Foreign diplomats yesterday told Honduras’ government to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya. In a confrontation broadcast on local television, President Roberto Micheletti scolded the diplomats for refusing to recognize what he insisted was the lawful removal of Zelaya under the Honduran Constitution and for isolating his country. “You don’t know the truth or you don’t want to know it,” he said. Canada’s Minister of State for the Americas, Peter Kent, then told Micheletti that the international community respects the Honduran Constitution, but it opposes the military’s ouster of Zelaya. The OAS delegation is scheduled to leave the capital of Tegucigalpa Thursday. It is recognized that the ousted president alienated business leaders after he allied himself with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. A Zimbabwean court has issued a warrant of arrest against a senior minister from President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party for failing to testify in a case where a white commercial farmer is refusing to vacate his farm. The warrant was issued by a magistrate in the farming town of Chinhoyi after the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs, Mr Didymus Mutasa failed to turn up in court for the hearing. Mr Mutasa who is in charge of the country’s feared state secret service was summoned to give evidence in support of the farmer whose land was acquired by the government in 2005. Hundreds of Zimbabwe’s remaining white farmers are being hauled before the courts for refusing to leave their farms that were acquired for redistribution to blacks under Mr Mugabe’s land reforms. It is a criminal offence to remain in occupation of land without lawful authority under the controversial Gazetted Lands (Consequential
Provisions) Act. The minister had sent his lawyer to represent him in the case but the magistrate ruled that he had to appear in person. The online poll being conducted by Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan
Tsvangirai’s MDC party still shows that more people are keen on the party remaining in the inclusive government. Since polling started on Sept. 24, more people have been voting for the former opposition party to remain in government. By the fifth day of the polling on Sept. 28, the party had recorded 52.8 percent of the voters supporting the stay in government. The margin has since continued to increase with 57.2 percent of the voters registered as of noon on Thursday, against 42.8 percent of the opponents who initially accounted for 47.2 percent. The number of respondents continues to be low, however, with 166 people
having cast their votes by Thursday. This could be attributed to limited
access to the Internet by the majority of Zimbabweans. The spirit of keeping the MDC in government is shared even by many within
President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, given the improvement that has taken place in people’s lives since the formation of the inclusive government. Analysts have also said it would not be in the interests of any to pull out now, against the people’s hope for a brighter future. The MDC initiated the poll after expressing frustration over what it called outstanding issues to the Global Political Agreement, which gave
birth to the inclusive government. Among its complaints are the appointments of Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono and Attorney-General Johannes Tomana, whom the party wants to be replaced; the failure to swear in the party’s treasurer-general Roy Bennet as deputy minister of agriculture and the appointment of provincial governors. Mugabe has refused to swear Bennet into office, arguing that he has a pending criminal case in the courts of law. He has promised, however, that he will swear him into office as soon as he is cleared of the charges. Unless Uganda begins to address the poverty, ethnic divisions and social unrest in its midst, the country’s future will be blighted,
Archbishop Henry Orombi of Uganda has warned. Police report that 24 people died in two days of rioting in and around Kampala that began on Sept 10 after the government forbade King Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, the leader of Uganda’s largest ethnic group, the Baganda, from touring the Kayunga region near Kampala. Kayunga is a part of the Baganda kingdom, however, only a minority of its residents are Baganda. The government forbade the king from visiting the region after it said he declined to meet with separatist groups. The government ban angered militant Baganda leaders who launched two days of rioting directed against the government. In a statement released last week by Archbishop Orombi, who was outside of the capital and unable to return while the violence raged, the Ugandan church leader said: “The events of last week when riots broke out in different parts of the central region, when lives were lost, property destroyed and civic life paralysed all call on us to reflect deeply on how we as a nation came to this point and how we shall move forward. “As a people, we are not united. We are divided along the lines of tribal, regional, district, political ideology and social status,” he said, and “these divisions are culminating into visible and audible hatred.” Poverty and unemployment lay behind the violence as well. “We have made strides in economic development, but how widespread is this prosperity?”, he asked. “The gap between the poor and rich seems to be growing by the day. This gap cannot be ignored because sooner or later, it could become fertile ground for instability,” Archbishop Orombi said.