|
By Agencies, London
Britain has praised Ghana for the peaceful, transparent election and stated that it shall support other African countries to follow Ghana's example.
During a worldwide televised press briefing at Number Ten Downing Street, London, the British Premier Mr Gordon Brown said he "accepted entirely" the views of Ugandan born journalist Dr Jesse Mashate that Britain had to learn from its past mistakes of misplaced support for rogue leaders.
Mr Gordon Brown jovially joked with journalists and in one instance begged them not to throw shoes at him. A BBC World Service journalist Nick Robinson jokingly told Mr Brown that "Instead of throwing my pair of shoes at you, I shall throw a couple of questions at you." British traditional Christmas cakes were served to the jovial journalists who nevertheless squeezed the Premier on a number of political and economic issues pertinent to Britain particularly about the recession.
The attentive Premier nodded in approval throughout Dr Mashate's suggestive comments that, "Britain should join the rest of the civilised world in celebrating Ghana's recent holding of a genuinely democratic, transparent, peaceful, free and fair election. In particular Britain should learn hard lessons from this Ghana experience. Consequently, Britain must boldly regret its past support and cease forthwith any further support of Commonwealth dictatorships particularly to Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, General Yoweri Museveni's ruling family in Uganda, and ousted Pakistan General Musharaff.
It should interest us that all these British supported dictators were all from the British Commonwealth and not incidentally with their names beginning with Mu in form of Mugabe, Museveni and recently ousted Musharaff! Two of these dictators have hosted the Queen and the Commonwealth Summit and served as Chair of the Commonwealth, without Britain sharing in any of the shame.
Tyrant Yoweri Museveni has professed in a recorded address to the Kenyan cabinet, that to him, multi-partism is simply a fake commodity that he only accepted for the sake of not wasting his time. Britain must join the right side of the argument because Uganda, like Ghana will device its own means to achieve democracy to the detriment of Britain."
Mr Brown said, the world was awaiting the African leaders response to the situation in Zimbabwe which he described as most appalling. African leaders were accused of frustrating the United Nations progress on Zimbabwe.
During last year's Christmas media briefing at Downing Street, Dr Jesse Mashate again highlighted the Uganda tyranny when he asked Premier Gordon Brown about Museveni's then intended private jet purchase, that Mashate humorously termed as an item on Museveni's Christmas shopping list, as an abuse of the British tax payer's support of the Ugandan budget. Mr Brown who was together with his Chancellor of the Excheque Alistar Darling, had promised to look into the matter of Museveni's then quest for the state -of-the-art US $ 50 million worth private jet, that superseded that of most leaders of the world richest countries including Saudi Arabia.
Readers Comments:
22 Dec 2008
1.
Wow! We need more of patriotic Jesse Mashates in foreign media!
There is no doubt that if selfless and patriotic foreign based Ugandan journalists and writers kept punching the conscience of the international community regarding the bloody regime in Kampala, sooner than later they would be forced to re-think their support for it.
Mashate of course joins the chain of gallant RK writers except that his ability to be in No. 10 Downing Street enables him to punch higher and in the glare of international media.
Kudos to Mashate and hopefully Brown's admission of Jesse's points is not another joke like the one he made about "throwing of shoes".
Etome
2
BROWN PRAISES GHANA
While we congratulate Dr. Masette for his questions at the party and the people of Ghana for their success in conducting one of the best elections in the 20th and 21st centuries, we need to examine why some African countires have failed to serve their people as would have been expected.
Most often than not, we Africans have heaped blame on Western countries for what we call their support for dictators. We often omit to mention how we have supported these very dictators, and to make matters worse we have given these leaders the illusion that they are indispensible. For example, Museveni got local as well as international support during and after the Luwero Triangle War; and what is more, it is our own people who carry the bribes or who help in rigging of elections or harassing the wanaichi. Even when the British or Americans criticize the dics such as Mugabe, we throw in support to Mugabe and his likes in the name of Africanism and safe-guarding our "sovereignty."!
I think we should look into ourselves if we have to attain the standards shown by Ghana. As M7, Mugabe or Mm Ghaddafi often remind us, it is mostly us the Africans to solve our problems, the wasungu/foreigners will just give us some support, but not much. If most Ugandans reject the rigging of elections even before they are conducted and go to the polls with a view to electing a party/leader whom they have trust in, we can get the Ghana standard. One thing that is true is, the Ghananians are not different from Ugandans and in any case Ghana was also a British colony!
Merry X-Mas and a Happy New Year!
Mo Tata
|