On Oct. 2, Cape Verde’s president, Jorge Carlos Fonseca easily won re-election with 74 percent of the vote, an unsurprising result given victories by his party, the Movement for Democracy, in legislative and municipal elections earlier this year. In an email interview, Lydia Beuman, a postdoctoral fellow at Dublin City University, discusses politics in Cape Verde. WPR: What were the main issues that dominated the recent presidential election in Cape Verde? Lydia Beuman: The constitution of Cape Verde defines the president as the head of state and the guardian of the constitution. The president has limited executive powers but can, [...]
Last week, Cote d’Ivoire’s parliament approved the draft of a new constitution that President Alassane Ouattara says will “turn the page” on the country’s “successive crises,” and offer a “new social pact.” That’s because the new draft makes good on his 2015 campaign promise to lift the restriction on presidential candidates with dual nationality, a deep-rooted source of social tension in a country with a large immigrant population. Ouattara himself had previously been barred from running for president, due to speculation that his father was born in Burkina Faso. Ivoirians will vote on the new charter in a national referendum [...]
Late last month, judges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued a landmark verdict, sentencing Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, a Malian member of a jihadi group tied to al-Qaida, to nine years in prison for the destruction of sacred mausoleums in Timbuktu. For the first time, the ICC prosecuted the destruction of cultural heritage as a war crime, sending a powerful message of international condemnation against the growing use of attacks on cultural heritage as a weapon during war. Prosecuting the destruction of the Timbuktu mausoleums was a way to respond through law rather than force to similar devastation [...]
