Palo Alto's sole mobile-home park, Buena Vista Mobile Home Park. Palo Alto Weekly file photo.
An effort by Santa Clara County and Palo Alto to save Buena Vista Mobile Home Park from closure could be approaching a key milestone.
County Supervisor Joe Simitian and Mayor Pat Burt are preparing to announce on Wednesday what they call a "breakthrough development" in the quest to keep the city's sole mobile-home park in place.
The county Board of Supervisors and the City Council had already committed $14.5 million each in county and city funds, respectively, to purchase Buena Vista from the Jisser family, which has been trying to close it since 2012.
So far, the family has been loathe to sell the 4.5-acre park. Last August, after several months of negotiations, the Jisser family declined an offer from the City and the County for the mobile-home park. At that time, the plan was to turn over the management of the mobile-home park to the nonprofit Caritas Corporation. The announcement from the family came just after the Buena Vista Residents Association filed a lawsuit against the City, alleging that officials should have done more to protect the mobile-home park from closure.
The City is also facing a suit from the Jisser family, which is contesting the relocation-assistance package that it is required to provide to Buena Vista's roughly 400 residents. This includes the first and last month's rent, moving costs and a year of rent subsidies that would cover the difference between rates at Buena Vista and at their new residences. The City Council approved the relocation package in May 2015, when it affirmed the Jisser family's right to shutter Buena Vista.
While a potential deal between the City, the County and the Jissers fell through, the Wednesday announcement suggests that public agencies are now eyeing a different strategy.
Simitian and Burt are preparing to announce "significant developments regarding the preservation of the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park," the press release about the Wednesday event stated.
They will be joined at the Wednesday press conference by Katherine Harasz, executive director of the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Clara, a local government agency that administers the federal rental assistance program, develops affordable housing and provides services to low-income households. Also joining them at the 10:30 a.m. event at City Hall will be Erika Escalante, president of the Buena Vista Residents Association.
As long as the city of Palo Alto isn't on the hook for any more of the costs (including legal settlements) it's all good.
What an outrageous use of our taxpayer dollars. They are using our hard-earned money to keep this eyesore. The stupidity absolutely boggles the mind. Well Palo Alto voters, this is what you supported. Maybe you can make better choices next time.
Hopefully joe and his gang don't use more of our money to save this place. The owner should turn down any offer, at this rate they will offer him more next year.
You just wait. The next step is to designate Buena Vista Park as a "historic" district. Given how we just cavalierly throw around the word "historic" when it comes to tract houses in Palo Alto, it would be our just desserts.
I think our city council would be better serving the community if they focused on the issue of foreign money over bidding all the houses for sale in Palo Alto then trying to save the decrepit trailer park.
"The county Board of Supervisors and the City Council had already committed $14.5 million each in county and city funds"
"the Buena Vista Residents Association filed a lawsuit against the City, alleging that officials should have done more to protect the mobile-home park from closure."
"The City is also facing a suit from the Jisser family"
Forget it, this fiasco is wasting the taxpayers' hard earned money. The Buena Vista residents had their chance, and then decided to do something incredibly stupid (filing a lawsuit). If they want to bite the hand that feeds them, then let them eat cake. Withdraw the city's 14.5 million offer and use the savings to fight the lawsuits tooth and nail. Buena Vista has become far more trouble than it is worth. It's bulldozer time for BV.
"I think our city council would be better serving the community if they focused on the issue of foreign money over bidding all the houses for sale in Palo Alto then trying to save the decrepit trailer park."
The "foreign money", aka the Chinese, are not overbidding at all. They are simply paying what they think the property is worth,boosting homeowners' net worth through the roof in the process. As an added bonus, they make good neighbors, a lot better than the whining, petulant fussbudgets they replace.
What are the odds on Eminent Domain?
BV only houses a limited number of people. How many more low income residents in Santa Clara County could be helped by investing $30M in building a new facility elsewhere?
One of the original reasons cited for closing BV was the cost to upgrade the outdated infrastructure (sewer, water, electricity, etc.) as the facility is long past that point. These articles never discuss those details.
Here we go again, our elected officials continue wasting time and $ pursuing a matter which is simply a private contract between the landlord and tenants who have had a good deal for too long, and has created a sense of entitlement.
As far as I know, nobody is 'entitled' to live and go to school in Palo Alto. It depends on personal circumstances and market forces. People come and go, and we all eventually settle in a place that we can afford. If you cannot afford to live in this community, please don't expect your neighbors to subsidize you.
Easy for the politicians and city council to promote their welfare projects at the expense of others. However, I never see them putting their own $ or offering their own neighborhoods for these projects. Hypocritical and insulting to the intelligence of the neighborhoods affected by these projects.
Please remember this next time you vote.
probably a "new" joint venture to raise more funds to waste on the mobile home park. Seriously $40 plus million to save 100 year old homes from renters without a lease. when the bay area has a real housing crisis?
Who is electing these people?
I agree the owner should reject all new offers and wait till next year and get more.
This "eyesore" represents peoples homes. How would you like to be forced to move knowing that the chances of finding another place to live that is affordable is practically non- existent. How would you like to be faced with this long, drawn out situation, wondering when you might have to leave your home and wondering where you might end up -- where your children might be going to school sometime in the near future. Can you even imagine this scenario? So much thanks and gratefullness is due to Joe Simitian and all the others who are trying so hard to come up with a workable solution so no one will have to move and have their lives disrupted. Eyesore -- really!
I understand that people have their perspectives - but they're entitled to their opinions, not to their facts.
The fact is that the funds made available here are from funds not available for other purposes - they can only be used for affordable housing. In fact, the bulk of it is money that went back into the fund when the Maybell property was sold. It can't be used for anything else. Thus, there is no better use for the fund than for helping long-time low-income Palo Altans keep their homes.
Secondly, this is not just a renter/landlord situation. Most of the residents of BV are property owners, too. They may have mortgages on their structures. Some invested up to $50,000 to buy their mobile homes, a kingly amount for low-income people. They made investments in what was until the current building boom, a stable place to live for decades here. They have rights,too. Mobile Home Park law recognizes the unique vulnerabilities of people who live in mobile homes, because they aren't just simple tenants. There is an equivalent situation where Stanford rents the land on which the houses of its faculty sit - which they purchase (just the houses). Stanford may have rights to take back the land (they own the land on which Gunn HS sits, I believe), but there would be a fight given the structures sitting on them. Most people can understand that, yet keep talking over that fact when it comes to the low-income residents of Buena Vista. Shame on them.
Thank you Greenacres for your immensely valuable perspective and suggestions!
Unless the owner is serious when say "THE LAND IS NOT FOR SALE". What a joke and a waste of tax payers money. Everyone keeps on saying that the tenants own their own home.
First its not a home, its a trailer which is considered personal property not real estate.
Second, the owner is being forced to buy these "home", hence the waste of more tax payer dollars due to the on going law suits.
After reading the most "enlightened" of these comments, about the best I can say is that this country deserves nothing better than Donald Trump, who represents the utter perversion of decency and respect for all and caring about the fate of others.
What's the ratio of low-income resident to investment ratio for these millions? BV is a low-density park. This money should be going towards a project with a bigger impact (i.e. more low income residential units) rather than maintaining a minimal stock of low income housing.
And BTW, if we take money *out* of this fund, where is the new money coming from? Even though there is a technical distinction that prevents other uses of this money, government agencies abhor a budget vacuum. New tax dollars will come in and fill that sucker up (from us suckers that let them do it).
"Secondly, this is not just a renter/landlord situation."
Yes this is. They may own a mortgage on their structure, but they are renting space. In fact, they're called mobile homes for a reason - they can be moved elsewhere.
This is financially risky for the city and county. Eminent domain requires paying fair market value of the land's potential FUTURE use, not its present use. This plot of land is really valuable when redeveloped.
If the Jissers thought $29 million was fair market value, they would have taken the government's offer a long time ago. Undoubtedly, they've done an in-depth analysis about how much money redevelopment could bring. It has to be a lot more than $29 million for all the time and effort this whole ordeal has been.
I thank Joe Simitian and his strong support including allocating county funds to help with Palo Alto's low income housing alongside our already allocated funds. These folks have been part of our community for a long time and the City of Palo Alto has gone above and beyond to help these folks, regardless of the ultimate outcome, which is somewhat outside the city's control.
We have an affordable housing crisis. There are typically over 200 places for rent so plenty of supply. Unfortunately, its not cheap or affordable for many. For market rate units it's reasonable to expect folks to pay more for the same house in a more desirable location. However, to address the core problem we need to protect and expand the supply of affordable housing in Palo Alto.
I hope those affluent folks in our community have compassion for many other folks working in our community who may not be as as fortunate but nevertheless teach your kids, are nurses in your hospital, respond when you have a medical emergency, work in retail where you shop, etc... I know many Palo Altans do care about these folks.
Wow... sorry I took a long nap on this subject, but now that I've been rousted from my slumber I feel a need to speak out...again.
And, I see many of the same online posters are back at it. Duh, well here I am, also.
I posted a lot, earlier, when this was the hot issue in town and consumed too much of CC's time. I'll try to be brief now. I am in a quandary...do we spend that money to save BV or could it be better spent and provide more housing for more of the very low and low income people in our community? I'd like to know and hear it from people qualified to answer my question, not the street, pedestrian experts, who think they have answers to everything, and on any and all subjects.
If saving BV is calculated in as our share of ABAG's required housing I might be in favor of it. If not, I'm not. And a side note...we should give ABAG the finger. Don't dictate at the state level what local municipalities should do, even in terms of housing. We know more about our towns, much more than the politicians in Sacramento will ever know, so let us take care of our business and local issues here.
"There is an equivalent situation where Stanford rents the land on which the houses of its faculty sit - which they purchase (just the houses)."
I believe you have this backwards.
Stanford owns land in Menlo Park that has private homes homes on them; the parcels in "Stanford Hills" and "Stanford Creek" are leased to the homeowners. Those leases expire and when they do the homeowners (homes worth millions EACH) get nothing. NOTHING.
So, Greenacres is citing a good equivalent to the Buena Vista issue; unfortunately for Greenacres it undermines the case he/she is trying to make.
I fail to see why the Buena Vista residents should be treated as special snowflakes when there are plenty of other groups of people that face similar circumstances, but unlike Buena Vista they don't get special financial dispensation nor special treatment.
"The "foreign money", aka the Chinese, are not overbidding at all. They are simply paying what they think the property is worth,boosting homeowners' net worth through the roof in the process. As an added bonus, they make good neighbors, a lot better than the whining, petulant fussbudgets they replace."
Congratulations! When do you close escrow?
So what is the major announcement?
The reality of the situation is that the Jissers should be able to do whatever they want with their property, unless it is not lawful.
The ridiculous over-spending of tax pay money (including in the form of time devoted to this by Palo Alto City Council and officials, Santa Clara County officials, etc.) is discouraging as it is excessive at this point.
I am all for open exploration of ideas, but at a certain point it's time to be fair to the property owner and accept reality. I sympathize with those living in the mobile homes, but change is all around us all the time and we all have to adjust. Cooking up costly schemes at taxpayer expense is the wrong approach, and I disagree with government officials who continue to pursue these schemes.


text:
SEE NO EVIL: How international election observers lost credibility during the August elections
Dauti Kahura
The August 8, 2017 Kenyan presidential election, which was invalidated and nullified by the Supreme Court of Kenya on September 1, 2017, not only led to a flurry of hastily cobbled up contrite statements by international observer missions and some Western-based media houses, but also opened up a Pandora's box that critically questioned the role of international observer missions.
The election, which pitted for the second-time President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta against Raila Amolo Odinga, was declared "null and void" by Chief Justice David Maraga on account of electronic and technological malpractices. A fresh election is slated for October 17, 2017.
Just two days after the voting had ended, the international observer missions that had come to monitor the elections had already written their preliminary reports certifying the general election as largely free, fair and peaceful. About 400 international observers had been deployed to watch the polls.
The missions included, among others, the African Union (AU), led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki, the Carter Center, whose chief election observer was John Kerry, the former US secretary of state who lost the 2004 US presidential election to George W. Bush, and the European Commission (EU), under the leadership of the Dutch politician Marietje Schaake.
While the EU observer mission, in its preliminary report, did cite problems to do with the lack of preparedness within the electoral process, the lack of applicable campaign finance legislation and unreliable transmission, it was only after the Supreme Court ruling that the EU and other missions realised that they had completely missed the mark – they were forced to concede that there were massive electoral malpractices in the electronic transmission of the results.
Kerry, who had certified the elections as "free, fair and credible" despite "little aberrations here and there", even felt the need to expiate his "sins of omission" in a New York Times op-ed article on September 14, 2017. The long and short of his opinion was to shift the blame to the media – local and international – by subtly accusing them of misquoting what the international observers had meant by "free, fair and credible elections."
Schaake, the EU's chief election observer was later quoted saying: "At times, expectations of us observers are greater than our mandate allows us to do. Kenya's electoral process relied heavily on technology and observers did not have access to the backend of the system."
Caught completely unaware by the Supreme Court judgement, Schaake beat a hasty retreat by justifying and mitigating the ineptitude of the international observers. So did the Carter Center, which said that it would reevaluate its observer mission to Kenya and find out from Kerry exactly what had transpired within the team that he had led.
Characteristically, the AU mission has kept a studious silence: It has not said anything about the nullification of the presidential election, nor has it explained the rationale behind the mission's certification of the election as successful.
It used to be said that the precursor to the AU, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), was a presidents' club, where one of the unwritten rules was never to interfere with the "internal affairs" of a brother president's country. It seems to me that that rule has never been done away with, even after the OAU was baptised the AU, insofar as election observation by the AU is concerned.
Removing "egg on the face"
After more soul-searching and hoping to erase "egg on the face", on September 14, 2017 Schaake seemingly talked tough and called for "thorough investigations of alleged electoral offences in order to promote representations where warranted, including of IEBC [Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission] staff. There have to date not been any investigations against senior public officers who have reportedly breached the law."
Harping on the theme of accountability and thorough investigations, Schaake said that "fast, comprehensive and effective investigations are needed so that there is individual accountability for actions taken." Seemingly striking an impartial balance, she mildly criticised both the Jubilee and Nasa coalitions for their "apparent insubordination" of the IEBC and the Judiciary after the Supreme Court ruling. "Since the elections, Nasa and Jubilee have at times been undermining the IEBC and the Judiciary respectively."
After the Supreme Court judgement, the New York Times was forced to reconsider its earlier position. An editorial published on September 3, 2017 stated: "The ruling was a rebuke to international monitors and diplomats – and this page – who were too quick to dismiss charges of irregularities, largely out of relief that the August 8 voting had been mainly peaceful and in the hope that disappointment with the results would not lead to the sort of violence that had erupted after the disputed 2007 election, in which hundreds of people were killed."
"Multiple media reports suggested inaccurately that we and other international observers had declared the election free and fair," wrote Kerry. "Although our observers had noted isolated instances of procedural irregularities in voting and counting, these did not appear to affect the integrity of those processes which had functioned smoothly."
Kerry, like every politician, had no qualms about speaking from both sides of his mouth. He shifted blame and made sure he was not "caught with his pants down". So he unabashedly wrote, "The court ruling didn't contradict the reports of the Carter Center, whose team we led, or those of other observer missions, including the European Union and the African Union, whose findings were broadly similar."
Not to be left out during confession time was the United States embassy in Nairobi. US ambassador Robert F. Godec and the heads of other diplomatic missions issued a statement on September 7, 2017 clarifying their unconsidered judgement on the August 8, 2017 elections. "The court's decision was a strong call to everyone, including the international community, to reflect on how to make each election better than the last," said Godec. "As partners, we are doing so and we are ready to assist again." Sounding somewhat apologetic, Godec, on behalf of other Western countries' diplomats accredited to Nairobi, hoped to justify their hasty verdict on the election by saying, "Some of our missions have been the subject of fake stories and false attacks in this election period."
Godec made the point that "our electoral assistance was requested by the government of Kenya and conformed at all times with the Kenyan law." The US ambassador issued the statement on behalf of 12 diplomatic missions: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
The New York Times, one of the most influential newspapers in the world, equally reconsidered its earlier endorsement of Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner of the election after the Supreme Court ordered a fresh presidential poll. In an editorial praising the 8 August election, the New York Times had stated: "Raila Odinga, a perennial loser, began crying foul long before the election commission declared that President Uhuru Kenyatta was elected with 54 percent of the vote to Mr. Odinga's 45. International monitors from the African Union, the United States and Europe said they witnessed no foul play; former United States secretary of state John Kerry, co-leader of the Carter Center's mission of election observers, praised Kenya's election commission for its transparency and diligence."
Journalist Sarah Jerving, writing on September 8, 2017 for Devex.Com argued, "The perceived mismatch between the court ruling and international observers' initial observations has sparked a debate about how such missions operate and what role they play in codifying elections. In Kenya, that discussion is complicated by a history of election violence linked to irregularities."
The newspaper, realising the folly of its earlier hasty editorial endorsing the electoral process, added, "The fears were real, but the rush to judgment overlooked, among other things, that the supervisor of a new electronic voting system, Christopher Chege Msando, had been murdered and apparently tortured days before the election."
The Financial Times, like the New York Times, seized the moment to comment on the Supreme Court's unprecedented judgement, proclaiming the ruling as "the first of its kind in Africa." Moralising on African dictatorial regimes, the paper declared on September 3, 2017: "The many regimes across the continent who exploit incumbency to perpetuate their rule through patronage, oppression and manipulation of the vote have been put on notice. So too have those international election observers whose formulaic rubber stamping of the results has become increasingly insidious – notably in undermining their own credibility, but also spreading cynicism among the electorate."
Revisiting the violence that visited Kenya after the bungled election of December 2007, the Financial Times called out the international election observers who seem to be more obsessed with "peace" and "stability" rather than accountability and credibility. "Since 2007, when Kenya went to the brink of civil war in the wake of polls marred by fraud, there has been a tendency among such observers to brush aside all manner of irregularities in the interest of preserving peace."
Amidst the international election observers "falling over each other" to quickly correct the impression that they had declared the August 8, 2017 elections as credible, one local observer organisation has stood its ground – insisting that the general election was "free and fair", the Supreme Court's ruling notwithstanding. The Elections Observation Group (ELOG) has maintained that Uhuru Kenyatta won the election fair and square. On September 4, 2017, Regina Opondo, the chairperson of ELOG's steering committee (which includes Bishop Alfred Rotich of the Catholic Church) reiterated that Uhuru had won the presidential vote even though Supreme Court had found the process wanting. She said that the observer mission had deployed about 1,700 monitors and more than 5,000 (stationary) observers whose major responsibility was to focus on the results transmission. Her point of departure was that different observer missions had different methodologies which they used to ascertain whether the election had been conducted properly or not.
Journalist Sarah Jerving, writing on September 8, 2017 for Devex.Com, argued, "The perceived mismatch between the court ruling and international observers' initial observations has sparked a debate about how such missions operate and what role they play in codifying elections. In Kenya, that discussion is complicated by a history of election violence linked to irregularities." She particularly noted, "Clashes erupted after international observers highlighted irregularities in the 2007 elections, leaving more than 1,300 people dead and 600,000 displaced. Yet, the question now is whether observers have swung too far in the other direction, holding the bar for election too low, examining the wrong components on the side of caution to avoid unrest."
Jerving poses the question of "whether election monitoring needs a rethink worldwide, particularly as electoral processes digitise, adding that "international observers focused too heavily on the voting process, overlooking critical next steps such as the transmission of the results, which in Kenya's case was done digitally and with little transparency."
A short history of election observer missions in Kenya
Election observer missions first became a major feature in Kenyan elections in 1992 after the country returned to multiparty politics in 1991, when former President Daniel arap Moi reluctantly repealed section 2A of the old Lancaster House Constitution. Western countries, led by the United States, spearheaded the multiparty wave in Africa and were particularly keen to witness political change in Kenya.
When Moi called the elections on December 29, 1992, they instantly flew in about 200 international observers These poll watchers were augmented by between 7,000 and 10,000 local monitors who organised themselves under the auspices of the National Election Monitoring Unit (NEMU). NEMU consisted of, among others, the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-Kenya), Professional Committee for Democratic Change (PCDC), the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ-Kenya), the National Ecumenical Civic Education Programme (NECEP), the National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC).
With the prospect of facing a sustained serious opposition for the first time, President Moi's Kanu ancien regime provoked ethnic clashes in the vast Rift Valley Province, especially in the North Rift, where many migrant Kikuyus had lived for many years. These clashes, ostensibly instigated by Kalenjin Kanu party mandarins, led to the death of 1,500 Kenyans and the displacement of 300,000 others, many of whom were Kikuyus living in the Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzoia districts.
Nobert Braakhuis, a political scientist way back in 1997 would write that oftentimes election observation is usually confined to elections themselves and perhaps a few days just before elections. In his essay "International Election Observation During the 1997 Kenya Elections" published in Out for the Count: The 1997 General Elections and the Prospects for Democracy in Kenya, and edited by Marcel Rutten, Alamin Mazrui and Francois Grignon, Braakhuis noted that "election observation ignores the broader political context and long-term process of which elections form part."
The international observers accredited to monitor the 1992 general elections, according to Braakhuis, "came on the eve of the elections and once the election was over flew out the same day." These international monitors were largely drawn from the Commonwealth, the Washington-based International Republican Institute (IRI), Denmark, Egypt, Germany, Japan and Switzerland.
Out of the 7,000 polling stations, the international observers visited only a few stations, and because they came on the eve of polling day, they could not capture any of the irregularities that obviously biased the election results. NEMU, which was funded by Western donor agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the Royal Netherlands Embassy, may have captured many of these irregularities, but did not have the international gravitas to broadcast Moi's underhand tactics.
The then electoral malpractices included Moi's regime ordering the police to disrupt opposition rallies and meetings, which made it extremely difficult for opposition politicians to register as candidates. Other malpractices included the use of state instruments of violence, namely, the police, the paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU) and even organised militia, to brutalise opposition figures.
Moi had a whole load of tricks up his sleeve, which ensured that the fledgling opposition was disorganised and scattered. He exclusively "zoned off" certain areas that he claimed were Kanu areas, and the opposition was refused access to these areas. In short, the opposition went to the 1992 general election on a very uneven field.
Apart from these "tribal clashes", Moi's government also harassed the media so much that news organisations were afraid of reporting Kanu's political excesses. In the lead-up to the 1992 elections, there was only one national radio broadcasting station, the state-owned Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC), which could not broadcast news about the opposition', let alone reports about the orchestrated killings of one ethnic community in the Rift Valley.
With all these disadvantages poised against a fragile and nascent opposition, "national and international observers, embassies and the like, were simply not prepared to oppose the salami tactics that increasingly reduced the chances of the opposition to win the elections by introducing uneven electoral conditions," wrote Braakhuis.
Many keen observers of the 1992 multiparty general election noted that the international observers had been to Kenya on "election tourism", suggesting that they were in the country to have a good time rather than to monitor an election. The "election tourism" tag also alluded to the fact that the various international observer missions' reports were done in haste and without collating the different missions' assessments.
Given the way that local and international observers had handled the elections – ignoring talk about the clashes and Moi's gagging of the press – "the international observers came in for serious criticism," said Braakhuis. The result of this "see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil" attitude of the international observers was aptly captured by Africa Confidential magazine in 1993 when it wrote: "Neither the foreign nor the local observer groups had the capacity and resources to comprehensively investigate rigging allegations. Consequently, they reported the most blatant and easily verifiable irregularities."
When the post-election evaluation was done, it was evident that the international observation had been an exercise in futility and that the observer missions had lost their credibility. The missions had totally failed to capture electoral malpractices. This fiasco put the Western world on the spotlight. So, by early 1997, during the second cycle of the multiparty elections, they were already thinking of crafting a new model.
The new model that the international observers envisaged was one that would allow for a comprehensive and in-depth observation of the electoral process that was not limited to a one-day affair. The new model would also enable the observers to stay in the country a while longer, gaining experience and long-term perspective. This would equally allow them to understand the political terrain, including identifying possible tricky manipulations of the electoral process.
Western countries, through their respective embassies, formed the Donor for Development and Democracy Group (DDDG) in 1997 (which was re-named the Democracy Development Group (DDG) the following year). One of the first things DDDG did was to form the Election Observation Centre (EOC), whose members were drawn from diplomatic missions and international experts recommended by DDDG.
The DDDG consisted of 22 diplomatic missions with representation at the European Commission. They were: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States.
The EOC was composed of four coordinators – Dr Judith Geist, (USAID), Prof. Palle Svensson (Denmark – Aarhus University), Dr. David Throup (British Foreign Office) and Dr. Marcel Rutten (The Netherlands).Nonetheless, there was a caveat as to what precisely the EOU would engage in. The EOU was supposed to refrain from making public or press statements and from having any external contacts, except through its president. Canada was in charge of the presidency.
The EOU's mandate was basically divided into six clear-cut operations:
Registration of voters (which was conducted between May 19 and June 30, 1997)
Designation of candidates within the political parties' nominations (which took place between late November and early December, 1997)
Official nominations (presidential: December 2–3, councillors and parliamentary: December 8–9, 1997)
Campaign period
Election day, including vote counting (December 29)
To be better prepared this time, DDDG began having its own meetings as early as May 1997. The move was certainly encouraged by the hastily convened Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) reforms, which somewhat hoped to level the playing field as the country geared towards the December elections. IPPG had been necessitated by the events of the Saba Saba Day (July 7, 1997) and Nane Nane Day (August 8, 1997), during which the police had unleashed unmitigated violence on opposition supporters. With the support of Western countries, they too had pressurised the Kanu government to implement minimalist reforms.
The local observer group for 1997 elections included the Institute for Education in Democracy (IED), Catholic, Justice and Peace Commission (CJPC) and the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK). Together, they deployed about 27,000 poll watchers. This meant that there were at least two observers per polling station.
Two weeks prior to the election, the EOU got into top gear and distributed the Diplomatic Election Observers Field Guide – a self-prepared documentation containing guidelines for observers. Still, the ever cunning and unpredictable Moi jolted the EOU's preparedness by suddenly transferring the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK)'s chairman Justice Zacchaeus Chesoni to the High Court. This move alone caught the international observers unawares; they did not know what the move portended.
There were glaring irregularities during the 1997 elections that the international observers took note of. "The opening and closing hours of the polling stations varied erratically with voting extending in some places to more than 48 hours," wrote Braakhuis. "The counting process was equally erratic, sometimes taking a whole week." There were also many irregularities in the ballot distribution. All these irregularities seemingly happening at the same time confused the observers. In fact, many of the international observers left even before all the voting had been concluded.
The international observers had to deal with a crafty Kanu party machinery that intimidated its opponents using brutal force, stuffing ballot boxes, spoiling ballot papers, introducing unsealed ballot boxes, kidnapping returning officers and handling ballot papers improperly. Yet, with all these irregularities, "the election of Daniel arap Moi as president was accepted," observed Braakhuis.
According to Kenya's Hobbled Democracy Revisited: The 1997 General Elections in Retrospect and Prospect by Arne Tostensen, Bard-Anders Andreassen and Kjetil Tronvoll, as far as election observation was concerned, the international element was smaller in 1997 than in 1992. "The international observers under the auspices of the Donors' Democratic Development Group (DDDG) also assumed a more reticent attitude with respect to passing a judgement over the conduct of the election."
"The technical limitations are exacerbated by political realities. Clearly, the idea that international observers are a neutral, independent force is a myth. In reality, they are every bit as subject to political pressure as the parties they observe."
On the third cycle of multiparty elections that took place on December 27, 2002, the international observers would remark that "the 2002 elections mark(ed) an important step forward in the process of democratic development in Kenya." In particular, the EU Election Observation Mission (EOM), which had been in the country from November 19, 2002 till January 17, 2003, stated that "the overall conduct of the elections constituted an example for other countries in the region, also because the electoral process resulted in the first transfer of power from one political group to another since independence." The EU EOM waxed lyrical that the transfer of power from the Kanu regime to Mwai Kibaki's government showed that Kenya had "truly become a multiparty democracy."
The EU EOM also noted that "the level of violence and intimidation during the pre-election period was significantly below that predicted and below the level of the 1992 and 1997 elections." In summary, the EU EOM said it was "impressed by the conduct of the 2002 elections."
What exactly is the role of international observer missions?
What is it that gets an international observer team to get impressed about an election? And what exactly is the primary role of an election observer mission team?
In an article they wrote for Foreign Policy in April 2016, Gabrielle Lynch, Justus Willis and Nic Cheeseman argued that "international election observation missions – when small teams of foreign nationals are sent to watch over elections under the auspices of groups, such as the European Union, the African Union and the Carter Center – are intended to deter foul play and ensure free and fair polls. The trio noted that, "across Africa, international observers have frequently refused to give elections the evaluations they deserve for fear of offending incumbent governments and triggering political instability – and, also, it would seem because they apply lower standards on the continent."
Are these the "lower standards" that the Financial Times alluded to as "the soft bigotry of low expectations" insofar as elections' monitoring in Africa by international observers are concerned? The newspaper, in reference to Kerry's praising of the IEBC beforehand for a "job well done", said that the former US secretary of state "appeared guilty of the 'soft bigotry of low expectations', to borrow from a phrase coined by his own nemesis George W. Bush."
"The challenges facing election monitors are both political and technical," stated the Foreign Policy article. "The technical limitations are exacerbated by political realities. Clearly, the idea that international observers are a neutral, independent force is a myth. In reality, they are every bit as subject to political pressure as the parties they observe." Citing Kenya specifically, the three writers of the article, who have been observing the political situation in the country for some time, noted that "in the 1990s, observers turned a blind eye to deeply flawed elections in Kenya because they were worried that speaking out would trigger civil war and regional instability."
But it is Judith Kelly of Duke University in the United States who seems to have captured the true essence of international election observers: "[International] monitors are more likely to endorse elections in countries that are major foreign aid recipients. Kenya, one of the US's closest allies on the [African] continent received more than $500 million in USAID funding last year."
As if to bolster Kelly's argument, on September 18, 2017, the US government's Bureau of African Affairs made it publicly clear that they were keenly monitoring the trajectory leading to the fresh presidential elections slated for October, 17, 2017. "We [the US government] are not going to take our eyes way from Kenya: Kenya matters. If our largest embassy is in Nairobi, Kenya, that means we have a stake in that country, and Africa has a stake, and this government is looking at where the trend will go after October 17," said the Bureau's principal deputy assistant secretary Donald Yamamoto.
This sentiment is echoed by Emma Gordon, a senior East African risk analyst based in London, who observes that "for several years, election observers' main audience has been the international community rather that the population whose election they monitor."
However, by looking the other way as electoral malpractices are perpetrated by various governments, the international election observers have become, "complicit in the attempts of a brutal authoritarian regime to hold onto power and [in the process] undermined their own reputation."
The August election in Kenya was a classic case of how international election observers undermined their reputations and credibility by whitewashing or ignoring electoral malpractices in the name of stability and to protect their own national interests.
By Dauti Kahura
Mr Kahura is a senior writer for The Elephant.
Hijacking Kenya's Health Spending: Companies Linked to Powerful MP Received Suspicious Procurement Contracts
Two obscure companies linked to Kitui South MP Rachael Kaki Nyamai were paid at least KSh24.2 million to deliver medical supplies under single-source agreements at the time the MP was chair of the National Assembly's Health Committee.
Africa Uncensored
Two obscure companies linked to Kitui South MP Rachael Kaki Nyamai were paid at least KSh24.2 million to deliver medical supplies under single-source agreements at the time the MP was chair of the National Assembly's Health Committee, an investigation by Africa Uncensored and The Elephant has uncovered.
One of the companies was also awarded a mysterious Ksh 4.3 billion agreement to supply 8 million bottles of hand sanitizer, according to the government's procurement system.
The contracts were awarded in 2015 as authorities moved to contain the threat from the Ebola outbreak that was ravaging West Africa and threatening to spread across the continent as well as from flooding related to the El-Nino weather phenomenon.
The investigation found that between 2014 and 2016, the Ministry of Health handed out hundreds of questionable non-compete tenders related to impending disasters, with a total value of KSh176 billion including three no-bid contracts to two firms, Tira Southshore Holdings Limited and Ameken Minewest Company Limited, linked to Mrs Nyamai, whose committee oversaw the ministry's funding – a clear conflict of interest.
Although authorities have since scrutinized some of the suspicious contracts and misappropriated health funds, the investigation revealed a handful of contracts that were not made public, nor questioned by the health committee.
Mrs Nyamai declined to comment for the story.
The Other Afya House Scandal
Nyamai has been accused by fellow members of parliament of thwarting an investigation of a separate alleged fraud. In 2016, a leaked internal audit report accused the Ministry of Health — colloquially referred to for its location at Afya House — of misappropriating funds in excess of nearly $60 million during the 2015/2016 financial year. Media stories described unauthorized suppliers, fraudulent transactions, and duplicate payments, citing the leaked document.
Members of the National Assembly's Health Committee threatened to investigate by bringing the suppliers in for questioning, and then accused Nyamai, the committee chairperson, of blocking their probe. Members of the committee signed a petition calling for the removal of Nyamai and her deputy, but the petition reportedly went missing. Nyamai now heads the National Assembly's Committee on Lands.
Transactions for companies owned by Mrs Nyamai's relatives were among 25,727 leaked procurement records reviewed by reporters from Africa Uncensored, Finance Uncovered, The Elephant, and OCCRP. The data includes transactions by eight government agencies between August 2014 and January 2018, and reveals both questionable contracts as well as problems that continue to plague the government's accounting tool, IFMIS.
The Integrated Financial Management Information System was adopted to improve efficiency and accountability. Instead, it has been used to fast-track corruption.
Paying for a Pandemic
Hand sanitizer was an important tool in fighting transmission of Ebola, according to a WHO health expert. In one transaction, the Ministry of Health paid Sh5.4 million for "the supply of Ebola reagents for hand sanitizer" to a company owned by a niece of the MP who chaired the parliamentary health committee. However, it's unclear what Ebola reagents, which are meant for Ebola testing, have to do with hand sanitizer. Kenya's Ministry of Health made 84 other transactions to various vendors during this period, earmarked specifically for Ebola-related spending. These included:
Public awareness campaigns and adverts paid to print, radio and tv media platforms, totalling at least KSh122 million.
Printed materials totalling at least KSh214 million for Ebola prevention and information posters, contact tracing forms, technical guideline and point-of-entry forms, brochures and decision charts, etc. Most of the payments were made to six obscure companies.
Ebola-related pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical supplies, including hand sanitizer
Ebola-related conferences, catering, and travel expenses
At least KSh15 millions paid to a single vendor for isolation beds
Hacking the System
Tira Southshore Holdings Limited and Ameken Minewest Company Limited, appear to have no history of dealing in hygiene or medical supplies. Yet they were awarded three blanket purchase agreements, which are usually reserved for trusted vendors who provide recurring supplies such as newspapers and tea, or services such as office cleaning.
"A blanket agreement is something which should be exceptional, in my view," says former Auditor-General, Edward Ouko.
But the leaked data show more than 2,000 such agreements, marked as approved by the heads of procurement in various ministries. About KSh176 billion (about $1.7 billion) was committed under such contracts over 42 months.
"Any other method of procurement, there must be competition. And in this one there is no competition," explained a procurement officer, who spoke generally about blanket purchase agreements on background. "You have avoided sourcing."
The Ministry of Health did not respond to detailed questions, while Mrs Nyamai declined to comment on the contracts in question.
BPAs Explained
Procurement experts say blanket purchase agreements are used in Kenya to short-circuit the competitive process. A ministry's head of procurement can request authority from the National Treasury to create blanket agreements for certain vendors. Those companies can then be asked by procurement employees to deliver supplies and services without competing for a tender.
Once in the system, these single-source contracts are prone to corruption, as orders and payments can simply be made without the detailed documentation required under standard procurements. With limited time and resources, government auditors say they struggle especially with reconciling purchases made under blanket agreements.
The agreements were almost always followed by standard purchase orders that indicated the same vendor and the same amount which is unusual and raises fears of duplication. Some of these transactions were generated days or weeks after the blanket agreements, many with missing or mismatched explanations. It's unclear whether any of these actually constituted duplicate payments.
For example, the leaked data show two transactions for Ameken Minewest for Sh6.9 million each — a blanket purchase order for El Nino mitigation supplies and a standard order for the supply of chlorine tablets eight days later. Tira Southshore also had two transactions of Sh12 million each — a blanket purchase for the "supply of lab reagents for cholera," and six days later a standard order for the supply of chlorine powder.
Auditors say both the amounts and the timing of such payments are suspicious because blanket agreements should be paid in installments.
"It could well be a duplicate, using the same information, to get through the process. Because you make a blanket [agreement], then the intention is to do duplicates, so that it can pass through the cash payee phase several times without delivering more," said Ouko upon reviewing some of the transactions for Tira Southshore. This weakness makes the IFMIS system prone to abuse, he added.
In addition, a KSh4 billion contract for hand sanitizer between the Health Ministry's Preventive and Promotive Health Department and Tira Southshore was approved as a blanket purchase agreement in April 2015. The following month, a standard purchase order was generated for the same amount but without a description of services — this transaction is marked in the system as incomplete. A third transaction — this one for 0 shillings — was generated 10 days later by the same procurement employee, using the original order description: "please supply hand sanitizers 5oomls as per contract Moh/dpphs/dsru/008/14-15-MTC/17/14-15(min.no.6).
Reporters were unable to confirm whether KSh4 billion was paid by the ministry. The leaked data doesn't include payment disbursement details, and the MOH has not responded to requests for information.
"I can assure you there's no 4 billion, not even 1 billion. Not even 10 million that I have ever done, that has ever gone through Tira's account, through that bank account," said the co-owner of the company, Abigael Mukeli. She insisted that Tira Southshore never had a contract to deliver hand sanitizer, but declined to answer specific questions. It is unclear how a company without a contract would appear as a vendor in IFMIS, alongside contract details.
It is possible that payments could end up in bank accounts other than the ones associated with the supplier. That is because IFMIS also allowed for the creation of duplicate suppliers, according to a 2016 audit of the procurement system. That audit found almost 50 cases of duplication of the same vendor.
"Presence of active duplicate supplier master records increases the possibility of potential duplicate payments, misuse of bank account information, [and] reconciliation issues," the auditors warned.
They also found such blatant security vulnerabilities as ghost and duplicate login IDs, deactivated requirements for password resets, and remote access for some procurement employees.
Credit: Edin Pasovic/OCCRP
IFMIS was promoted as a solution for a faster procurement process and more transparent management of public funds. But the way the system was installed and used in Kenya compromised its extolled safeguards, according to auditors.
"There is a human element in the system," said Ouko. "So if the human element is also not working as expected then the system cannot be perfect."
The former head of the internal audit unit at the health ministry, Bernard Muchere, confirmed in an interview that IFMIS can be manipulated.
Masking the Setup
Ms Mukeli, the co-owner of Tira Southshore and Ameken Minewest, is the niece of Mrs Nyamai, according to local sources and social media investigation, although she denied the relationship to reporters. According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms Mukeli works at Kenya Medical Supplies Agency, a medical logistics agency under the Ministry of Health, now embroiled in a COVID procurement scandal.
Ms Mukeli's mother, who is the MP's elder sister, co-owns Icpher Consultants Company Ltd., which shares a post office box with Tira Southshore and Mematira Holdings Limited, which was opened in 2018, is co-owned by Mrs Nyamai's husband and daughter, and is currently the majority shareholder of Ameken Minewest. Documents also show that a company called Icpher Consultants was originally registered to the MP, who was listed as the beneficial owner.
Jacks of Many Trades
Co-owner of Tira Southshore Holdings Limited, Abigael Mukeli, described the company to reporters as a health consulting firm. However Tira Southshore also holds an active exploration license for the industrial mining in a 27-square-kilometer area in Kitui County, including in the restricted South Kitui National Reserve. According to government records, the application for mining limestone in Mutomo sub-county — Nyamai's hometown — was initiated in 2015 and granted in 2018.
Mukeli is also a minority owner of Ameken Minewest Company Limited, which also holds an active mining license in Mutomo sub-county of Kitui, in an area covering 135.5 square kilometers. Government records show that the application for the mining of limestone, magnesite, and manganese was initiated in 2015 and granted in 2018. Two weeks after the license was granted, Mematira Holdings Limited was incorporated, with Nyamai's husband and daughter as directors. Today, Mematira Holdings is the majority shareholder of Ameken Minewest, which is now in the process of obtaining another mining license in Kitui County.
According to public documents, Ameken also dabbles in road works and the transport of liquefied petroleum gas. And it's been named by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations in a fuel fraud scheme.
Yet another company, Wet Blue Proprietors Logistics Ltd., shares a phone number with Tira Southshore and another post office box with Icpher Consultants Company Ltd., according to a Kenya National Highway Authority list of pre-qualified vendors.
Mrs Nyamai and her husband co-own Wet Blue. The consulting company was opened in 2010, the same year that the lawmaker completed her PhD work in HIV/AIDS education in Denmark.
Wet Blue was licenced in 2014 as a dam contractor and supplier of water, sewerage, irrigation and electromechanical works. It's also listed by KENHA as a vetted consultant for HIV/AIDS mitigation services, together with Icpher Consultants.
It is unclear why these companies are qualified to deliver all these services simultaneously.
"Shell companies receiving contracts in the public sector in Kenya have enabled corruption, fraud and tax evasion in the country. They are literally special purpose vehicles to conduct 'heists' and with no track record to deliver the public goods, works or services procured," said Sheila Masinde, executive director of Transparency International-Kenya.
Both MOH and Ms Mukeli refused to confirm whether the ordered supplies were delivered.
Mrs Nyamai also co-owns Ameken Petroleum Limited together with Alfred Agoi Masadia and Allan Sila Kithome.
Mr Agoi is an ANC Party MP for Sabatia Constituency in Vihiga County, and was on the same Health Committee as Mrs Nyamai, a Jubilee Party legislator. Mr Sila is a philanthropist who is campaigning for the Kitui County senate seat in the 2022 election.
Juliet Atellah at The Elephant and Finance Uncovered in the UK contributed reporting.
We can call the kind of intrusive donor clientelism that Cheeseman is recommending Good Governance 2.0. His advocacy for strengthening patron-client relations between western donors and African governments, and his urging that donors use crises as a way of forcing regime change and policy conditionalities, is ahistorical, counterproductive and morally indefensible.
Jimi O. Adesina, Andrew M. Fischer and Nimi Hoffmann
In a piece, published on 22 December 2020, that he describes as the most important thing he wrote in 2020, Nick Cheeseman penned a strong criticism of what he calls the 'model of authoritarian development' in Africa. This phrase refers specifically to Ethiopia and Rwanda, the only two countries that fit the model, which is otherwise not generalisable to the rest of the continent. His argument, in a nutshell, is that donors have been increasingly enamoured with these two countries because they are seen as producing results. Yet the recent conflict in the Tigray region of Ethiopia shows that this argument needs to be questioned and discarded. He calls for supporting democracy in Africa, which he claims performs better in the long run than authoritarian regimes, especially in light of the conflicts and repression that inevitably emerge under authoritarianism. His argument could also be read as an implicit call for regime change, stoking donors to intensify political conditionalities on these countries before things get even worse.
Cheeseman's argument rests on a number of misleading empirical assertions which have important implications for the conclusions that he draws. In clarifying these, our point is not to defend authoritarianism. Instead, we hope to inject a measure of interpretative caution and to guard against opportunistically using crises to fan the disciplinary zeal of donors, particularly in a context of increasingly militarised aid regimes that have been associated with disastrous ventures into regime change.
We make two points. First, his story of aid dynamics in Ethiopia is not supported by the data he cites, which instead reflect the rise of economic 'reform' programmes pushed by the World Bank and IMF. The country's current economic difficulties also need to be placed in the context of the systemic financial crisis currently slamming the continent, in which both authoritarian and (nominally) democratic regimes are faring poorly.
Second, we reflect on Cheeseman's vision of aid as a lever of regime change. Within already stringent economic adjustment programmes, his call for intensifying political conditionalities amounts to a Good Governance Agenda 2.0. It ignores the legacy of the structural adjustment programmes in subverting deliberative governance on the continent during the 1980s and 1990s.
Misleading aid narratives distract from rebranded structural adjustment
On the first point, Cheeseman establishes his argument early on by stating 'that international donors have become increasingly willing to fund authoritarian regimes in Africa on the basis that they deliver on development'. In support of this assertion, he cites a table from the World Bank that shows net Official Development Assistance (ODA) received by Ethiopia surging to USD 4.93 billion in 2018, up from just over USD 4 billion in 2016 and 2017, and from a plateau oscillating around USD 3.5 billion from 2008 to 2015.
These aggregated data are misleading because ODA received by Ethiopia from western bilateral donors in fact fell in 2018 (and probably continued falling in 2019 and 2020). The World Bank data that he cites are actually from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) statistics, which refer to all official donors (but not including countries such as China). If we restrict donor assistance to DAC countries – which is relevant given that Cheeseman only refers to the US, the UK and the EU in his piece – disbursed ODA to Ethiopia fell from USD 2.26 billion in 2017 to USD 2.06 billion in 2018 (see the red line in the figure below).
Figure: ODA to Ethiopia (millions USD), 2000-2019
Source: OECD.stat, last accessed 30 December 2020.
There was a brief moderate increase in DAC country ODA starting in 2015 and peaking in 2017. Cheeseman might have been referring to this. However, contrary to his argument, it was likely that the reason for this increase in aid was primarily humanitarian, responding to the refugee influx from South Sudan that began in 2015 and to the severe drought and famine risk in 2016-17. It was also probably related to attempts to induce incipient political reform following the major protests in Oromia in 2014, which Cheeseman would presumably condone given that conventional measures of democracy and freedom improved in 2018. Indeed, it is notable that committed ODA from DAC donor countries fell even more sharply than disbursed aid in 2018, from USD 2.49 billion in 2017 to USD 2.07 billion, reflecting the context in which these countries were negotiating hard with the Ethiopian government at the time.
Instead, the sharp increase in ODA in 2018 came entirely from the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank Group, which increased its mixture of grants and loans to the country from USD 1.1 billion in 2017 to USD 2.1 billion in 2018. This subsequently fell to USD 1.8 billion in 2019 (the dashed green line in the figure).
Such ODA has been explicitly tied to the World Bank's long-standing goal of liberalising, privatising and deregulating the Ethiopian economy, thereby 'reforming' (or disassembling) many of the attributes that have allowed the Ethiopian state to act in a developmentalist manner. These attributes include state-owned enterprises, state control over the financial sector, and relatively closed capital accounts, in strong distinction to most other countries in Africa (including Rwanda).
For instance, in October 2018 it approved USD 1.2 billion from the IDA in support of 'a range of economic reforms designed to revitalize the economy by expanding the role of the private sector… to gradually open up the economy and introduce competition to and liberalize sectors that have been dominated by key state-owned enterprises (SOEs)'. The support aimed to promote public-private partnerships in key state-owned sectors such as telecoms, power and trade logistics as key mechanisms to restructure these sectors, as well as broader deregulation and financial liberalisation. It is also notable that the World Bank prefaced this justification by emphasising the political reforms that had already been embarked upon, and the promotion of 'citizen engagement social accountability' in Ethiopia.
In other words, contra the idea that western donors have been increasing their support for an authoritarian development model, they have been gradually withdrawing aid since 2017. The World Bank pulled up the slack in 2018, and in December 2019 both the World Bank and IMF promised more funding in support of ongoing economic reforms. The economic liberalisation has in turn undermined political liberalisation and has been a key source of political destabilization.
The bargaining hand of these donors has been reinforced by the economic difficulties faced by the Ethiopian economy – in particular, a hard tightening of external foreign-exchange constraints. Balance of payments statistics reveal that the government had effectively stopped external borrowing after 2015, a policy that it was advised to adopt in its Article IV consultations with the IMF in 2016 and 2017 as its external debt distress levels were rising. As a result, the government became excessively reliant on donor grant money as a principal source of foreign financing. Yet the country continued to run deep trade deficits, in large part because its development strategies, as elsewhere in Africa, have been very import and foreign-exchange intensive (e.g. think of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, requiring more than USD 4.6 billion to build, the bulk in foreign exchange). Significant capital flight appears to have taken place as well; for example, errors and omissions reported on the balance of payments were -USD 2.14 billion in 2018. In order to keep the ship afloat, the central bank burnt through over USD 1 billion of its reserves in 2018 alone.
Contra the idea that western donors have been increasing their support for an authoritarian development model, they have been gradually withdrawing aid since 2017
This severe tightening of foreign-exchange constraints needs to be understood as a critical structural factor in causing the development strategy to stall. Along with non-economic factors, this in turn put considerable strain on the government's ability to stabilise political factions through the deployment of scarce resources, of which foreign exchange remains among the most important, especially in the current setting. Again, the point is not to apologise for authoritarianism, but rather to emphasise that the current situation is rooted deeper within a conjuncture of systemic crises that go far beyond any particular form of political administration.
Indeed, Cheeseman commits a similar oversight in ignoring the previous systemic crisis that the present is in many ways repeating. Later in his piece, he asserts: 'The vast majority of African states were authoritarian in the 1970s and 1980s, and almost all had poor economic growth.' This is an ahistorical misrepresentation of the profound global crisis that crippled Africa from the late 1970s for about two decades and which was the source of the poor growth he mentions. Then, as now, economic crisis was triggered throughout the continent by the severe tightening of external constraints, which neoliberal structural adjustment programmes exacerbated in a pro-cyclical manner despite being justified in the name of growth. The combination crippled developmentalist strategies across the continent regardless of political variations and despite the fact that many countries were performing quite well before the onset of the crisis. Such historical contextualisation is crucial for a correct assessment of the present.
Along with non-economic factors, this in turn put considerable strain on the government's ability to stabilise political factions through the deployment of scarce resources, of which foreign exchange remains among the most important, especially in the current setting.
In this respect, there is a danger of putting the cart before the horse. Most countries that descend into deep protracted crises (economic or political) generally stop being nominally democratic, and yet this result becomes attributed as a cause, as if authoritarianism results in crisis or poor performance. Cheeseman cherry-picks two papers (one a working paper) on democracy and development performance in Africa (which like all cross-country regressions, are highly sensitive to model specification and open to interpretation). However, drawing any causality from such studies is problematic given that states tended to become more authoritarian after the global economic crisis and subsequent structural adjustments of the late 1970s and 1980s, not the other way around. For instance, 16 countries were under military rule in 1972, compared with 21 countries in 1989 during the height of adjustment. Faced with crippled capacity under the weight of severe austerity and dwindling legitimacy as living standards collapsed, many states responded to mass protests against the harsh conditionalities of adjustment with increasing force. As such, economic crisis and adjustment plausibly contributed to the rise of political instability and increasingly authoritarian regimes. Other factors include the Cold War destabilisation, which western countries fuelled and profited from. In other words, the political malaise across Africa at the time was driven by as much by external as internal factors.
Aid as a lever of regime change
This leads us to our second point concerning Cheeseman's vision of aid as a lever of regime change. Cheeseman is at pains to emphasise that rigged elections and repression of opponents have contributed to the recent emergence of conflict in the Tigray region. While these are important features, Ethiopian intellectuals have also emphasised that conflicts in contemporary Ethiopia have taken place against a history of imperial state formation, slavery and debates about the 'national question', or what has sometimes been called 'internal colonialism'. These conflicts are shaped by the system of ethnic federalism, in which ethnically defined states control their own revenues, social provisioning and security forces. They have been affected by foreign agricultural land grabs, which interact with older histories of semi-feudal land dispossession. Most recently, there have been concerns that regional tensions over the Renaissance Dam and agricultural land may help draw neighbouring countries into the conflict.
In the face of this highly complex and rapidly changing context, no one person can identify the optimal response. It plausibly requires regular collective deliberation by people who are deeply embedded in the context. In particular, the brief political liberalisation of 2018 was followed by a sharp uptick of political violence on all sides, rooted in fundamental tensions between different visions of statehood. Such situations cannot be solved simply by 'adding democracy and stirring'; they require deliberative governance.
Yet, Cheeseman's piece seeks a reimposition of the very political conditionalities that were a primary factor in subverting deliberative governance on the continent during the first wave of structural adjustment and its attendant Good Governance agendas. Such conditionalities work by constraining the open contestation of ideas and the process of informed consensus-building. They undermine the sovereignty of key institutions of the polity and the economy. And by doing so they degrade the historical meaning of development as a project of reclaiming social and economic sovereignty after colonialism.
Indeed, as Thandika Mkandawire has argued, the previous wave of political conditionalities and democratisation reduced democracies to formal structures of elections and, by wedding and subordinating them to the orthodox economic policy frameworks established under structural adjustment, led to what he called 'choiceless democracies'. Such 'disempowered new democracies' are incapable of responding to the substantive macroeconomic demands of voters and thereby undermining substantive democracy, deliberative governance and policy sovereignty.
In particular, the idea of a democratic developmental state is meaningless in the absence of policy sovereignty. The institutional monocropping and monotasking of the type that Mkandawire wrote about does not merely prevent key institutions, such as central banks, from using broader policy instruments to support the developmental project. It also involves the deliberate creation of unaccountable policy vehicles, such as Monetary Policy Committees (MPCs), which operate outside of democratic oversight, but have considerable hold on the levers of economic policy. MPCs are in turn wedded to neoliberal monetarism. The message to such disempowered new democracies is that 'you can elect any leader of your choice as long as s/he does not tamper with the economic policy that we choose for you.' Or as Mkandawire wrote in 1994, 'two or three IMF experts sitting in a country's reserve bank have more to say than the national association of economists about the direction of national policy.'
As Thandika Mkandawire has argued, the previous wave of political conditionalities and democratisation reduced democracies to formal structures of elections and, by wedding and subordinating them to the orthodox economic policy frameworks established under structural adjustment, led to what he called 'choiceless democracies'
In such contexts, the prospect of a democratic developmental state is severely diminished. Ensuring significant improvements in people's wellbeing is important for the legitimacy of democracies. Yet the subversion of policy sovereignty significantly constrains the ability of new democracies to do so, setting them up for a crisis of legitimacy.
If democracy is to be meaningful it should involve the active engagement of citizens in a system of deliberative governance. Civil society organisations, in this context, are meaningful when they are autonomous institutions of social groupings that actively engage in boisterous debate and public policymaking in articulating the interest of their members. Yet, donor clientelism in Africa has wrought civil society and advocacy organisations that are manufactured and funded by, and accountable to, donors, not the citizens. This is a substantive subversion of democracy as a system of deliberative governance.
In this respect, we can call the kind of intrusive donor clientelism that Cheeseman is recommending Good Governance 2.0. His advocacy for strengthening patron-client relations between western donors and African governments, and his urging that donors use crises as a way of forcing regime change and policy conditionalities, is ahistorical, counterproductive and morally indefensible. In particular, it does not take into account the destructive, anti-democratic role of western-backed regime change and policy conditionality across the Global South during the era of flag independence. Even recently, these donor countries have disastrous human rights records when pushing for regime change in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Their support for military dictatorships, such as in Egypt, has been a central pillar of foreign policy for decades. And several of these donor countries worked hard to uphold apartheid in South Africa. They have no moral high ground to push for regime change, and little record to ensure that they could do so without causing more harm than good.
Moreover, external actors attempting to enforce their narrow view of democratisation in contexts of deeply polarised and competing visions of statehood, and in the midst of economic instability reinforced by already burdensome economic conditionalities, austerity and reforms, could well be a recipe for disaster. As a collective of intellectuals from across the Horn has emphasised, the people of Ethiopia in particular and the Horn in general must be at the forefront of developing a lasting peace. This would likely require a developmental commitment to supporting state capacity and deliberative governance, not undermining it through external interference and conditionalities.
This article was first published in CODESRIA Bulletin Online, No. 2, January 2021 Page 1
Last year marked the 10th anniversary of the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, who on 17 December 2010 set himself alight at Sidi Bouzid in an act of self-immolation that made him the iconic martyr of the Tunisian revolution.
Habib Ayeb
Mohamed Bouazizi's name is familiar to all; less so is his background, although the facts of his story are well known and documented. This article will explore the links between the different sequences of 'protest' processes in Tunisia, from the 2008 strikes in the minefields, to the most recent (2017-20) El Kamour protests in the country's south-east. It will also consider the concept of socio-spatial class solidarity, both in turning an individual suicide into the spark for a major uprising, and in facilitating collective resistance and its role in long revolutionary processes.
Two key questions arise: what in Bouazizi's profile, life and circumstances was of such significance that his suicide sparked a huge popular uprising whose impact, direct and indirect, was felt worldwide. And what can he teach us about the origin, scale and longevity of the Tunisian revolution?
We must therefore examine the suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi within its familial and personal context, but also within the more general context of the political protests against the Ben Ali dictatorship, and especially against the processes of dispossession, impoverishment and exclusion. Sidi Bouzid was clearly a focus of the protests and resistance then spreading throughout Tunisia's marginalised regions. The prolonged mining strikes of 2008 were a key stage in the actions.
Born into poverty, Mohamed Bouazizi was raised by his mother after he lost his father at the age of three. As the eldest son he grew up with a moral 'obligation' to support his mother, to the detriment of his education, and he left school without qualifications. Some time before his dramatic act, he acquired a barrow and scales and started selling vegetables but his informal business attracted endless administrative hassles and police harassment. Finally, on 17 December 2010, the police seized his meagre equipment to put a stop to his trading. Angry, frustrated and desperate, he turned to the only act of resistance that still appeared open to him and thereby unwittingly triggered the countdown to Ben Ali's fall, scarcely one month later, on 14 January 2011.
'Individual' suicide and class solidarity
Between the prolonged mining strike of 2008 and the shows of solidarity unleashed by Bouazizi's self-immolation, many social movements were active across Tunisia. Among them were the protests made in Sidi Bouzid in June and July 2010 by peasant farmers whose demands focused on a number of issues: access to natural resources such as agricultural land, and water for drinking and irrigation purposes, state aid, and the complex problem of indebtedness.
According to several witnesses interviewed in Sidi Bouzid, as well as two family members, Mohamed Bouazizi took an active part in these demonstrations. Whether or not this is so, I would identify a clear link between the peasant 'protests' of summer 2010 and those that followed Bouazizi's desperate act – a link that explains why this particular case, in contrast to other suicides, sparked a popular uprising across the country. First to take to the streets after Bouazizi's self-immolation were other peasant farmers' children identifying with his fatal act of resistance and despair.
Here was a clear example of 'class solidarity' among local populations directly affected by the region's multiple social and economic problems. Over the next few days that same class solidarity also found expression nationwide, moving from the 'rural' zones (including 'rural towns'), to the popular quarters of larger towns, and finally to the big urban centres, including Tunis. The progress of the protests suggests the existence of a distinct class-consciousness embracing all the 'popular' classes, rural and urban.
Since the early 1980s, the governorate of Sidi Bouzid has been the site of a rapid, state-initiated intensification of farming, designed to create a modern, export-oriented agricultural hub based on exploiting deep underground water reserves and attracting private and public capital. Over the past four decades Sidi Bouzid has been transformed: from a semi-arid desert fringe with an extensive agriculture based on olives, almonds, pasture and winter cereals, it has become Tunisia's leading agricultural region, producing over a quarter of the nation's total output of fruit and vegetables.
But behind this undoubted technical success lies a real social and ecological failure. Socially Sidi Bouzid remains one of Tunisia's four poorest regions (of 26 in total), while ecologically the level of the water table is plummeting, water for irrigation is increasingly saline, and soil damage is visible, even to non-specialist eyes.
Since the early 1980s, the governorate of Sidi Bouzid has been the site of a rapid, state-initiated intensification of farming, designed to create a modern, export-oriented agricultural hub based on exploiting deep underground water reserves and attracting private and public capital
Here investors – who are mostly outsiders, often called 'settlers' by the local population – accrue capital and profits; meanwhile peasant farmers accumulate losses, tragedies and suicides. Without this huge socio-spatial fault, which divides Tunisia between a dominant centre and dependant periphery, Mohamed Bouazizi's death would scarcely have merited a mention. And that same divide also lies at the heart of several other shocks which will be discussed below.
After the Sidi Bouzid uprising ended with the fall of the Ben Ali dictatorship, several more protest movements arose, all forming part of the same resistance processes in the social and spatial periphery.
The Jemna oasis movement began in 2011 and concerned rights to land and resources, while the El Kamour movement (2017-20) also involves rights to local resources and in particular to 'development': two different struggles each of which constitutes a key moment/sequence in the same process of dissent.
At Jemna and El Kamour, as in other cases, the key to mass mobilisation lies in the processes and dynamics of socio-spatial class solidarity: 'This is where I come from, I belong to this region and this social group, I am being deprived of resources materially and/or symbolically, so I support those who dare to say "no" and resist'. In summary, this is what you can hear in Kebili-Jemna, Tataouine-El Kamour and elsewhere; what you can read in the media reports of declarations made by local populations. And underlying it all, 'driving' resistance and 'cementing' solidarity, lie profound feelings of injustice and demands for dignity.
Jemna: rights versus law; a disruptive legitimacy
Following the Sidi Bouzid episode and the fall of the dictator, in 2011 an oasis was 'discovered' that was probably new to the majority of Tunisians. Situated in the desert, midway between Kebili and Douz, the Jemna oasis owed its sudden appearance on the map to a significant new collective action, stemming directly from specific elements of colonial history that resurfaced after the wall of silence placed around them had been breached.
While most French colonists chose to settle in north or north-west Tunisia and created big cereal farms and/or stock-raising enterprises, and even vineyards and orchards, others preferred to head south and specialise in date farming – in particular the Degla variety, whose export market in France and Europe was virtually guaranteed. Among this latter group was one Maus De Rolley, who in 1937 created a new date-palm plantation around the core of the ancient Jemna oasis. The plantation today covers some 306 hectares, including 185 hectares planted with approximately 10,000 date palms.
Although local populations had held these lands as common and indivisible (tribal) property, they were dispossessed without compensation on the pretext that nomadic herding (pastoralism) was not a genuine productive activity, and that the land therefore was uncultivated. At independence, these populations – who had battled against the occupiers – held great expectations that the new authorities would return their stolen lands.
The Jemna oasis movement began in 2011 and concerned rights to land and resources, while the El Kamour movement (2017-20) also involves rights to local resources and in particular to 'development'
When the colonial lands were nationalised in 1964, however, the government decided to place them under state control, confiding their management to the body that administered the state's agricultural land, the Office des Terres Domaniales (OTD), which thereby became Tunisia's biggest agricultural landowner. Bolstering this strategy was the collectivisation policy of the 1960s, which aimed to reorganise agricultural land and create state 'socialist' cooperatives.
Yet the real argument against the redistribution of the nationalised lands lay elsewhere: small peasant farmers were judged too ignorant and archaic, too lacking in the necessary financial and technical means, to develop a modern intensive agricultural sector – a stigmatisation that still recurs today whenever discussion returns to this subject and/or to questions of agricultural models and political choices related to farming and food.
Over the following decades, the heirs made some efforts to reclaim these lands, but it was not until early 2011 that the first organised occupations of OTD lands were launched by local populations describing themselves as the legitimate successors. Among them was Jemna's local population, who occupied the former De Rolley plantation, claiming rights of property and of exploitation. The authorities demanded an end to the occupation, and the resulting impasse lasted for several years. The government argued that the occupation was illegal, while the occupiers countered that they held a legitimate right to resources and especially to community assets, including the indivisible and inalienable commons.
After a long period of tension a compromise was reached. By mutual agreement, the state ceded full management of the palm plantation to the local population while retaining ownership of the land. Might the latter have believed this negotiated settlement to be the only viable compromise?
Underlying the government position was the fear that any solution implying the grant of freehold to the legitimate heirs might create a legal precedent and set an example that would unleash a torrent of other land claims, all drawing on the same colonial and post-colonial past. But the occupation alone had set that example already, inciting other local populations to reclaim – with some attempts at occupation – the lands snatched from their grandparents during colonisation. Furthermore, I would argue that the Jemna case also served to fuel claims of a legitimate right to other local 'natural' resources such as water, minerals (for example, phosphates) and oil that mobilised populations in the Tatouine region.
El Kamour: the 'will of the people'
Resistance entered another phase, not without success, at El Kamour – a locality situated in the barren steppes of south-eastern Tunisia, south of the town of Tatouine, on the tarmac road leading to the oil-fields in the extreme south of the country. The 'dispossession pipeline' carrying crude oil to the port of Skhira, 50 kilometres north of Gabes, runs through here, and this geographical position close to the pipeline is the immediate reason for El Kamour's sudden appearance on political maps of Tunisia, as well as in the media.
Behind El Kamour, however, lies the governorate and town of Tataouine (Tataouine is the capital of the governorate of the same name), with over 180,000 inhabitants. Arid and barren, this region contains most of Tunisia's oil reserves, producing 40 per cent of its petrol and 20 per cent of its gas. Yet Tataouine also records some of the nation's highest levels of poverty: in 2017, for example, 28.7 per cent of its active population were unemployed (compared with a national average of 15.3 per cent), while for graduates the rate rose as high as 58 per cent.
Events in El-Kamour, 2017-2020: a brief chronology
The El Kamour movement began on 25 March 2017, with protests in various localities in the governorate, all converging on the town centre of Tataouine. The protesters were demanding a share of local resources, particularly oil, as well as greater employment opportunities and infrastructure development. Met by silence from the government, on 23 April they organised a sit-in at El Kamour. Tensions mounted on both sides, and an escalation became inevitable after the prime minister visited Tataouine and met the protesters. His plans to calm the situation with a few token promises came to naught and the discussions ended in deadlock. On 20 May the pumping station was occupied for two days before being cleared by the army, and tensions remained high.
Eventually, on 16 June 2017, an agreement was signed with the government through the mediation of the Union générale tunisienne du travail (UGTT), which acted to guarantee its implementation. The terms of the agreement promised the creation of 3,000 new jobs in the environmental sector by 2019, and 1,500 jobs in the oil industry by the end of 2017. A budget of 80 million dinars was also earmarked for regional development. But, to the frustration of the local population, the agreement was never implemented. The government simply bided its time, gambling that the militants would tire and the movement run out of steam.
'This is where I come from, I belong to this region and this social group, I am being deprived of resources materially and/or symbolically, so I support those who dare to say "no" and resist'. In summary, this is what you can hear in Kebili-Jemna, Tataouine-El Kamour and elsewhere.
On 20 May 2020, however, the El Kamour activists resumed their protests and sit-ins in several places, piling on the pressure and blockading several routes to bar them to oil-industry vehicles. On 3 July they organised a new general strike throughout the public services and the oilfields, and on 16 July they closed the pumping station, blocking the pipelines carrying petroleum products north. But the El Kamour militants had to wait until 7 November 2020 before they could reach an agreement with the government's representatives, in return for which petrol producers and other oil-sector enterprises were to resume operations immediately.
Signed by the head of government on 8 November 2020, the agreement contains a number of key points, including several that had previously featured in the 2017 accord but had not been implemented. These included, dedicated 80-million-dinar development and investment fund for the governorate of Tataouine; credit finance for 1,000 projects before the end of 2020; 215 jobs created in the oil industry in 2020, plus a further 70 in 2021; 2.6 million dinars for local municipalities and 1.2 million dinars for the Union Sportive de Tataouine.
The big social movements discussed above all have several points in common. Firstly, they are very largely located in southern, central, western and north-western Tunisia, the same marginalised and impoverished regions that between 17 December 2010 and early January 2011 saw huge protests in support of Bouazizi and against current social and economic policies. Secondly, while differing in detail, the principal demands of these movements all relate essentially to the right to resources, services and a decent income. None, or virtually none, are linked to 'political' demands (political rights, individual freedom). Thirdly, in their choice of language, and of several 'spectacular' actions, these social movements display a radicalism that marks a clear break with the political games played in and around the centres of power. Finally, almost all these movements are denounced and accused of regionalism and tribalism, sometimes even of separatism and treachery. Protesters are suspected of being manipulated, of being puppets in the hands of a political party or foreign power.
Yet these movements have enjoyed some, albeit relative, success – a success impossible without the class solidarity shown in the three examples discussed above, and the ties of domination and dependency that for decades have characterised the relationship between Tunisia's centre of power (the east coast) and its deprived and impoverished periphery. Finay, these same examples, and other more recent cases, demonstrate that the 'revolutionary' processes launched in early 2008 are still active in Tunisia and will probably remain so for many years to come.
This article was first published in The Review of Africa Political Economy journal

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: What is the point of "grep -q" I was reading the grep man page and came across the -q option, which tells grep to "not write anything to standard output. Exit immediately with zero status if any match is found, even if an error was detected."
I don't understand why this could be desirable or useful behavior. In a program who's reason d'etre seems to be read from stdin, process, write to stdout, why would I want to silence it completely?
In what case would silencing a program whose goal it is to output things be useful? Why would someone want to entirely ignore errors and force a successful return code?
Thanks!

A: The exit status of grep doesn't necessarily indicate an error ; it indicates success or failure. grep defines success as matching 1 or more lines. Failure includes matching zero lines, or some other error that prevented matching from taking place in the first place.
-q is used when you don't care about which lines matched, only that some lines matched.
if grep -q foo file.txt; then
    echo "file.txt contains foo"
else
    echo "file.txt does not contain foo"
fi

A: Here's a good example of grep -q: scanning the output of a command for a particular value, then performing an action if the value is found:
if docker context ls | grep -q dm-manager; then
  docker context rm dm-manager
fi

if docker context ls produces a line containing dm-manager then delete context dm-manager.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
David Paul Bobzien Jr. (born December 11, 1972) is an American politician. He was a Democratic member of the Nevada Assembly, representing Washoe County District 24 from 2006 to 2014. He attended George Mason University where he received his Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics. He then received his Master of Public Administration from Boise State University with an emphasis in Natural Resources and Public Lands Policy. On January 15, 2019, Bobzien was appointed by Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak as the Director of the Governor's Office of Energy.

Legislative Service
Bobzien served in the 75th Session of the Nevada Assembly on the Government Affairs (Vice Chairman), Natural Resources, Agriculture and Mining, Education, and Transportation committees.

Awards
 2009 Assemblyman of the Year, Nevada Conservation League
 Highest-rated freshman legislator of the 2007 session (Las Vegas Review-Journal)
 2007 Freshman of the Year, Peace Officers Research Association of Nevada
 Winner, Southwest Energy Efficiency Project's Leadership in Energy Efficiency Award
 Distinguished Deed, Nevada Conservation League
 Winner, Nevada EcoNet's Golden Pinecone Award for environmental excellence as a public servant

References

External links

 Nevada Assembly - David Bobzien Official Government Website

1972 births
Living people
Boise State University alumni
George Mason University alumni
Democratic Party members of the Nevada Assembly
People from Washington, D.C.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia