a écrit le 14 juillet 2009 à 1h25 @tous (suite et fin)
Niger Senses a Threat to Its Scrap of Democracy...(continued)
(the New York Times of today Monday )
]....The country’s constitutional court ruled that he could not hold the referendum; Mr. Tandja’s solution was to dissolve the court and replace its members.
“In every other country where democracy is well anchored, what is happening here would be unimaginable,†said Moussa Coulibaly, a lawyer who leads the bar association here, citing the president’s recent seizure of emergency powers for himself. “It’s all the more serious in that 10 years of gains are now threatened.â€
During a 2005 visit to the White House by Mr. Tandja, President George W. Bush praised his adherence to democratic values. (Shortly afterward, Mr. Tandja went on to deny the existence of a well-documented famine in his country.)
Now, Mr. Tandja, a 71-year-old former military man, has engineered “a coup d’état in its first phase,†said the leader of the opposition, Mohamadou Issoufou, a veteran politician here, who was recently arrested in the night and interrogated at police headquarters in Niamey, but later released.
Niger Senses a Threat to Its Scrap of Democracy...(continued)
(the New York Times of today Monday )
]....The country’s constitutional court ruled that he could not hold the referendum; Mr. Tandja’s solution was to dissolve the court and replace its members.
“In every other country where democracy is well anchored, what is happening here would be unimaginable,†said Moussa Coulibaly, a lawyer who leads the bar association here, citing the president’s recent seizure of emergency powers for himself. “It’s all the more serious in that 10 years of gains are now threatened.â€
During a 2005 visit to the White House by Mr. Tandja, President George W. Bush praised his adherence to democratic values. (Shortly afterward, Mr. Tandja went on to deny the existence of a well-documented famine in his country.)
Now, Mr. Tandja, a 71-year-old former military man, has engineered “a coup d’état in its first phase,†said the leader of the opposition, Mohamadou Issoufou, a veteran politician here, who was recently arrested in the night and interrogated at police headquarters in Niamey, but later released.
