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Commentaries on Parliamentary News: Weekly Digest Review

 

 

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Togo: rejection by the majority of reform to prevent the president from running for a third term

In Togo, the National Assembly on Monday rejected a bill limiting the number of presidential terms, allowing the current president Faure Gnassingbe to run for a third term in 2015, according to our Observers onsite.

 

The bill, proposed by the Government, provided six constitutional reforms long demanded by the opposition, including the election of the President considering "direct and secret universal suffrage for a term of 5 years, renewable only once."

 

Members of the Union for the Republic (UNITE), majority with 62 seats out of 91, voted against the reform.

On the death of General Gnassingbe Eyadema, the army carried his son Faure Gnassingbé to power. Upon adapting to power soon, he also won the presidential elections in 2005 and 2010, which results were contested by the opposition. Even if he has not yet announced his intentions for the next presidential election, scheduled for the first quarter of 2015, nothing prevents him legally in the current constitution to run for a third term.

 

The bill rejected by the majority members also included:

 

  • A voting in two rounds for the presidential

  • The recomposition of the Constitutional Court and the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI).

 

The main opposition formations like the "Collective Save Togo" (CST) and the "Rainbow Coalition", have frequently expressed their indignation to demand the limitation of the presidential mandate with "immediate effect". Associations close to the government have also demonstrated on Monday in Lome, to demand the candidacy of Faure Gnassingbé in 2015.

 

Parliamentary Observatory

Lome, July 05 2014

Nepad Summit on Financing Infrastructure in Africa

A summit of heads of state to finance infrastructure projects of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) opened Sunday, June 15, 2014 in Dakar, attended by several African leaders.

 

Senior officials and experts from international and African private sector financial institutions came together to develop a strategy for a public-public partnership (PPP) to finance 16 Nepad "priority" infrastructure projects; among 51 Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), the period from 2010 to 2040.

 

Dakar summit is organized by the Government of Senegal in partnership with:

 

➢ The Agency Nepad

➢ The Commission of the African Union (AU),

➢ African Development Bank (AfDB),

➢ The United Nations Commission for Africa (ECA)

➢ The World Bank.

 

President Macky Sall, also Chairman of the Orientation of NEPAD Heads of State Committee, said in the presence of his counterparts from Mali, Ibrahim Keita Boubabar, Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, Benin, Boni Yayi, President Commission of the African Union (AU), Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma:

 

"We need to accelerate regional integration and economic infrastructure interconnection. We rely primarily on our own efforts (to raise) domestic resources due to reflux of official development assistance and volatility of capital markets. "

 

"Africa has certainly urgent and overwhelming needs, but these resources, it is intended, not as a receptacle for help, but a hub of opportunities, investment and partnership," said President Macky Sall, calling to explore alternative sources of funding, mainly internal.

 

Political and economic landscape of the continent is favorable to reduce its deficit in infrastructure, the opportunity is real to a new dynamic in the implementation of major infrastructure projects, to give the full extent of its potential growth and thus to accelerate the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

 

A selection of projects identified as ready for implementation, in the fields of electricity, ports and roads, railways and oil,  are hereby prioritized:

 

• Extension Port of Dar es Salaam,

• Pipeline Nigeria-Algeria,

• Modernisation Railway Dakar-Bamako

• Construction Abidjan-Lagos Corridor Littoral,

• Corridor North Africa

• Bridge Road & Rail Brazzaville-Kinshasa.

 

For President Boni Yayi of Benin, "the continuous improvement of the business environment is a condition (essential) the attractiveness of investment and finance."

 

To fill the gap in infrastructure in Africa, experts believe investments "nearly $ 93 billion per year for more than a decade, according to experts from the summit.

 

Parliamentary Observatory

observatoire.parlementaire@gmail.com

Dakar, June 16th 2014

 

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