In Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, a Senator of the Federal Republic and former Governor of Zamfara, Ahmed Sani Yerima has done something that should infuriate all right-thinking members of our society. He travels to Egypt to procure a 13-year old girl as bride for a sum of $100, 000 and he organises a public wedding at the Abuja National Mosque. The 13-year old girl is his fourth wife, a replacement for an earlier 15-year old who had to be divorced so the Egyptian child bride could take her place. This has attracted appropriate public outrage, but now Senator Yerima has spoken on BBC Hausa Service and he insists that he has not violated any law. The Child Rights Act does not exist in his home state of Zamfara and his marriage to the lady in question does not violate any Islamic law, he says. He has told us that his marriage is a private matter. And asked how old the girl-child now his wife is, Yerima says he has not done anything that the Koran, Islam and the Sharia do not approve of. What kind of man is this fellow? Clearly his conduct brings Nigerians to ridicule; outsiders may be tempted to believe that cradle-snatching is standard practice among our kind.
He further raises questions about the quality of persons who get elected/appointed to high office in Nigeria. Will anyone please help tell Yerima that the Child Rights Act exists in the Federal Capital Territory where his marriage to the Egyptian girl-child was contracted, and so he has violated the law? And will the police proceed to arrest him and enforce the law, as there are other laws in the statute books which criminalise girl-child marriage, child abuse, child trafficking and peadophilia? As a member of the National Assembly of Nigeria, is Yerima making laws for the Sharia or for the good governance of Nigeria in line with the Constitution? It is the country's Constitution that is the grundnorm, not the Koran. He doesn't know this and yet he has been a Governor and now a Senator? Yerima insists that his marriage is a private matter, the same silly excuse that was initially given by the leadership of the Senate, whose members we would be right to believe were witnesses at the wedding, and who must have sent messages of congratulations to their colleague on his achievement. Well, let them be told that this matter is not private, for it goes right to the heart of the quality of our society's value system, the dignity of man, and the rights of children.
This has been the bane of the development process in Nigeria: this reduction of everything to a private matter. When politicians commit an offence and they are indicted, the traditional rulers and the youth in their communities insist that their kinsman cannot be touched because whatever he may have done is a "private matter." When politicians behave badly and there is a clamour that they should be sanctioned, the political parties to which they belong hijack due process by proclaiming that it is "a family affair." When a lawmaker breaks the law with impunity by marrying an under-aged girl, he and his colleagues insist also that it is "a private matter." Rigged elections, stolen public funds, misgovernance have all been explained away as private matters in the last eleven years and see where that has left Nigeria. The leadership recruitment process has also been turned into a private affair, it is never about the common public interest, as Godfathers in different parts of the country and at different times select who gets into what elective position. The Godfather is of course not interested in public service or quality, or merit. He wants to exercise power and authority by proxy, and control the treasury from a distance. The choices he makes could range from the sick and incapacitated to an over-pampered son or daughter, a favourite wife or concubine or an idiotic protégé whose only relevance is that he must never forget that he got to office as another man's private representative in power.
As for Ahmed Sani Yerima, he should not be allowed to get away lightly. Hopefully, one of these days, it would be possible to lay hands on a photograph of him and his child-wife, the publication of that would be a major public exposure of his guilt with all its attendant ridiculousness. And those friends of his who witnessed the wedding, who are they? What is their sense of morality? Surely, Ahmed Sani Yerima is not the only man involved in this private business of catching them young for bedroom services, and it is a shame that he is shameless about it. What does he expect us to do with that his arrogant response? Clap for him? His current exposure in the public arena is not in any way distinguished.
#2
It happened everywhere mein heer. We did however perfect it. If the first fucking RINO hadn't been elected the US would haven't ended slavery until after Brazil. Yes, I know, experten blog-warriors will tell us differently, but I laugh at their weak sense of Volk.
For the first time in years, international experts say North Korea's isolated government is increasingly frail, and potentially unstable. Part of the reason, they say, is Pyongyang's attempt at currency reform last year.
Flash back to North Korea, early 1995. The Soviet Union and its eastern bloc allies were gone, along with the economic aid that flowed from them. Kim Il-sung, the leader North Koreans worship like a god, had died the year before. And the country was entering a severe famine that would kill an estimated million people.
Predictions abounded that North Korea would collapse. But it persevered, and by 2005 predictions of a North Korean collapse were dismissed and even ridiculed. Now, however, in 2010, that is changing, as Mansfield Foundation Executive Director Gordon Flake said recently. "I think there's some increasing views in Seoul that after 20 years of wrongly predicting the demise of North Korea, there's something going on in Pyongyang," said Gordon Flake. "There are a growing number of people in South Korea who say that we're getting close to the end game here."
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Posted by: Steve White ||
05/02/2010 00:00 ||
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Been SAYING that for 40/50 years now.
Is this like the prediction of world's end, just keep on predicting and one day you'll be right?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/02/2010 12:27 Comments ||
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The proposed International Monetary Fund loan of $15 billion to Greece is wrong on two grounds. First, it violates the IMF's charter. Second, it is an unwarranted favor to Europe that developing countries will perceive as being at their expense.
The IMF suffers from mission creep. Although created for balance of payments rescues, it now wants to stage fiscal rescues too that means bigger budgets and more staff, the two unwritten goals of any bureaucracy.
The articles of association of the IMF state clearly its aim to provide loans for balance of payments support. Greece has a huge fiscal need but no balance of payments need. Greek importers can get all the euros they wants from Greek banks, which get euros from the European Central Bank. The IMF is by definition a monetary authority, and Greece has no monetary issues it surrendered its monetary powers to the ECB Bank on joining the eurozone. Some eurozone countries have fiscal crises, but these are Europe's problem, not the IMF's.
The IMF's funds proved wholly inadequate to meet balance of payments needs during the Great Recession of 2007-09. So member countries tripled its lending resources to meet future balance of payments crises, which presumably did not include fiscal crises.
If Greece gets an IMF lifeline, bond speculators will logically attack the other eurozone countries with large deficits Portugal, Spain and maybe Italy. Rescuing them would empty the coffers of the IMF. Yet it would be politically difficult to say no to Spain or Italy after saying yes to Greece.
Historically, there was a clear division of work between the World Bank and IMF. The Bank provided fiscal support for development, so its loans entered the budgets of borrowers. The IMF provided hard currency for balance of payments support. This hard currency was purchased by the central bank of the borrower, and went into the borrower's foreign exchange reserves, not its budget. Indeed, loans from the IMF were technically called "purchases" of hard currency, and repayments were called "repurchases."
This Bank-IMF division of labor has blurred since 1991. Ex-communist countries needed massive support, and it was politically expedient to use the full resources of the Bank and IMF. The blurring was rationalized by arguing that the IMF always sought fiscal stringency when lending. Further, even when such loans went to central banks, they enabled central banks to give more budget support to their governments. This blurring also facilitated emergency loans during the Asian Financial crisis. IMF loans to Russia and Argentina were formally allowed to enter the budgets of the borrowers.
By the same logic, say Europeans, the IMF should give fiscal support to Greece. They are wrong. Argentina, Russia and all the other IMF borrowers had serious balance of payments problems. The IMF gave loans to tackle these balance of payments problems in accordance with its charter and the fiscal support was just a supplementary benefit.
Greece, however, has no balance of payments problem. Any IMF rescue would be straightforward fiscal support, violating the IMF's charter. Why would it do this? To bestow a special favor on Europeans, its dominant shareholders.
Developing countries should be expected to protest. They are the main candidates for future IMF loans, and so feel they have the most to lose through fund diversion. The poorer members do not have the political or economic strength to stand up to Europe, but the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) do. The BRICs have contributed to the IMF's expanded coffers and need to worry about the husbanding of those resources.
The IMF is supposed to be lender of last resort. Europeans want it to be among the lenders of first resort in this crisis. Greece can, after all, borrow from the markets, but it will have to pay 7% interest. Instead of relying on market discipline, the Europeans seek to use IMF to organize a rescue package with an interest rate averaging maybe 5%. This implicit interest subsidy is justified by saying Greece will default if it has to pay 7 % interest. Maybe, but many analyses suggest that Greece is fundamentally insolvent and will likely default anyway.
It is easy for the IMF to jump into this mess, but will be hard to extricate itself if things go wrong. Developing countries should protest that limited IMF funds are being put at risk just to spare Europe from taking care of its own.
Posted by: john frum ||
05/02/2010 07:49 ||
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Greece can, after all, borrow from the markets, but it will have to pay 7% interest. This can't be a serious estimate. When a country is insolvent, the markets will refuse to loan anything. (Maybe Greece can mortgage its islands.) The EU violated its own standards of existence simply by admitting Greece to their august body. Then the EU played along with all the lies necessary to maintain Greece in its membership. What's one more lie among so many?
#2
Heh, I remember being told to leave Greece for working, lol! Soon, there will be no jobs, even for the people who tell people with jobs to piss off.
Whatever your views on Pakistan, it is hard not to admire Manmohan Singh for the commitment he has demonstrated in his quest to improve relations with our unruly neighbour. The Pakistani foreign minister was being provocative when he said in Thimphu last week that Singh had neither the support of his own party or the political establishment in this quest. But his view was not far from the truth.
In a sense, Mission Pakistan flows directly from Singh's nature. Each time he has been in a position of influence he has adopted a core issue and held firm. When he was finance minister he remained deeply committed to economic reform. In his first term as prime minister, he would not budge on the nuclear deal, even threatening to sacrifice his government on this issue. This time around, it is Pakistan that is Singh's core issue.
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Posted by: john frum ||
05/02/2010 00:00 ||
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Single mindedness is an undesired trait, Hitler was single minded.
Far better to be open minded, but NOT so open minded that your brains fall out. (Listen, don't swallow the ideas whole)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
05/02/2010 12:32 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
