Fighting in Ukraine intensifies ahead of Minsk talks

Niles Williamson

Fighting between Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian separatists escalated on Monday and Tuesday, ahead of cease fire talks being held today in Belarus. Each side has pushed to make strategic territorial gains ahead of today’s meeting.

Delegates from Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia as well as representatives of the separatists and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are meeting today to discuss a possible ceasefire. It would create a demilitarized zone in eastern Ukraine and possibly halt fighting that has killed more than 5,000 people, since the Kiev regime launched military operations against pro-Russian separatists in the spring of last year.

Conflicting reports of a deal emerged late last night, involving the withdrawal of heavy military equipment and establishing an effective means of enforcing the ceasefire. If such an agreement is signed, it would be the second ceasefire since the Minsk Protocol, signed in September, which has been repeatedly violated by both sides over the last several months. The Kiev regime signed that accord when it was in an unfavorable military position—as it is now—and used the ceasefire to prepare a renewed offensive against the separatists in eastern Ukraine.

French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew to Moscow at the end of last week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as part of emergency diplomatic efforts to avoid the outbreak of full-scale war in Europe, after it was reported that the US government was moving to directly arm the Ukrainian military.

Merkel traveled to Washington, DC on Monday to meet with US President Barack Obama, who has put off making a decision on sending weapons and equipment, including anti-armor missiles, until after the conclusion of today’s talks in Minsk.

“If, in fact, diplomacy fails, I’ve asked my team to look at all options, what other means can we put in place to change Mr. Putin’s calculus. And the possibility of lethal defensive weapons is one of those options that’s being examined. But I have not made a decision on that yet,” Obama told reporters.

According to Bloomberg View, US Secretary of State John Kerry told a closed meeting of US lawmakers, including Chairman of the Armed Services Committee Republican Senator John McCain, gathered in Germany for last weekend’s Munich Security Conference that he is in favor of arming the right-wing pro-Western Ukrainian regime with lethal arms and equipment.

The current government in Kiev was brought to power in a US and EU backed fascist-spearhead coup last February which ousted pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych. Since the spring of last year, the regime has been waging a bloody offensive against ethnic Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region who are opposed to the government’s pro-Western alignment.

A renewed offensive and corresponding military draft initiated last month by the Kiev regime quickly collapsed, with the separatists responding with their own offensive that achieved territorial gains.

The Kiev regime has faced significant resistance to its mobilization order, implemented in January, severely impacting its ability to carry out military operations in the east. By the end of last month, at least 7,000 people were facing criminal charges for refusing compulsory military service.

In a high-profile incident, Ruslan Kotsaba, a journalist from western Ukraine, was arrested this week on charges of treason after he released a video stating that he would rather go to prison for draft dodging than fight the pro-Russian separatists in the east. Kotsaba also called on anyone else that was drafted to resist military service.

In recent weeks, the separatists successfully pushed the Kiev regime’s forces out of the Donetsk airport and encircled several thousand Ukrainian fighters in the strategic rail town of Debaltseve.

Separatist militias moved into Lohvynove on Tuesday, cutting off access to Ukrainian-controlled territory. This was part of an ongoing effort to encircle several thousand pro-Kiev regime forces entrenched in Debaltseve. Fighting has also been reported in Chornukhyne, seven miles east of Debaltseve.

A spokesman for the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) claimed that separatist fighters had succeeded in completely surrounding the city.

DPR spokesman Eduard Basurin called on Ukrainian fighters trapped in Debaltseve to surrender. “We guarantee security to all who lay down their arms. The others will be eliminated. If the enemy attempts to attack in another place, the strike will be repelled. Some 5,000-6,000 Ukrainian servicemen have been trapped in Debaltseve,” he stated.

Meanwhile, the fascist Azov Battalion, a part of the Ukrainian National Guard, opened a new government offensive along Ukraine’s southern Black Sea coast. The operation is aimed at retaking the city of Novoazovsk, which has been controlled by pro-Russian separatists since August of last year.

The Kiev regime’s military spokesman, Andrey Lysenko, told reporters that the purpose of the assault was to return “to the line of demarcation, to their positions, drawn by the Minsk agreements.” Oleksandr Turchynov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, was also in Mariupol to assist in coordinating the push for Novoazovsk.

In the course of the day’s fighting, the pro-Kiev battalion took control of the villages of Pavlopil, Oktyabyr, and Shyrokyne, which is less than 23 kilometers west of Novoazovsk. Separatist-held positions in the village of Kominternove, less than 30 kilometers northeast of Mariupol, were shelled by pro-Kiev forces.

Several rockets struck the Ukrainian military headquarters in Kramatorsk on Tuesday, injuring at least 10 Ukrainian soldiers. Kramatorsk was retaken from the pro-Russian separatists in July of last year after a month-long assault by the Ukrainian military. The city has since been used as the headquarters for the Ukrainian military’s operations in the Donbass.

Rocket strikes in the eastern suburbs of Kramatorsk also killed at least seven and wounded another 15 civilians. The Ukrainian government claims that the rockets were fired from the separatist-held city of Horlivka, 80 kilometers to the southeast, but separatist forces denied responsibility for the attack.

On Monday, the shelling of a chemical plant in Donetsk by Ukrainian forces resulted in a massive explosion, though there were no reported casualties.

HSBC documents reveal criminal conspiracy of banks and governments

Andre Damon

On Sunday, international news outlets the Guardian and Le Monde, working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), published articles based on their analysis of leaked files showing that the Swiss private banking arm of HSBC, Europe's largest bank, functioned for years as a tax evasion and money laundering firm.

The company ran a branch that gave out “bricks” of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in foreign denominations and provided its wealthy clientele with advice on how to commit tax fraud, according to the reports.

These facts have for years been been in the possession of international financial regulators and governments throughout the world—including those of Britain, France and the United States—which systematically covered them up. Neither the bank, nor its executives, nor any of the clients that utilized its tax dodging services have been criminally prosecuted.

No one should believe that HSBC is an aberration; there is no doubt that similar practices are carried out by all major international financial institutions. The HSBC files have unearthed a cesspool of corruption, criminality, bribery and collusion that pervades the entire capitalist system and the governments that defend it.

The HSBC revelations are only the latest in a series of scandals involving virtually every major financial institution. These have included the selling of fraudulent subprime mortgage-backed securities, illegal foreclosures, commodities fraud and the manipulation of LIBOR and international foreign exchange benchmarks.

HSBC was one of the institutions whose greed and lawlessness plunged the world into a crisis in 2008 from which it has never recovered, cost millions of people their jobs and launched a wave of austerity all over the world involving the slashing of workers wages’ and social benefits.

The list of people who used HSBC’s services include corporate executives, fundraisers and major donors to American, British and Australian political parties, and politicians from at least 17 countries, including Britain.

The trail of dirty money reaches as high as former US President Bill Clinton. British business tycoon Richard Caring, who once picked up more than five million Swiss francs in cash from the bank, donated $1 million to Clinton’s foundation from his Swiss bank account.

The report by the ICIJ notes that the month before Caring made his donation, he “funded a champagne and caviar extravaganza at Catherine the Great’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, flying in 450 guests to be entertained by Sir Elton John and Tina Turner and addressed by Bill Clinton.”

It also notes that Charles Barrington Goode, a major fundraiser for the Liberal Party and chairman of ANZ bank, one of Australia’s largest financial institutions, held an account with the bank under a false name for three decades.

In addition to “legitimate” businessmen and high-ranking politicians, HSBC’s services were used by drug kingpins, weapons smugglers and traffickers in illegal “blood diamonds.” Reviewing the reports, it is impossible to determine where the criminal underworld ends and the ruling class of bankers and corporate CEOs and their millionaire political front-men begins.

While no bank executives or wealthy clients have been prosecuted, the one person out of this morass of criminality who faces serious legal consequences is the whistleblower who exposed them.

In 2009, an HSBC technical employee named Hervé Falciani came to realize that HSBC’s private bank was operating a huge tax evasion operation, and began collecting information to provide to Swiss authorities, which showed no interest.

He subsequently turned files pointing to tax fraud by some 130,000 people over to the French police, who shared them with other governments, including that of Britain and America. Falciani has since been charged with violating Switzerland’s bank secrecy laws and carrying out industrial espionage.

In 2010, then French Minister of Finance Christine Lagarde provided a list of 2,000 suspected tax evaders to the Greek government, and the list subsequently came into the possession of Greek magazine publishers, who printed it. They were subsequently charged, then found not guilty, of breaching privacy laws.

A portion of the files accumulated by Falciani were recently obtained by Le Monde and shared with the ICIJ and other newspapers. The files cover some 30,000 accounts holding nearly $120 billion in assets.

In the UK, more than 3,000 people have been investigated based on Falciani’s files, but the government has brought no charges against any of them.

Perhaps the biggest cover-up has been carried out in the United States, where in 2012 the Justice Department agreed to a $1.2 billion “deferred prosecution” settlement with HSBC on charges of money laundering for Mexican drug cartels, never mentioning the fact that the US government had evidence the bank helped its clients evade taxes.

One of the leading architects of the settlement with HSBC, Loretta Lynch, at that time the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, is now the Obama administration’s nominee to replace Eric Holder as attorney general. The Reverend Lord Stephen Green, HSBC’s chief executive during the period covered by the files, was subsequently appointed the UK’s minister of state for trade and investment.

The British Labour Party, which was in power at the time that thousands of members of the British ruling class used HSBC to dodge their taxes, declared, “What is truly shocking is that [UK officials] were made fully aware of these practices back in 2010 but since then very little has been done.”

The revelations are likewise particularly striking in the baseness of the criminality they depict. After all, these people already make millions of dollars by paying workers poverty wages, slashing the pensions of the elderly and privatizing public assets. Do they really need to cheat on their taxes too? Is it really necessary, as the documents detail, for them to smuggle “bricks” of cash in some cases amounting to millions of dollars?

For the global financial elite, the line between “legitimate” business activity and political donations on the one hand, and fraud, theft and bribery on the other, does not exist. Capitalist society is run by thieves and criminals, who see the law as a minor inconvenience. In the immortal words of Leona Helmsley, “Only the little people pay taxes.”

We would ask those who still believe the social order exposed by these documents can be somehow reformed: Where would you start? Would you appeal to the politicians, who are all bought by political donations from financial criminals? Or to regulatory agencies, which have systematically covered up these crimes? Or the courts, which bring charges against whistleblowers while shielding financial criminals?

The entire structure of contemporary society, from major corporations to governments to regulators, is controlled by multi-billionaire financial oligarchs.

The only way to bring to justice the major banks like HSBC, and the millionaires and billionaires who used its services to commit fraud, is a complete reorganization of society. The ill-gotten wealth that corrupts every public institution must be seized, major corporations must be nationalized, and every existing state replaced with a workers’ government whose first task will be the establishment of democratic control over the basic forces of economic life.

China Foreign Minister's Visit to Kenya: An Analysis

 Bob Wekesa

As Kenyans were resuscitating themselves from the stupor of end of year holiday festivities and coming to terms with the fact that New Year 2015 was here with us, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi came calling. Wang’s Nairobi visit between January 10 and 11 was his first port of call anywhere in the world this year.

The visit might have passed for a fairly innocuous and routine diplomatic event except that certain covert and overt factors make it special and worth analysis. Discerning Kenyans may ponder over why a visitor of the stature of foreign minister of the world’s second largest economy elected to visit their rather lowly-ranking-by-global-standards country so early in the year!

Well, symbolically, Wang’s visit was in keeping with a consistent tradition devised in 1991 whereby a high level Chinese official makes Africa his first destination every New Year. The significance of an Africa-first for a Chinese top official annually is often bundled with the calibration of Africa-China relations as founded on as such conceptions as south-south solidarity and true and sincere friendship. In this scheme of things, a Chinese top official would have elected to visit the country with which China operates the highest level of economic engagement: the United States of America. However, Chinese officials see relations with the US as a pursuit for explicitly pragmatic interests while relations with Africa are seen as those of natural allies in a competitive geopolitical environment. 

The symbolism however tells only half the story as even the chummiest of international relations must be anchored in economic and political motivations. After all, until fairly recently, Kenya-China relations were cool rather than “tight” particularly during the Cold War epoch when the two nations travelled different ideological paths: the former gravitating West and capitalist; the latter decidedly communist.

Yet, since former President Jiang Zemin’s 1996 Africa tour in which Kenya was among the selected few, this East African country has remained high on China’s Africa agenda. It is worth noting that Jiang Zemin’s visit was momentous to the extent that it was it was the first ever visit by a Chinese president to Africa at the outset of China’s more robust policy toward Africa. Evidence of Kenya’s importance on the Chinese diplomatic circuit can be seen in the fact that the 2005 visit by former president Hu Jintao and last year’s visit by current Chinese premier Li Keqiang not mentioning other high ranking Chinese state and party officials over the years. The importance of these visits is that excepting South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt, other African countries hardly attract the interest of Chinese leaders on such an elevated scale. 

Indeed foreign minister Wang’s January visit resonates with historical as well as contemporary dynamics. In the present, media reporting on the visit indicates that one of his objectives was to lobby for the extradition of Chinese nationals facing charges in Kenya for allegedly being in Kenya illegally on a supposed criminal mission. This constitutes dicey headwinds in the hitherto even-keeled Kenya-China relations. Observers of this dramatic saga will be keenly watching to see how it develops given the mix of legal, nationalistic and diplomatic dimensions it has wended into. The elephant in the room for which perhaps only time will settle is: will the legal, nationalistic and diplomatic maneuvering on the matter on the Chinese and Kenyan side put paid to Kenya-China engagements?

Notwithstanding the cyber-crime conundrum, analysts might have missed other significant factors that might have impelled Wang to make the symbolic junket to Kenya. Probably the most crucial of these factors is Kenya’s geopolitical positioning on the continent. Not long after he was elected President, Uhuru Kenyatta famously encapsulated Kenya’s foreign policy as “Africa first, Africa second and Africa third.” He followed up this with highly visible visits to a number of African countries. Uhuru’s “Africa policy” was quickly conflated with his battle against the International Criminal Court (ICC) charges for crimes against human – now water under the bridge  - in that he was seen as lobbying African leaders to do him a good turn vis a vis the ICC specifically and the West generally. On this score, China, the first non-African country for Uhuru to visit as president, is seen to have been a friend in deed. But more importantly, Chinese officials might have noted Kenya’s fallout with the West and its rising stature on the continent in such a manner to earmark it a higher ranking in its African policy. It is probable that Chinese foreign policy strategists might have seen Kenya as a robust African ally in the continuing battle with the West on myriad political and economic issues. 

On the East African front, Uhuru and Kenya have been seen as the cog in the so-called coalition of the willing wheel bringing together Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan and more tepidly Burundi. For instance it will be remembered that when Premier Li Keqiang visited Kenya May last year, one of the multilateral meetings he held was with presidents Yoweri Museveni, Salva Kiir and Paul Kagame with Uhuru playing host. This was in the context of discussions for the construction of East African railway system. Indeed unconfirmed sources indicated that, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda had initially sought Chinese capital for the independent construction of their railways only for the Chinese side to advice for seamless cross-border infrastructure. Bundled with the near-incontestable Kenyan status as the regional economic powerhouse, all these make Kenya attractive as the gateway for Chinese economic and political interests in East Africa.

An equally powerful factor revolves around what several analysts refer to as “China’s long memory,” one in which Kenya is the few African countries with claim to bona fides. The fact of China leveraging history to the present can be seen in President Xi Jinping’s promulgation of the geopolitical policy-cum-strategy variously referred to as the “Silk Road Economic Belt,” “new Silk Road”, “Silk Road and Maritime Silk Road”, “Chinese and 21st-Century New Silk Road” and “Silk Road of the Sea” last year. At its very basic, the policy looks to see China expend resources on the revival of the ancient trade routes from southern China to Eurasia, Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia and Africa. To this end, the Chinese government unveiled a $40 billion Silk Road Fund, a demonstration if any was needed, that the Silk Road strategy sits at the heart of China’s global economic strategy. 

In the Silk Road cartographic models that have been generated, Africa feature not by road extensions but by a maritime route that touches Mombasa on the East Africa coast (with a short dash to Nairobi) and then extends via the Red Sea to Egypt. In essence therefore the Kenyan coast is the landing point for China’s economic plans in the Sub Saharan region going forward. It is in these respects that Chinese interest in the ports on the Kenyan coast (Lamu and Mombasa) as well as the Mombasa-Nairobi railways – funded and constructed with Chinese loans – should be seen.

So why is Kenya being included in the New Silk Road strategy? The straightforward answer is that the Kenyan coast was the site of ancient voyages by Chinese maritime ships. Specifically, the famous Chinese admiral, Zheng He led the maritime armada of ships to Malindi and Lamu in 1418. Indeed, one of the symbolic Kenya-China cultural project that has been underway since 2010 is the $2.4 million archeological research undertaken as partnership between the National Museums of China and the National Museums of Kenya.  

The upshot is that foreign minister Wang Yi might have made Nairobi his capital of choice for his maiden visit anywhere in the world in furtherance of the African dimensions of the Silk Road concept. Wang might have well elected to make his maiden tour of Africa elsewhere on the continent. After all, Kenya has hogged a little of Chinese visits than other African countries. Indeed Premier Li Keqiang was in Kenya less than a year ago. It would appear that the significance of the New Silk Road – in addition to Kenya’s econo-political positioning – were powerful motivations for the visit.

Spiegel Online warns of nuclear war

Johannes Stern

On Sunday evening, after the Munich Security

Conference, Spiegel Online published an article titled “NATO-Russia crisis: The Nuclear spectre returns”. It confirms the warnings of the World Socialist Web Site regarding the danger of nuclear war between the superpowers, which is steadily rising as the Ukraine crisis and the imperialist states’ aggression against Russia intensify.

The article begins by describing a little-known incident on January 25, 1995, which almost triggered nuclear war between the United States and Russia. At that time, Norwegian and American researchers fired a rocket from the Norwegian island of Andøya, which caused the Russian armed forces to go to the highest alert level, and prompted Russian president Boris Yeltsin to activate the keys to the nuclear weapons.

The rocket, used by the scientists to study the Northern Lights, travelled on the same trajectory that US intercontinental nuclear missiles would take on their way to Moscow. Moreover, on the Russian radar, the four-stage research rocket looked like a Trident missile fired by an American submarine. Then everything happened extremely quickly. The alarm sirens sounded in a Russian radar centre, then technicians reached for the phone and reported a US missile attack. Yeltsin called up generals and military advisers on the telephone, but finally gave the all-clear because no second missile followed.

Spiegel Online notes that Yeltsin at that time probably left the Russian nuclear missiles in their silos “because relations between Russia and the United States in 1995 were relatively trusting”. Today, however, the situation is entirely different. The magazine quotes senior politicians, military experts and scholars, who provide a picture of how dangerous the situation currently is.

“A five or six minute decision time can be enough if trust exists, when the communication channels exist and you can activate them quickly,” former Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov said during the Munich Security Conference, which was dominated by the imperialist powers’ escalation against Russia. “Unfortunately, this machinery is currently running very badly,” Ivanov added.

Asked what would happen today if the 1995 incident were repeated, he said: “I’m not sure if the right decisions would still be taken.”

Ivanov recently published an analysis with former British defence minister and head of the European Leadership Network (ELN) Des Browne and former US senator Sam Nunn, warning that “the institutions created for constructive interaction between Russia and the West have been badly damaged and are not in a position to deal with the current political, economic and security issues.”

The authors write that “for years, there has been no close personal relationships between leaders and no clear and timely communication necessary for crisis management”. The NATO-Russia Council was dissolved, and other agreements that serve to foster mutual trust, such as the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) and the Washington Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Systems (INF), had already been suspended or placed in question.

Back in November, the London-based ELN think tank published an alarming report on the growing threat of war in Europe. Since the NATO-supported right-wing coup in Kiev in February 2014, there had been almost 40 “near misses” between the Russian military and the NATO forces sent into eastern Europe that could have caused a military conflict.

Nunn described to Spiegel Online a gloomy picture of the situation: “Trust between NATO and Russia is almost destroyed. In the midst of Europe, a war is taking place, international treaties have collapsed or are heavily overloaded, we have tactical nuclear weapons everywhere in Europe. The situation is extremely dangerous.”

Ivanov compares the situation today with the Cold War. At that time, there were many security mechanisms, “a huge amount of agreements and documents which ensured that there was no military confrontation between the Soviet Union and NATO.” Today, “the danger of war [is] bigger”.

One measure of the nuclear threat is the “Doomsday Clock” of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ( BAS). On January 19, the BAS, which has existed since 1945, set the clock to “three minutes before midnight”. The last and the only time it had stood there was in 1984, when the United States stepped up the nuclear arms race against the Soviet Union, and as a result, “cut or limited all communication channels”.

The BAS justified its current decision as follows. The “political leaders” had failed “to protect citizens from possible disaster” and thus “endangered every person on earth.” In 2014, the nuclear powers had “taken the crazy and dangerous decision to modernise their nuclear arsenals”. They had abandoned “reasonable efforts to disarm” and allowed the “economic conflict between Ukraine and Russia to develop into an East-West confrontation”.

Significantly, neither the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists nor Spiegel Onlinenames those responsible for the growing threat of nuclear war. It was the imperialist powers who first organised a coup in Ukraine utilising fascist forces, and who since then drove forward the aggression against Russia and now prepare to supply arms to the pro-Western regime in Kiev.

The scientists’ and journalists’ silence is not surprising. While the BASpromotes illusions in the phony promises of the Obama administration to create a nuclear weapons-free world, Der Spiegel has followed the broader line of the German media, which has launched the most aggressive warmongering over the last year against Russia.

Now, it is dawning on some people in the newsroom how dangerous the situation that they helped conjure up really is. For example, Spiegel Onlinenotes that tactical nuclear weapons are also stored in Germany at the Büchel airbase in the Eifel, “which are currently being modernised at a high cost”. Although they are under US command, “in wartime” they could be “dropped by German Tornado fighter jets.”

Wealth Creation and Asset Management

F. Eugene Mayo

In order to accumulate wealth, income typically has to figure into a viable equation. Income is what people earn from labor, dividends, interest and rents or royalties generated from property ownership. If income is derived from such investment vehicles, recipients have reached a level of understanding that would cause them not to end up broke and downtrodden once their employment years have ceased. Wealth building is a gradual process that occurs from saving, investing and sacrificing daily, monthly and annually.

Stand your ground and declare an embargo on going to shopping centers and shopping on line. Refrain from succumbing to false advertising of lower prices being offered on merchandise on Black Friday, when in fact prices on merchandise are increased. Some suggestions have been included to help you save and avoid being a promiscuous spender.

1.ENERGY CONSERVATION: Americans constitute 5% of world population, but consume 24% of world energy according to BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2007. Start in your place of domicile by turning off lights and electrical gadgets when not in use. Turn down heating and cooling systems when your home is not occupied due to work days or vacations. If you are gone for some forty to fifty percent of a typical day and your heating and cooling plant are not operative during that period you are likely to see a significant savings in utility cost. These savings reflect money that could be placed in your savings account at end of each month. Teach all family members to turn off energy consuming items when not in use because money saved in utility expenditures is more money you and your family has available for saving , investing and wealth building and asset protection.

2.VEHICLES:Transportation cost (insurance, petroleum, maintenance, payments) is by far second largest cost item in a typical family budget. Automobile manufactures count on individuals keeping a vehicle for some 3.5 years before they dispose of same Considering exorbitant cost of vehicles with financing being in the 7 to 8 year range unless one makes a substantial down payment trading in a 3 to 4 year time frame could result in one creating an abundance of debt from trading up for new vehicles. When acquiring a vehicle, think in terms of owning that vehicle for ten years or 200,000 miles. However, of utmost importance is retiring that debt obligation in three years or less. A vehicle is the most non appreciable item in a typical house hold budget and each time you make a payment that vehicle depreciates in value. Save money to pay cash for your vehicle and create a viable relationship with an honest, competent, courteous and reliable mechanic is essential.

3.SAVINGS & INVESTING: Utilizing ten percent of your gross income for saving and investing is ideal to avoid impoverishment.  By all means it must be consistent and start early because it is a great benefactor when accumulating wealth. The more you save the better you can be prepared for unanticipated expenses that may come your way to disrupt your life styles. Fifty percent of all marriages end up in divorce and a substantial percentage of marriages are broken because of money or lack of money to meet debt obligations. One of the basic principles aspiring individuals should crystalize before marriage is consider current income, expenses assets or debt  If Mr. or Ms. RFM (right for me) is really clicking each of you will survive more abundantly when positive cash flow is a way of life.

4. GIFT GIVING: Throughout the year occasions arise that require expenditures for a gift and this is more renowned at Christmas than any other time of year. If you are engrossed with a group of co-workers friends or associates to exchange gifts, establish a limit for amount to be paid for that gift. Whatever you do during this period don’t create debt that will be with you for years to come or spend money you don’t have.   In purchasing gifts, place an amount by that recipients name even though you may not know what item will be. Once you have established amount for each person stay within that budget limit you have established in advance. Don’t spend money you don’t have or spend money to get a discount or a bonus. Don’t wait until the last minute and rush to buy something because Christmas is just one day and the item is likely to be substantially discounted immediately after Christmas. As always, lay–a-ways can be a good mode of payment where permissible.

5. MARKETING: Business enterprises spend in excess of $275 billion each year attempting to influence consumers to buy products they don’t need or want, but to improve that business bottom line. Black advertisers partake very sparsely in this revenue stream and Black and Brown people expend in excess of $2 trillion dollars due significantly to advertising. The best option for intelligent consumers is to turn off advertising commercials due to lack of common good that item being promoted can be to you and your family. If you don’t have the item as a planned purchase, ignore the advertisement.  Alcoholic beverages, vehicles, tobacco products, beverages, jewelry, and apparel items are heavily advertised to minority groups but each has little or no appreciable value. 

6. AS CONSUMERS OF GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Black and Brown people must become aggressively involved in voting and becoming apprised relative to what duties government and elected officials and their associates perform. Government exists to assist individuals that help politicians get elected to serve their constituents. They have political privileges and benefits regarding employment, contracts, sitting on boards and commissions and serving as department heads to establish and interpret policies and procedures.

Typically these policies and procedures fail to embrace your views and concerns if you are void of capital or positive cash flow. Appointees to a parole board could determine if your son or grandson is released on parole or remains incarcerated for a crime he may or may not have committed. Federal Reserve Board members can change interest rates that result in you paying a higher interest rate on home and automobile loans and credit card debt. Local planning and zoning boards could vote to permit a strip joint within a 500 foot radius of your home, resulting in pandemonium at all hours of evening that prevent you from sitting on your porch and ultimately driving down property values

7.ESTABLISH SMALL BUSINESS ENTERPRISES:Owner operated business enterprises typically generate more income to proprietors than jobs working for others. Don’t be reluctant to establish and build your own business and establish your customer base. Clinton Mosley owner and operator of A Good A/C Company has been in heating and air condition business better than 20 years, Does no marketing, and has an abundance of business. Michael Kanu, owner and operator of Michelle’s Home Style Buffet, has two well established eating facilities that serve delicious meals and has been in business for some ten years, and continue to grow. Ted Preston Smith owner/operator of Uniquely Yours Florist for better than 25 years in Louisville Kentucky. Recently retired from his floral business. Each of these business enterprises provided and continues to offer prompt courteous and reliable service at reasonable prices.to their customers in very competitive industries.

Each took entrepreneurial risk, invested their own capital and make employment opportunities available for a vast number of individuals. Each is a visionary in a competitive market that gives more service than expected to customers and are embraced by their markets.

Individuals financially depleted at end of their careers can excel and survive, but it must be on their own terms and accord. Economically misguided individuals are good citizens and outstanding Americans. However to become renowned and transcend from consumers to producer’s they must commence to make economic sacrifices to bolster their lives and families over extended periods of time. Considering political climate in country at this juncture, governmental assistance is not on the drawing board, and if so, it’s not likely to reach fruition due to political gridlock. Now is time to do for self and work on your economic salvation. Reportedly, the poor will always be with us, but you can determine who that person will be, and put forth a gallant effort it’s not you or any of your family members.

Uganda Pension Liberalisation Bill: A Critique

Morrison Rwakakamba

While reading the budget for 2014/2015 financial year, Uganda’s Minister of Finance Planning and Economic Development, Maria Kiwanuka announced that Retirements Benefits Sector Liberalization Bill currently in Parliament would be enacted into law with immediacy. The bill is aimed to provide for liberalization of the retirement benefits sector; to provide for fair competition among licensed retirement benefits schemes for mandatory contributions; to provide for mandatory contribution and benefits; to provide for voluntary contributions and voluntary schemes; to regulate occupational retirement benefits schemes; to provide for licensing of umbrella retirement benefits schemes; to provide for the portability and transfer of accrued benefits, to provide for innovation of new retirement products and services – and most of all; to repeal the National Social Security Fund Act Cap 222.

In effect, the  bill seeks to put workers money on open market – with the usual seductive assumption that workers will have unfettered freedom to save their money in a scheme where they get ‘higher return’ on their savings. Yet looking at global experiences, this argument is flawed and seeks to accentuate shadow markets. For example, these fancy ‘high return’ investments literally collapsed the United States and European Economies in 2009, requiring Government bail outs of their leading banks using taxpayer’s money. The US and EU were unable to protect savers from systematic failures of their sophisticated securities markets that sought to make higher returns without creating value until the bubble burst.  The biggest losers were pension funds that held the biggest investments on those markets.

Will the minister deliver on her promise in her budget speech for 2015/2016 financial year- five months from now? I really don’t think so- because there are many unanswered questions in this contentious bill that I tackle chronologically in this article. For example, does the bill entrench transparency through disclosure and access to information? Free information flow is critical in the highly sophisticated retirement benefits/pension sector. Members can only enforce their retirement benefits if they have access to timely and simplified information on scheme policies and operations. Information disclosure also enables members to make informed choices and to participate in scheme affairs that affect them. This enhances transparency and accountability which are all key tenets of good governance for any successful business entity. 

For these reasons, it is important for schemes to disclose to existing and potential plan members information on plan investment policies, current investments, scheme expenses, tax implications, actuarial reports, assets owned by the plan, financial position, effect of inflation on benefits and; the formulae for computation of benefits. Unfortunately, beyond the requirement for plans to display annual statement of accounts, the proposed law lacks sufficient provisions on access to material and relevant information.  The law if passed as is will expose unsuspecting plan members to rogue investment policies and decisions which undermine the whole essence of retirement benefits namely- to provide old age replacement income.

Secondly, does this liberalization bill enhance the security of the pension sector? Security means that the promise made to the worker will be fulfilled when that worker is eligible to receive his/her benefits. It has two facets: Strong governance of the sector and Sustainability which refers to whether the sector will have funds to pay beneficiaries when due. NSSF is fully funded, and can pay all member obligations. Why change this? The problem is the Public Service Pension Sector which is in arrears. According to the World Bank study of 2011, the arrears are to the tune of $2.6bn or 16% of Uganda’s GDP. The bill in current form excludes Public Service Pension Sector. This indicates the bill is not keen to enhance security of Uganda’s pension sector.

Third question; does this liberalization bill enhance the coverage of the pension sector? The bill lowers employee threshold from 5 to 1 employee. That will automatically bring in more people whether in a liberalized environment or non-liberalized environment. Do we need a new bill yet this can be accomplished by amending the NSSF Act. The experience of other economies that have liberalized their economies is more telling: Uruguay coverage fell from 55% to 51% - 8 years after pension liberalization reform. Argentina coverage fell from 45% to 40% - 12 years after reform, Bolivia coverage fell from 19% to 15% - 5 years after reform, Columbia coverage from 24% to 22%.- 5 years after reform.  In fact, 6 of the 8 Latin American countries that tried liberalization had either flat or reduced coverage. Liberalization bill, in its current form, is not needed to enhance coverage of the pension sector.

Forth question; does this liberalization bill enhance the effectiveness of the pension sector? Effectiveness refers to the ability to reach members in terms of value, products, and service points, i.e. making actual differences in member lives. The bill opens up new benefits that hitherto, had been excluded including health, education and homeownership. However, these can achieved by amending the NSSF Act. Furthermore, an argument is made that competition will force retirement funds to offer better service and products to members. While there is merit in this argument, we can all agree that Uganda Revenue Authority has improved its services over the years. So has Kampala Capital City Authority and same with Uganda Peoples Defense Forces. Have the foregoing institutions been liberalized to be efficient? What matters is leadership and proper governance. Our members of Parliament should therefore pursue reforms that strengthen governance and efficiency of NSSF instead of seeking to exterminate it.

Fifth question, Does Liberalizing the pension sector increase portability? The issue of portability is being discussed at the East African regional level. The consensus at that level suggests that rather than go for harmonization of laws, reciprocal arrangements are more practical. NSSF Kenya, NSSF Uganda and NSSF Tanzania Acts already have these provisions.We must all understand that occupational schemes are not retirement funds. These are private arrangements between employers and their staff as human resources terminal benefits. They are not transferable to other schemes--neither in Kenya nor in Uganda.

Moving forward, our Parliament should do first things first. i.e. pass the Social Security Policy, from which meaningful reforms of the subsectors can then be made. Secondly, most countries have set a mandatory contribution that is held and invested by national schemes e.g. Malaysia, USA, Kenya, Tanzania, Singapore and South Africa. These national schemes, provide, a basic safety net that is not exposed to the perils of market forces. The mandate of national schemes, include among others, expanding coverage to otherwise unreachable parts of the society- This helps countries meet the International Labor Organization objectives for security and coverage.  Ideally, the law should maintain mandatory contribution of 15%, through existing scheme-NSSF. At a minimum, the basic safety net can be funded with 10% contribution from the employer. 

By and large, Uganda should provide for the amendment of the NSSF Act by incorporating elements of the bill that are good instead of seeking repeal the NSSF Act. Parliament should move quickly to remove bottlenecks that curtail productivity of NSSF e.g. amend NSSF Act to include coverage of the informal sector, harmonize the laws with the rest of the region and provide for a more practical mechanism that will enable retirement schemes participate fully in the long term development of the country using safe instruments that provide reasonable returns to members. For example, Malaysia- Roads, the Port, Housing; Tanzania- Dodoma University, Dar es Salaam - Chalinze Dual Carriage way, Mkuranga Power Plant; Singapore-Roads, Kenya: Housing: Nyayo Embakasi. All the foregoing was done through direct borrowings, equity investments and infrastructure Bond. Uganda can pick lessons from this.

If NSSF Act is repealed, what happens to worker safeguards that are built in the Act, e.g. interest rate guarantee? Our Parliament should reflect on this and other many questions. In spite of challenges that have dogged NSSF over the years, a clever option would be to strengthen its management and close gaps in NSSF Act. In fact, a 2013 Actuarial Valuation by M/s Callund Consulting of UK confirmed that NSSF is fully funded, with sufficient resources to discharge its liabilities to all its members, with zero expense to the tax payer. If it isn’t very broken- why overhaul it? Just repair it. The Economist (Jan 11th 2014, Page 59) reported that because New York’s funds do not manage any assets themselves, they paid $472m to outside managers and consultants last year—about $269m more than Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, which manages about 80% of its assets in-house. Are Ugandan workers ready to go New York way?

The danger of escalation in Ukraine

Alex Lantier

Since last week's announcement that Washington may directly arm the pro-NATO Ukrainian regime in Kiev, the rhetoric of the US government and its European allies has become increasingly reckless and extreme. Amid all the bellicose statements, no one is stating clearly what the cost in human lives of a broader conflict over Ukraine might be, what limits it would have, or whether it could escalate into a nuclear exchange between Russia and NATO.

At the Munich Security Conference, US Senator Lindsey Graham made clear that a major war could erupt but called for Washington to arm Kiev anyway. “I don't know how this ends if you give [the Ukrainian regime] a defensive capability. But I know this: I will feel better, because when my nation was needed to stand up to the garbage and stand for freedom, I stood for freedom. They may die. They may lose. But all I can tell you is that if somebody doesn't push back better, we're all going to lose.”

Polish parliamentary speaker Radoslaw Sikorski proposed threatening Russia militarily until it panics and backs down. “Putin has shown us that Ukraine cannot win militarily. Now we must show him that he cannot win militarily either,” he said.

A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank argued for arming the Kiev regime: “A credible US/allied commitment to bolster the Ukrainian military while tightening sanctions will help signal to Moscow that it risks a political and military catastrophe ... ”

Writing in the New York Times, columnist Roger Cohen demanded that the US plunge billions of dollars into arming Ukraine against Russia. He wrote, “There is a language Moscow understands: antitank missiles, battlefield radars, reconnaissance drones. Bolster the Ukrainian Army with them and other arms. Change Putin's cost-benefit analysis. There are risks, but no policy is risk-free.”

Either the political establishment and media are drunk on their own propaganda, and believe that they can get away with the equivalent in international diplomacy of shouting fire in a crowded movie theater, or they mean what they say. In this case, they are moving to launch a major land war in Europe that could lead to thermonuclear war between NATO and Russia that would cost billions of lives.

Whatever the intent of those making such statements, the threats are being taken very seriously by their intended targets. Yesterday, the chief of the Kremlin's security council, Nikolai Patrushev, said that he views the NATO intervention in Ukraine as challenge to the very existence of Russia. “The Americans are trying to draw the Russian Federation into an interstate military conflict, to achieve regime change through the events in Ukraine and to ultimately dismember our country,” he said.

Patrushev, a close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin, warned that if Washington decided to arm the Kiev regime, the conflict “would escalate only further.”

The Russian regime's fears are being fanned by leading US strategists, who have stated that their goal in arming the Kiev regime is to trap Russia in ruinous urban warfare costing millions of lives, in order to humiliate Russia and break it as major power that can challenge the United States.

Speaking last year at the Wilson Center think tank, former Carter administration National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski warned against the emergence in Russia of “an ambitious outlook which justifies… the conclusion that Russia is a world power.” Ukraine, he believed, could “evolve not only into an enduring problem for Russia in that respect, but represent also the permanent loss of a huge swath of territory, the greatest loss of territory suffered by Russia in the course of its imperial expansion. This may in turn eventually begin to work against this new mythology regarding Russia's place and role in the world.”

Brzezinski added, “It would be much better to be open about it and to say to the Ukrainians and to those who may threaten Ukraine that if Ukrainians resist, they will have weapons ... And in my view, they should be weapons designed particularly to permit the Ukrainians to engage in effective urban warfare of resistance. There's no point trying to arm the Ukrainians to take on the Russian army in the open field, thousands of tanks, an army organized for the application of overwhelming force.”

Brzezinski explained: “If the major cities, say Kharkiv, say Kiev, were to resist and street fighting became a necessity, it would be prolonged and costly. And the fact of the matter is, and this is where the timing of this whole crisis is important, Russia is not yet ready to undertake that kind of effort. It would be too costly in blood, paralyzingly costly in finances.”

It is a basic adage of military science that war is the most unpredictable of human activities.

One can think of countless circumstances in which such a plan as outline by Brzezinski, which itself involves the loss of millions of lives in Ukraine’s major cities, would rapidly lead to a major escalation. Russia may not choose to only engage in house-to-house fighting in Kiev and western Ukraine, but to strike at NATO forces and satellite regimes throughout Eastern Europe, such as in the Baltics, where NATO is treaty-bound to intervene. If this fighting goes badly for NATO in these areas, where Russia has overwhelming military superiority in conventional weapons, will NATO retaliate with nuclear weapons?

The question that finally arises is: What is the objective source of the ruthlessness and recklessness of the NATO powers' foreign policy? The last two regimes that adopted such aggressive and suicidal policies were Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, in the years before World War II. Their policies reflected a deep systemic crisis, as isolated ruling elites, facing social tensions and international contradictions for which they had no rational solutions, staked everything on war.

There is a dangerous parallel between the recklessness of US policy and those of Hitler or Hirohito. Were the Kremlin to capitulate and work out some deal—as some reports late last night indicated might take place before today's talks in Minsk—this will only prove to be the starting point for a new round of demands by the United States.

The situation is extraordinarily dangerous. Even if some short-term solution is patched together, this will only be a brief interlude to a renewal of the crisis.

Africa 2015: Is it really moving forward?

 Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma

Whilst the rest of the world has the luxury to choose to stay where they are or move East, West, South or North, Africa has neither the time nor the choice: we must move in one direction —and that is forward and upwards! Fifteen years ago, as the world welcomed the new millennium, Africa was referred to as the 21st’s Century’s development challenge at best and a hopeless continent at worst. As Africans, we chose to see the start of the millennium as the start of the African century.

We should however be aware of the new global threats such as terrorism, insecurity and climate change that also threaten the African Century. On the one side of our continent we have a drought in the Sahel, whereas in the eastern side we have floods in Mozambique, Malawi and Zambia.

Terrorism, in particular the brutality of Boko Haram against our people, the senseless killings, the destruction of property, the enslavement and sale of our people, our girls kidnapped and married and the terrorization of villages are a threat to our collective safety, security and development. This, along with the senseless killings of our people, has now spread beyond Nigeria to Cameroon, Chad and Niger and requires a response that is collective, effective and decisive to achieve the desired results.

As we discuss the situations in Somalia, Libya, Mali, South Sudan and DRC, we should remind ourselves that on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the OAU, we vowed that we shall not bequeathed war and violence to the next generation of Africans. We also need a coordinated and collective responses to other threats such as modern slavery in the guise of human trafficking; poaching, illegal logging and fishing, and the destruction and plunder of African natural resources.

It is imperative that we deny space to those who are bent on destroying the lives and prospects of Africans. This will require concerted efforts to unite our people. The core of our solution rests in our ability to speedily champion tolerant, accountable, democratic and inclusive political cultures, and inclusive social and economic development.

Despite these challenges, and even as downward gale-force winds continue to buffet the world, Africa has been climbing, a step at a time, up the steep cliff towards peace, prosperity and the restoration of the dignity of our people.

It was this resolve to be in charge of our destiny, which informed our decision in the 50th Anniversary Solemn Declaration to develop Agenda 2063 “through a people-driven process for the realization of our vision for an integrated, people-centred, prosperous Africa at peace with itself.” We are confident that the aspirations in Agenda 2063 reflects the voices of the African people and her Diaspora, united in diversity, young and old, men and women, from all walks of life.

2015 is also 60 years since the 1955 Bandung Asian-African conference, a turning point of world history when for the first time representatives of the former colonized nations united and proposed alternatives to a world order dominated by superpowers. Sixty years on, the issues that served before Bandung - of peaceful coexistence amongst nations, the struggle for development and a just world order - are still relevant today, albeit in a changed world, with its threats of extremism and intolerance, of disease, inequality between and within nations, feminization of poverty, gender-based violence and climate change. But, it is also a world of opportunities with technological advances that can help leapfrog development, and changes in the economic landscape of the world. It is this changing world - with threats and opportunities - that Africa navigates as it finalizes its vision for the next fifty years.

Our generations of Africans, young and old, men and women, face the challenge to fulfill the mission we set ourselves. I dare say, we are the generations that will eradicate poverty, disease and hunger, as we set out to do in our Common African Position on post-2015 development. We are the generation that shall manage diversity and silence the guns.Agenda 2063 is therefore a call to action – to governments, civil society, academics and private sector; continental and regional bodies, the Diaspora, Africans of all ages, men and women alike.Our aspirations and the concrete programmes in Agenda 2063 are very clear: to diversify our economies and industrialise; to have a skills and entrepreneurial revolution, unleashing the creativity and energy of our young people, and to effect an agricultural and agro-processing transformation, so we can feed ourselves and contribute to feeding the world.

We shall connect Africa through aviation, railways, highways, ICT, energy and the seas. At Malabo, you gave us the mandate to explore Agenda 2063 flagship projects. We are therefore tackling the African infrastructure backlog, utilizing state of the art technology to leapfrog development and through smarter partnerships.

We discussed the importance of energy during the US-Africa Leadership Summit in August last year; the EU-Africa Summit agreed to strengthen co-operation on human development; and we have just concluded a Memorandum of Understanding with China on rail, highways, aviation, and industrialization.

We want to make a special appeal on aviation: that we need to move decisively towards the creation of a single African aviation market, as envisaged by the Yamoussoukro Declaration. It not only makes economic sense, but it is also a key driver towards continental integration. We call on countries to be bold, and be prepared to take the first step.

The large number of elections in the coming year is an opportunity to present our people and countries with a vision for a different tomorrow. We must continue to conduct our elections peacefully, freely and fairly, with respect for the will of the people.

We must invest in our people - their health and education, access to water and sanitation - and build resilience and public health systems in order to defeat diseases like Ebola, as well as malaria and HIV.We once again thank the health workers of the AU-ASEOWA mission, its leader General Julius Oketta, and the governments and peoples of the countries who sent them to help our brothers and sisters in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. We must continue to support them, until these countries are Ebola free.

We thank the African private sector for their partnership with us in the fight against Ebola, and particularly the mobile network operators, who through the continental SMS campaign enables Africans to contribute. Over thirty countries have joined the SMS campaign, and we invite those that have not yet done so to join. We must continue to mobilise our people to contribute to the campaign and to keeping health workers on the ground, until the countries are officially Ebola free. We must also call for the cancellation of their debts, as they prepare for their social and economic recovery.

During the 50th Anniversary Summit, on recommendation from President Obasanjo and his high level panel on alternative sources of funding, the Assembly decided to establish the African Union Foundation.

It is befitting that the year we adopt Agenda 2063, is also the Year of Women’s Empowerment and Development. During 2015, we shall take our continental programme of gender equality and women’s empowerment to a higher level: by ensuring that women are at the table in conflict resolution and peace building; by increasing the representation of women in public life; through the economic empowerment and financial inclusion of women; and by modernizing agriculture, and addressing women’s access to land, technology, markets, infrastructure, and capital.

Agenda 2063 commits to empower young people, as innovators, citizens and entrepreneurs. I am pleased to announce that the Pan African Parliament will cohost the 2014 Annual AU Intergenerational dialogue, which we started during the 50th Anniversary.

In November last year, I was very proud to attend the graduation of the first group of Masters students at the Pan African University Institute for Science and Technology in Nairobi, Kenya. These graduates are an example of what our young people are capable of, if given an opportunity. In their two years at the PAU, they had a near 100% pass rate, published research articles in journals, and one of them registered a patent.They, and thousands of young innovators and entrepreneurs, are an embodiment of what we can achieve if we invest and give Africa’s young men and women the opportunity to help shape the destiny of our continent.

During the Year of Women, we must pay special attention to the girl child, making sure that they are all in and remain in school, that we end child marriages and female genital mutilation, teenage parenthood and harness the potential of both boys and girls.

In conclusion, as we move towards implementation of Agenda 2063, we must adopt collective and cooperative approaches to the threats of peace and security. Let us be relentless about African economic development and strengthen partnerships with the African private sector. I am confident that working together, we shall create a peaceful, integrated, people-centered and prosperous Africa.

Nigeria Elections 2015: Will The Country Sink or Swim?

Anayo Unachukwu

In about two weeks, precisely 14 February 2015, which has now be postponed, Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, will go to the polls to elect its president. The election is perhaps the most closely contested election since its independence from the British in 1960.  

The two presidential front runners--Messrs Goodluck Jonathan, the incumbent president of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Muhammadu Buhari of the main opposition party, All Progressives Congress (APC)--couldn’t have been more different, in personality, character and what they represent. In spite of these glaring differences, the choice of who becomes the president come February is a Sisyphean task for the average Nigerian electorate. It is unsurprising, given the chequered past of the country, its unenviable present and its uncertain future. Further, one only needs to plumb the surface to reveal the geo-ethno-religious fault-lines that have dogged its every step from its creation in 1914 and the twists and turns of its various attempts at governance. These fault-lines perennially morph into chasms with each successive tussle for the control of the centre--associated with the control of its significant oil resources. Its successive leaders have been driven not by a call to public service or a vision-driven leadership but the ultimate relish--control and administration of the oil wealth to benefit their progenies, friends, families and a coterie committed to the rentier project.

In Mr Buhari, there are hardly agnostic electorates of note. His stern, ascetic physiognomy is the nearest thing to a totem for his party and supporters. Further, his idiosyncratic diagnosis of the problem with Nigeria and the prescribed panacea--moral management of the unruly (which includes almost anyone that dissented)--have been held aloft by friends and supporters as evidence of character and proven track record of the man.

To his foes--mainly Nigerian political elite--he is anachronistic, cantankerous, heavy handed, intolerant of dissent in public and political spaces and cannot be trusted not to rock the political ship that is bereft of a destination; but at least keeps its political passengers cosy and comfy. The more vociferous and visible opponents of Mr Buhari who are overly concerned about what may become of them, given the acrid aroma of corruption that serenade their personal and political life have devised vicious strategy to chip away his carefully cultivated cult-like figure.

His wider intolerance of dissent and opposition is now hitched onto religious wagon of intolerance of the Christian faith. In a closely contested presidential election, and in a country where religion is a major fault-line, that shackle carries with it a significant political liability for Mr Buhari. His past utterances--particularly when taken out of context--as regards adoption of Sharia law and its administration, make it difficult for him to unshackle himself from the label of a bigot.

Of some importance is the question mark and controversy surrounding his educational attainment. Perhaps Mr Buhari and his handlers should have handled the matter better. It goes without saying that Mr Buhari didn’t just crawl out of the woodworks; he was a public officer known to all Nigerians. His keen intellect has never been called to question until now. His records with regards training and attendance of international courses as a military officer are well known to friends and foes.

Further, his opponents have dredged up his record while he was an executive chairman of Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF)--a multi-billion dollar government initiative set up by a previous military leader to alleviate poverty of its citizenry and promote economic growth and development across the various regions of the country. They argued that Mr Buhari’s stint at PTF was marred by poor leadership, weak governance and sectional bias that favoured northerners.

The vitriolic and vicious attacks on the integrity of Mr Buhari seem to give credence to the fact that besides Mr Buhari, the distinguishing differences between the two major parties is wafer thin. Further, the paucity of any significant positive campaign by the ruling party--in spite of being in power since the beginning of the fourth republic--may be understood as a subliminal communication that it has very little to show for its period in government apart from squandered opportunities; a lack of political empathy on the plight of its citizens paralysed by poverty; and a lack of control and the insecurity ravaging swathes of north eastern part of the country.

It is surprising that the opposition--for some reasons--has largely refrained from attacking the personal integrity of Mr Jonathan, other than accuse him of incompetence, inept leadership and lack of compassion and humanity, given his belated tepid response to the abduction of the Chibok girls by Boko Haram. This in some ways mirrors the Republican Party’s refusal to attack Mr Dukakis’ medical history--he suffered from major depressive illness--in 1988 presidential election. When Ronald Reagan was asked if his party was going to use this history against Dukakis, he glibly responded: ain’t got nothing against an invalid.

Notwithstanding that the momentum is with Mr Buhari and his message of change is more attractive and has more traction than the status quo that Mr Jonathan represents, the power of incumbency in Nigeria’s political history is a very powerful single proposition that the opposition will discountenance at their peril.

Given the very polarised nature of this campaign season, the narrow margin of the electability of the two front runners and the winner-takes-it-all--a characteristic of presidential system of government--it is perilously possible that come February 2015, there may be no official winner acceptable to either of the supporters of the two leaders. To further complicate matters, the country’s electoral commission, The Independent Electoral Commission has warned that in the event of no clear winner in the first round, it may not be able to conduct a run-off election within the seven days stipulated by the amended 2010 Electoral Act.

Nigeria is apparently perching on a precipice and an accident could occur at that dizzy height which could plunge the country into Hades. The best case scenario of such a cascade of events is Cote d’Ivoire in 2010. Worse still is an armed insurrection--along ethno-religious lines--that engulfs most parts of the country which would be an open invitation for a military intervention. This will be like 1966--a chequered period in Nigeria’s history--all over again. Mark Twain aptly put it: history does not repeat itself, it rhymes.

This pessimistic picture is not inevitable. It will only take both sides of the political divide to show a sense of duty that comes with their privileged position. A duty they owe to Nigerians. They ought to moderate the tone of their religious intolerance, reduce threats of violence with regard to outcome of the election and the political metabolic rate and rein in their supporters who display proclivity to casual violence without appreciating the wider ramifications of such gratuitous behaviour.

In my previous opinion article--2015: Time To Reappraise Current Paradigm (The Nigerian Guardian, 17 July 2014)--I argued that it is unlikely that Nigeria will cease to be a country in 2015, regardless of what political pundits say. This remains true. One cannot discountenance the resolve and resilence of the ordinary men and women who in their daily grind of life to eke out a meagre living see less of the contrived differences orchestrated by political jingoists, borne out of their primordial self interests. Further, as The Economist succinctly put it: Nigeria is a country where the best is impossible and the worst never happens. I believe that Nigeria will likely live to count its blessings and recount on how it found itself at a precipice and avoided a fatal accident--by a whisker.

The Right to Nationality in Africa

 António Guterres

Having a nationality is something most people take for granted – but to those who do not have one, this lack often sentences them to a life of discrimination, frustration and despair. This problem is much more wide-spread than many might think: it affects at least 10 million people worldwide, and every ten minutes another child is born stateless. In Africa, we have data on nearly three-quarters of a million stateless people, but know the real number is significantly higher.

Imagine what life is like for most of the people who are unable to prove their nationality. They cannot send their children to school, hospitals will not provide them treatment, they cannot get a job, marry or move around freely. They live as if they were invisible, and when stateless people die, many authorities will not even issue a death certificate – as if they had never existed.

When it is present on a large scale, statelessness can also fuel displacement and instability. But perhaps even more importantly, denying people a nationality is a missed opportunity for countries on the way to development and prosperity. Ensuring that everyone can enjoy their right to a nationality will allow societies to draw on the energy and talents of hundreds of thousands of people who today, legally speaking, do not exist.

For all of these reasons, UNHCR has recently launched a global campaign to end statelessness within the next ten years. There is a lot of positive international momentum now which makes this an ambitious but possible goal, and I count on the strong support of the African Union and its Member States to help us achieve it.

UNHCR works very closely with African governments – in the exercise of its legal mandate to ensure refugee protection, and within the inter-agency cluster approach, supporting the protection of people who have been forcibly displaced within the borders of their own countries. This partnership with African States benefits from Africa's exceptionally strong regional legal frameworks for protection.

The OAU Convention of 1969 set the cornerstone for refugee protection in Africa, grown from this continent's long-standing tradition of solidarity with people uprooted by conflict. The Convention solidified that commitment, and millions of people have found sanctuary in the 45 years since its adoption. From the wars of independence to the refugee crises of today, countries and communities across the continent kept their borders open to refugees and shared what they had with new arrivals even when they themselves were struggling to make ends meet.

Forty years after the OAU Convention's fundamental contribution to the international refugee protection regime, the African Union adopted another ground-breaking treaty: the Kampala Convention on internally displaced persons. With this, Africa became the first region in the world to have a legally binding instrument on the protection of people displaced within their own countries. 39 States have signed this landmark instrument since then, and several are in the process of developing national laws and policies based on the Convention.

Their commitment to protection has long guided African States in the development of high-quality regional legal frameworks. And following this spirit, I am confident that African Union Member States will also extend this same commitment to the protection of the right to nationality and the fight against statelessness.

African countries have already taken significant steps in this regard, including 13 accessions to the two Statelessness Conventions in just over three years. UNHCR is working closely with many African governments to identify stateless populations and include safeguards in citizenship laws that would ensure no child is born without a nationality. Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal have made important changes to their nationality laws to prevent and reduce statelessness, and we will have the great honor to listen to His Excellency President Ouattara of Côte d'Ivoire in a few minutes.

The adoption of a Protocol on Nationality to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights would not only be a signal of the African Union's continued strong protection commitment and an important legal instrument to further strengthen its body of laws. It would also help to improve the lives of thousands of some of the most vulnerable people on this continent.

Let me add one word on the empowerment of women. One of the main causes of statelessness today is discrimination against women when it comes to the passing on of nationality. In over two dozen countries in the world, including 10 African Union Member States, women still cannot pass their nationality to their children the same way as men, which can create new generations of suffering and despair. A regional protocol on nationality would set an important standard to help eradicate injustices like this, and to end statelessness, on the African continent. I am certain that, with the AU's strong leadership in protection, this is a goal that can be achieved, and we look forward to supporting the Union and its member states in this important endeavor.

The concept of "belonging" contains much more than could be written down in a legal text. In Africa's history, the fact of belonging to a nation has never been limited to a discussion of identity documents. What is needed, ultimately, is the political will to build tolerance and acceptance for everyone, and to create the social and human space in a society that will allow all of its members to be recognized, to contribute, and yes, to belong. This is very much in line with the best of African culture and tradition. The role of civil society in this process is of course crucial, and needs to be supported.

Africa has proven many times that it is able to find creative solutions to some of its very complex problems. I have no doubt that it can do so again.