereignty,” Ping said.

Ping’s refusal to concede defeat raises the specter of prolonged unrest in the oil-rich central African country, which has already suffered from bloody clashes between Ping’s supporters and police over the past month. According to the opposition, some 100 people have so far lost their lives in clashes and 1,200 others have been taken into custody as part of a government crackdown.

Bongo has thanked his supporters, underlining challenges Gabon would face in the wake of the election. “The tight margin of this victory means there are many voters who, for one reason or another, did not choose us. We must decipher their message, hear and understand it,” Bongo stated.

He also said in an interview with Reuters on Saturday that he “most likely” included leading opposition figures in his new government, adding that “everything is possible.” Following the post-election chaos, the European Union and certain countries including the US and France, urged calm and called on authorities in the former French colony to show more transparency about the election results.

Bongo, who came to power in 2009, will now remain at the helm for a second seven-year term, succeeding his father, Omar Bongo, who had come to power in 1967 and passed away in 2009.

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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has named five former army generals as new provincial governors as part of appointments that increase the influence of military and security figures on crucial bodies. The five new provincial governors were sworn in during a ceremony at the presidential compound on Wednesday. Atef Abdel-Hamid, a former army officer and the minister of transportation in the 2011 Essam Sharaf government, was named as the new governor of the most populated and capital province of Cairo. The position had been vacant for six months.

Amr Abdel-Moneim, a former military official and the current secretary-general of the Egyptian cabinet, was appointed as the new governor of the northern province of Qalyubia. Alexandria’s new governor is former police general Reda Farahat. Former police general Essam el-Din el-Bedawai was appointed as the governor of Minya Province in the Upper Egypt region, while Air Force Major General Ahmed Mohamed Hamed was named governor of Suez.

University professor Gamal Sami was appointed the governor of Fayoum Province, located about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of Cairo. Sisi also named retired 64-year-old army general Mohamed Ali el-Sheikh as the new minister of supply. His nomination had been approved by the parliament on Tuesday.

Sheikh succeeds Khaled Hanafi, who had to step down last month amid corruption allegations and implication in a scandal related to fraudulent wheat subsidy payments. Egyptian provincial governors normally have held senior roles in homeland security and the military before their appointment. With the recent appointments, only eight of the country’s 27 provincial governors now have civilian backgrounds.

The Egyptian government has been engaged in a crackdown on the opposition since democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in July 2013 in a military coup led by Sisi who was then the head of the armed forces. Sisi has been accused of leading the suppression in which hundreds of Morsi supporters have been killed in clashes with security forces. Rights groups say the army’s crackdown has led to the deaths of over 1,400 people and the arrest of 22,000 others, including some 200 people who have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

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Denise Mekamne has replaced Seraphin Moundounga at the Ministry of Justice. The information was made public on Wednesday night on the airwaves of the national television by Prime Minister Daniel Ona Ondo.

In all President Ali Bongo made just three ministerial changes in the government. Former Justice Minister Seraphin Moundounga was a close ally to the former President of the National Assembly and it is rumoured that they could create a political party.

Désiré Guedon, Minister in charge of Town Planning and Housing replaced Alexis Boutamba Mbina.

By Chi Prudence Asong

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has agreed to the deployment of 4,000 additional UN peacekeepers after initially rejecting the regional protection force as a breach of its sovereignty. Kiir made the announcement on Sunday following a meeting with the UN Security Council in the capital Juba.

“The transitional government of national unity gives its consent for the deployment of the regional force,” read a joint statement released by the UN and the government. Juba initially rejected the proposal, which was offered earlier in the month, stating that it lends the United Nations the ability to govern and “seriously undermines” South Sudan’s sovereignty.

South Sudan has witnessed a new wave of conflict since July 8, when gunfire erupted near the state house in Juba as Kiir and then Vice President Riek Machar were holding a meeting. More than 300 people were killed in the clashes. The country gained independence from Sudan in 2011. It has gone through turmoil ever since.

The US envoy to the UNSC, Samantha Power, praised the additional deployment but noted that it was now time for action. “What we need to do now is move from those very important high-level commitments into working up the modalities in an operational way,” she said.

The conflict in South Sudan has exposed deep ethnic divisions. It erupted after a power struggle between President Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, and rebel leader Machar, a member of the Nuer ethnic group. “Fundamentally, it’s going to be the tribes themselves and the political leadership of this country that are going to have to come together,” added Power.

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South Africa’s ruling party, African National Congress (ANC), has been dealt a major blow as an opposition politician is named as the mayor of the capital Pretoria for the first time since the end of Apartheid two decades ago. Opposition councilor Solly Msimanga, 36, of the liberal center-right Democratic Alliance (DA), was elected Pretoria mayor on Friday.

“The people decided which way they want the city to go, and it was not the direction that it has been taking in the last… years,” Msimanga said in his inaugural speech to the city council. People are “tired of corruption, they are tired of nepotism, they are tired of cronyism… they are tired of work only given to members of certain families and their friends,” he said.

Msimanga vowed to end the patronage that he said had left the capital in the red. “This city is technically bankrupt right now because of greediness and because of people who decided to put themselves first,” he said. “No more will our people suffer under the hands of the ANC.”  The ANC councilors heckled Msimanga during his speech.

It is the first time since the end of white-minority rule in 1994 that Pretoria, also known as Tshwane, is not headed by a mayor from the ANC. The loss for the ANC and victory for the DA follows nationwide municipal elections earlier this month. The ANC lost control of three major cities, namely, Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Nationwide, as well, the party suffered its worst results in 22 years in the municipal vote, gaining less than 54 percent of ballots cast, an eight percentage point drop from the last local elections in 2011. The ANC was once viewed as the South African party upholding the ideas and tenets of anti-Apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, and the DA as the party serving rich white South Africans.

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