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Kenya PM calls for end to African dictatorships, new era of reform

30 April 2011 03:39 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Kenya’s prime minister says postcolonial Africa has spawned repressive and corrupt dictators, and asked political reformers not to blame colonial rule for all the continent’s continuing woes, APA reports quoting â€œAssociated Pressâ€.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga, guest of honour at a convention of the Zimbabwe prime minister’s party in this western provincial capital, said Friday that African dictators had tried to promote state unity as "an excuse for excess, intolerance, repression" and illegally holding on to power.
Despite cruel and unjust colonial rule, African constitutional law had since been constantly violated by ruling elites to entrench and enrich themselves, Odinga said.
"We must put an end to creating dictators and move on to mobilizing resources of this continent," he said.
Odinga serves in a coalition in Kenya created â€” like Zimbabwe’s two-year power sharing government â€” after disputed and violent elections in 2007.
He did not mention President Robert Mugabe by name, but it was clear elements of his speech were aimed at Zimbabwe’s longtime ruler since independence from Britain in 1980. Odinga addressed 6,000 delegates late Friday of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s former opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
State media loyal to Mugabe in his nation’s troubled coalition with Tsvangirai on Thursday accused Odinga of fomenting violence in Kenya and called him "the archetype of evil and violence."
Tsvangirai said Friday his party and Odinga’s in Kenya shared the same goal to democratize Africa and bring peace and economic growth.
Earlier Friday, he told supporters party loyalists had "felt the weight of the oppressor’s baton or the feel of his fist or booted feet" in a decade of state orchestrated violence and political intimidation he blames on Mugabe loyalists.
But he has acknowledged his supporters have been accused of violent retaliation against attacks by Mugabe’s militants after Mugabe called for polls later this year to end the shaky coalition government formed in 2009.
At the convention Thursday, Tsvangirai vowed his party will expel members who are involved in violence as they prepare for elections he says could be held within the next twelve months.
Tsvangirai said youths, unemployed in the nation’s economic meltdown, were often used by politicians "to mete out violence" to their rivals.
Tsvangirai also told supporters internal squabbles have hurt the party. There were no reports of violence at the often tense convention.
He said his party survived "the most vicious of all forms of violence and the most aggravated form of dictatorship" to garner the most votes in the disputed 2008 parliamentary poll.
Tsvangirai boycotted a presidential run-off against Mugabe to protest surging violence against his party.
After upcoming elections, "we will form the next Government and we will take Zimbabwe into a new era of peace, prosperity, dignity and hope," Tsvangirai said Friday.