Dear Samuel,
Surely, you wouldn't like to see this sort of thing happen in Nigeria?
Couldn't the Burkinabe have effected regime change in a more peaceful manner? Blaise Compaoré has only been in power for 27 years. And Robert Mugabe@90 only wants to take another shot at his country's top job for another couple of years. C'mon, he is no Methuselah!
So the revolution will not be televised and if we go back to the French Revolution, no one has said that if it ever happens, the Nigerian Revolution is not going to be bloody...
"agents of history" indeed. More like bloody agents of mayhem and anarchy. As similar "agents of history" and moving in the same direction, it probably won't be long before the Boko Haram agents of destruction are doing ditto in Abuja except that with Boko Haram apart from bombing government buildings they wouldn't mind dispatching some of the people's elected representatives to the hell-fire as well. We don't have to imagine or speculate that the Boko Haram people would actualise the same murderous intent if only they could get close enough (God forbid) to lay their hands on President Goodluck Jonathan himself – in which case of course his people (the PDP) would not hesitate to say that it's the APC backing the Boko Haram agents of death and destruction.
At this late date even the French president Francois Hollande has been deceived. Wasn't he the one who was putting his reputation on the line ( and I almost believed him) when on the 18th of October this year he said that the girls' release "could happen in the coming hours and days".
A few months earlier did you take in this
HARDtalk Doyin Okupe Senior Adviser to Nigeria's President ?
"be the change that you wish to see in the world" (Mahatma Gandhi
On Thursday, 30 October 2014 16:38:24 UTC+1, szalanga7994 wrote:
While a very difficult and risky task I am gladdened by the fact that the African brothers and sisters decided to see themselves as agents of history. They want to shape their destiny. I wish this will happen in other African countries as well. We need a paradigm shift. Just focusing on promoting economic growth that merely meets the need of a small fraction of the African population is not the way forward. They acted because they have come to realize that there is no any political messiah that will just appear from heaven and improve their conditions.
If I was a Burkinabe, I will join them. Sometimes it is better to die in pursuit of your human dignity than to accept to be treated like trash in the name of democracy or politics. This act of the people taking history into their hands creates more hope for social transformation than many of the religious pilgrimages that Africans have made in the past decades but that has not had any meaningful impact on public morality and social relationships.
Samuel
From: toyin...@austin.utexas.edu
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Burkina Faso: Parliament set ablaze
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:00:30 +0000
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
africa-29831262 Burkina Faso parliament set ablaze
Demonstrators breached the security around parliament and set it on fire
Protesters angry at plans to allow Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaore to extend his 27-year-rule have set fire to parliament.
The BBC's Laeila Adjovi in the capital, Ouagadougou, say the city hall and ruling party headquarters are also in flames.
The security forces fired tear gas from a helicopter as a crowd surged towards the presidency.
MPs have suspended a vote to allow Mr Compaore to stand for re-election.
One person has been killed in the protests, reports the BBC's Yacouba Ouedraogo from the capital.
Mr Compaore first took power in a coup in 1987, and has won four disputed elections since then.
The opposition has called for a campaign of civil disobedience to demand that he steps down in elections next year.
"October 30 is Burkina Faso's Black Spring, like the Arab Spring," opposition activist Emile Pargui Pare told AFP news agency.
State television has gone off air after protesters stormed the building housing it and ransacked it, Reuters quotes a witness as saying.
Cars were also set ablaze near parliament
The protesters do not want Mr Compaore to change the constitution to extend his rule
Smoke could be seen billowing from parliament.
Police had earlier fired tear gas to prevent protesters from moving in on the parliamentary building.
But about 1,500 people managed to breach the security cordon and were ransacking parliament, AFP reports.
Protesters were setting fire to documents and stealing computer equipment and cars outside the building were also set on fire, it reports.
Blaise Compaore
- Served under President Thomas Sankara as minister of state to the presidency
- Took power after Sankara was killed in mysterious circumstances by a group of soldiers in 1987
- First elected president in 1991 and again in 1998
- A new constitution in 2000 limited presidents to two term limits in office and limited the term to five years
- Won two further terms
- Protests at attempts to amend the term limits began a year ago, fuelled by the high cost of living
The government has been forced to suspend Thursday's parliamentary vote on a constitutional amendment that would have lifted the limit on presidential terms so that Mr Compaore could run for office next year.
It is not clear whether the government intends to hold the vote at a later stage, correspondents say.
Mr Compaore is a staunch ally of the US and France, which uses Burkina Faso as a base for military operations against militant Islamists in the Sahel region.
Both France and the European Union (EU) have called on him to scrap the proposed constitutional amendment.
The EU said it could jeopardise Burkina Faso's stability. The US has also raised concern about the proposed amendment.
Toyin FalolaDepartment of HistoryThe University of Texas at Austin104 Inner Campus DriveAustin, TX 78712-0220USA512 475 7224512 475 7222 (fax)
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