Anger over unchanged officials

MAPUTO: Mozambique’s anticorruption authorities have initiated a trial of 28 officials who allegedly diverted $2.7 million (R35.4m) from the national fund for agriculture.

Setina Titosse, kingpin of the alleged fraud, is the former managing director of the Agriculture Development Fund. She has been accused of involvement in approving fictitious agriculture projects. Most did not exist or were partly implemented and the money was later allegedly transferred to her personal bank account.

The defendants are facing charges including graft, money laundering and embezzlement. Xinhua WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court has issued a brief emergency order allowing the Trump administration to keep its travel ban on most refugees while the legal fight over the ban goes on.

The order effectively reversed part of a federal appeals court ruling that had lifted the travel ban’s restrictions on the nation’s refugee programme.

It took a vote of five justices to grant a stay application until further notice, media reports said.

Under the federal appeals court’s ruling, roughly 24 000 vetted refugees would’ve been able to enter the US. They will now be ineligible for entry. Xinhua DHAKA, Bangladesh: The number of Rohingya refugees fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar has topped 370 000, a crisis that the UN human rights chief called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Hundreds of thousands of the long-persecuted ethnic minority continued to stream via land and rickety boats into Bangladesh this week, arriving exhausted, dehydrated and recounting tales of nightmarish horrors at the hands of the Myanmar military, including friends and neighbours shot dead and homes torched before their eyes.

“It seems they wanted us to leave the country,” said Nurjahan, an elderly Rohingya woman who escaped her burning village and ended up camped by the side of the road, unsure of where to go.

The International Organisation for Migration put the number fleeing Myanmar, also known as Burma, at 370 000 but admitted that it could go much higher.

“Clearly the estimates have been bypassed several times over,” said spokesman Leonard Doyle. “I’m reluctant to give a number but obviously people fear that it could go much higher.”

As the refugees continue to inundate the area, ferry operators are charging about $122 (R1 600) for a river crossing – far out of the reach of many.

Relief efforts have been rapidly overwhelmed, with stocks of food, temporary shelter kits and other supplies running low.

Prices of vegetables, bamboo and plastic sheeting used to make shelter are soaring.

With camps full, many of the Rohingya refugees like Nurjahan have simply sat down on the roadside.

On Tuesday, Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, visited the camps in the Cox’s Bazar area of the country, which has sheltered thousands of the stateless Rohingya refugees since an earlier exodus in the 1990s.

Her foreign minister has accused Myanmar of committing “genocide”.

She said Myanmar would have to take back its Rohingya, since they “created this problem, and they will have to solve it”.

International condemnation of Myanmar’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has intensified, along with repeated calls for her Nobel Peace Prize, which she won in 1991 as a result for her long fight for democracy, to be rescinded – something the Nobel committee says will not happen.

The White House has condemned the attacks and the ensuing violence. Suu Kyi has long had strong supporters in US Congress and in the Obama administration, who saw her as the one leader who could bridge the country’s tentative transition from military junta to a civilian government.

But with Suu Kyi’s continued reluctance to speak out on the Rohingya’s plight and the ensuing human rights crisis, her star has begun to dim.

Her supporters say the episode has demonstrated how limited her powers are, as the military still controls 25% of the seats in the parliament as well as the security forces.

Myanmar’s more than 1 million Rohingya Muslims are essentially stateless and the government considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

KENYA is running out of time to ensure a credible rerun of presidential elections that were annulled by the nation’s top court after the main opposition party alleged they were rigged.

With the next vote due in just five weeks, the electoral commission is mired in infighting over who should take the fall for last month’s botched contest.

Demands by former prime minister Raila Odinga, 72, and his National Super Alliance that sweeping changes be made to the commission, including the removal of its chief executive Ezra Chiloba, have also placed them at loggerheads with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s ruling Jubilee Party.

“As things stand now, most of the people who ran the August 8 elections are still in office and the system that they used has not been changed,” Peter Wayande, a politics professor at the University of Nairobi, said by phone from the capital.

“As long as that remains the case, one cannot expect credible elections.

“If things are not done right, there will definitely be a crisis that will result in political instability.”

While Kenyatta accepted the ruling, he’s criticised the decision by calling the judges “crooks” and saying he plans to “fix” the court if he is re-elected.

He also threatened to impeach Odinga if the opposition leader wins, using the ruling Jubilee Party’s parliamentary majority.

Odinga’s alliance alleged that computer systems were tampered with and vote tallies were altered to ensure the re-election of Kenyatta, 55, last month.

On September 1 the Supreme Court ruled that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission “failed, neglected or refused to conduct the election in a manner consistent with the dictates of the constitution”.

It has yet to release its detailed findings. Former Kenyan justice minister Martha Karua has asked the High Court to invalidate the outcome of the entire election, including the gubernatorial, senatorial and parliamentary votes, the Nairobi-based Star newspaper reported, citing court documents.

Wafula Chebukati, the commission’s chairman, said the body was committed to holding a lawful vote and replaced six of its top managers, including the heads of operations, information technology and the national tallying centre.

The managers who mishandled the previous election refused to resign, according to IEBC commissioner Roselyn Akombe.

On September 5 Chebukati wrote to Chiloba asking him why a computer user-name had been created in his name without his consent and to explain the failure of the election results transmission system and other hitches during the initial vote.

Four commissioners said on September 7 the electoral body hadn’t sanctioned the letter and most of the issues raised by the chairman “are not factual”.

Odinga’s alliance, known as Nasa, said it would be untenable to stage the rerun on October 17 if the apparent conflict within the electoral commission isn’t resolved.

“It shows the commission is unable to carry out its constitutional functions without regard to political interests or causes that undermine its authority and mandate,” Musalia Mudavadi, a top Nasa official, said in a letter to Chebukati.

“The problem is systematic and grave and it has thrown the electoral process into a cesspool.”

Tushar Kanti Saha, a law professor at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, said the divisions within the commission and unresolved logistical and information-technology challenges have cast doubt over whether the election rerun will take place.

“If it is held, then the question of credibility will still arise,” he said.

“I am not sure what direction it is going to take. It is very uncertain.”