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Peru’s Congress on Monday approved a motion to initiate a process to remove President Martín Vizcarra from office over corruption allegations, a month and a half after he survived an earlier impeachment trial.Lawmakers approved the measure in a 60-40 vote with 18 abstentions. Vizcarra is set to present his defense before Congress on November 9, with another vote to follow.The move to oust Vizcarra follows media reports that the president allegedly accepted bribes of about 2.3 million soles ($637,000) from two companies that won public works tenders when he was the governor of the southern region of Moquegua. Vizcarra has denied the allegations.Several legislators during the debate said the allegations were serious enough to warrant a trial.”It is the least we should do,” said legislator Diethell Columbus, of the right-wing Popular Force Party of former presidential candidate and Vizcarra political adversary Keiko Fujimori.Peru´s president, who took office in 2018 and is constitutionally barred from seeking a new term, said some lawmakers are seeking only to generate “chaos and disorder” by pushing impeachment just months ahead of a presidential election slated for April 11.”There is absolutely no proof of the charges,” Vizcarra told reporters earlier Monday. “An impeachment trial destabilizes the country.”Vizcarra, who does not have his own party representation in the legislature and whose term ends in July, survived an ouster attempt on September 18 amid political tensions and an economic recession brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Only 32 of Congress’s 130 members voted to remove him.The political turbulence in copper giant Peru comes as the country surpassed 900,000 coronavirus cases and more than 34,500 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, with one of the highest fatality rates per capita in the world.
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Fewer than 1 in 4 Algerian voters took part in Sunday’s constitutional referendum, officials said, despite government efforts to encourage high turnout as part of a strategy to turn the page on last year’s political unrest.President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and the powerful military had presented the new constitution as a sign that they had addressed the causes of public anger that prompted mass weekly protests for more than a year.The referendum result will be announced at 10 a.m. (0900 GMT) Monday.However, Sunday’s turnout of only 23.7%, according to the election body, showed lackluster backing for a vote that many members of the Hirak street protest movement had decried as a sham intended to quash their movement.The global pandemic may have also constrained voting, with Algeria recording more than 300 new cases Saturday.”There is no point in voting. This constitution will not change anything,” said 30-year-old bus driver Hassan Rabia, sitting with two friends at a cafe in central Algiers.Days before the vote, Tebboune was admitted to a hospital in Germany after saying aides had tested positive for COVID-19 and a cartoon in el Watan newspaper showed a man in a polling booth looking at ballots marked in German rather than Arabic.Though pro-government media had shown a crowd of young men in one city rushing into a polling station as soon as it opened, voting queues in the capital Algiers were small.In the Kabylie region, a bastion of support for the Hirak or “revolution of smiles” movement and center of a 1990s Islamist insurgency, demonstrators blocked polling stations, witnesses said.”It is ‘ulac’ vote here,” said Said Mezouane in the village of Haizer, using the Berber word for no.Tebboune has presented the changes as partly addressing the wishes of protesters who forced his predecessor Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down after 20 years in office.However, their demands — replacing the ruling elite, the military’s withdrawal from politics and an end to corruption — have at best only been partly met.Many of Bouteflika’s closest allies and other top officials, including his brother Said and the former intelligence chief Mohamed Mediene, as well as major business tycoons, have been jailed on corruption charges.The new constitution includes presidential term limits and more powers for the parliament and judiciary.However, the military remains the most powerful institution in Algerian politics, though it has played a less prominent role since Tebboune’s election.The new constitution gives the military powers to intervene outside Algeria’s borders, with the generals concerned about insecurity in neighboring Libya and Mali.
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Ursula Gacek, head of the election observer mission to the United States from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, cheerfully refers to November 3, the U.S. presidential election, as “E-day.”   
 
Gacek spoke to VOA by phone after the release last week of a report by the elections arm of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe on the conditions leading up to election day.   
 
She says 2020 is different than the previous nine elections that OSCE has observed. The United States, a member of the OSCE, invited the European observers after the 2000 presidential election, when the decision about who had won the presidential race went all the way to the Supreme Court before it was decided for George W. Bush over former vice president Al Gore. At the invitation of the U.S. government, OSCE has sent observation teams for every U.S. presidential and midterm election since then.   
 
There’s more than one reason that this year is different. The most obvious, Gacek said, is the coronavirus pandemic, which has forced the OSCE’s Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights to vastly scale down the number of observers sent to the U.S. Pre-pandemic, the office had planned to send 500. But after the pandemic hit, they scaled back to just 30.   FILE – An election worker takes ballots from voters dropping them off at an official ballot drop box at the Miami-Dade County Board of Elections, in Doral, Fla., Oct. 26, 2020. 
COVID-19, Gacek said, “has made life difficult for everybody.” It has affected the way campaigns are conducted, the administration of the vote, and the amount of work election administrators must deal with. For voters, it has meant deciding whether to show up on election day, vote in person early, or send a ballot through the mail.   
 
Gacek noted that this year is different in an additional way, in the attention focused on the mechanics of the election — how people cast their ballots and when the ballots will be counted. “Suddenly,” Gacek said, “people are asking, ‘will my vote count?’”  
 
“I think the pressure is on everybody,” Gacek said. “It’s on the hardworking and really very decent election administration people. I have an awful lot of respect for them.” 
 
Gacek’s team arrived in the United States in early October and fanned out across the nation in pairs. Their mission was to talk to election administrators, evaluate media coverage, examine voting technology, and get a sense of the local political atmosphere in the places where their presence is welcomed.     
 
Eighteen U.S. states routinely deny access to OSCE observers. Gacek, who is not connected to the group of lawmakers who were turned away in North Carolina, said observers do not try to go to places where their presence is against the law.   
 
After a month of phone calls, virtual meetings, and in-person visits, Gacek’s team issued what they call an interim report, focused on conditions ahead of the election.   
 
The October 22 report noted the complexities of administering a national election taking place in 50 states that each have different rules and voting equipment. In all, voting administration is handled by some 10,500 jurisdictions across the country. That’s complicated in a regular year — but this year, COVID-19 has also changed the options people have for voting. The voting workarounds devised this year have met no small amount of resistance.  
 
The report notes that more than 365 lawsuits have been filed in 44 states and the District of Columbia over how people can vote and when their votes can be counted.   
 
Complicating things further, the pandemic has resulted in shortages of both funding and personnel. Congress awarded emergency funding to the states in March to help pay for the extraordinary measures being implemented to give people a safe way to vote — but those funds, in the words of the report, “are largely regarded to be insufficient.” Moreover, there is a shortage of experienced poll workers, as many of those who have the most experience also are high-risk because of their age. Many of them are sitting this election out.   
 
Other problems are ongoing.    
 
There are differences among the jurisdictions in voting technologies. Of particular concern are a handful of jurisdictions that use voting machines that do not leave a paper trail, which can cause problems if there’s a need for a recount. There are differences between states in whether people who have been convicted of a crime should be allowed to vote. The observers concluded that some 5.2 million citizens are disenfranchised due to criminal convictions. The report notes that such restrictions disproportionally affect racial minorities.   
 
The ODIHR report says “many” of the observers have voiced serious concern that the legitimacy of the election will be in question because of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “repeated allegations of a fraudulent election process,” particularly as it regards mail-in voting. The president has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread use of mail-in ballots will lead to voter fraud. He has also claimed that the U.S. Postal Service can’t handle the increased burden of mail-in ballots.    FILE – Postal workers load packages in their mail delivery vehicles at the Panorama city post office on Aug. 20, 2020 in the Panorama City section of Los Angeles.The U.S. Postal Service has not supported that statement. However, it did warn voters to request their ballots and return them early, to make sure they arrive in time to be counted.   
 
Election financing also is in question. Gacek’s observers noted that the Federal Election Commission, which regulates campaign spending, cannot make decisions or issue advisory opinions at present because, since July, it has lacked a quorum — meaning at least four out of six available positions filled — to carry out its operations.   
 
After several years of understaffing, the commission has a backlog of hundreds of cases to investigate.   
 
Trump nominated Allen Dickerson last month and Sean Cooksey and Shana Broussard on Wednesday to fill the empty slots, but the three have yet to be confirmed by the Senate — leaving the FEC toothless for Tuesday’s presidential election.   
 
Finally, the report notes that the media landscape is polarized, both in traditional media and on social networks. Despite actions by social network administrators to guard against disinformation, many of the observers said they were still concerned about untruths proliferating online.   
 
With the interim report published, Gacek’s team — along with the rest of the United States — is braced for “E-day.” Gacek’s team will evaluate the vote that day and remain in the United States for about a week longer to observe whatever happens next. Then, from Europe, they will spend the next two months assembling a final report to be released sometime in January —possibly, as Gacek noted, right around the time the U.S. inaugurates the winner of the presidential election.   
 
Whatever the outcome, says Warsaw-based ODIHR spokeswoman Katya Andrusz, the observers’ reporting is meant to be helpful, not critical for the sake of criticism.  
 
“I sometimes get the feeling that people have this image of the observers as . . . going into elections, wagging a finger up and down and saying, you’re not doing it well,” she said in a phone conversation recently, “but that is not the point.”   
 
She said the observation teams always offer to follow up their reporting with a visit back to the country to present the recommendations and help, if requested, with their implementation.   
 
The goal, she said, is to improve the election process for the next time around.  
 
“There is no perfect election,” she said. “We are not there to criticize but to help the countries and the authorities to improve their election processes for the benefit of their citizens.”        
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French authorities detained a third man for questioning Saturday in connection with the Islamist knife attack at Notre Dame Basilica in the southern French city of Nice that left three people dead.   The man, a 33-years-old, was present during a police search Friday at the home of a second young Tunisian man suspected of being in contact with the attacker.   France, Tunisia and Italy are jointly investigating to determine the motive of main suspect Brahim Issaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian, and whether he acted alone and whether his act was premeditated.    French police have three people in custody for questioning after they found two telephones on the suspect after the attack.   The first man, age 47, was detained Thursday night after police reviewed surveillance footage and observed the person next to the attacker on the day before the attack.   A second detained subject, 35, suspected of contacting Ibrahim Issaoui, the day before the attack, was arrested Friday.   Three people died in Thursday’s assault, two women, 60 years old and 44 years old, and a man, who was 55 years old.    Issaoui arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa on September 20 and traveled to Paris October 9.   He was not on Tunisia’s list of suspected militants and was not known to French intelligence services.  
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With just a few days until voters cast the last ballots in the U.S. presidential election, the top candidates are focusing their campaign efforts Friday in four midwestern battleground states. President Donald Trump will campaign in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, while former Vice President Joe Biden will campaign in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.Michigan has 16 electoral votes, Minnesota and Wisconsin have 10 each, and Iowa 6.WATCH: Blue states and Red states  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Democratic U.S. presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden greets suporters at a drive-in, Get Out the Vote campaign stop in Tampa, Florida, Oct. 29, 2020.Biden slams Trump over ‘super spreader events’
Biden criticized President Trump for holding packed rallies amid the coronavirus pandemic where most attendees are not wearing masks, calling them ”super spreader events.” The president is “spreading more than just coronavirus. He’s spreading division and discord,” Biden said at a second drive-in rally later in the day in Tampa that was cut short by a rain shower. Trump, addressing a large crowd in a stadium parking lot in Tampa, again predicted heavy Republican voter turnout — “a great red wave” — on November 3.  “We’re going to win this election so big. You watch,” the president predicted. Trump had been scheduled to hold another rally later Thursday in North Carolina, but because of “very bad weather,” including high winds, the event was postponed until Monday, he told reporters.U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during a campaign rally outside Raymond James Stadium, in Tampa, Florida, Oct. 29, 2020.Trump touts coronavirus vaccine
Trump, in his speech in Tampa, also said the country would have a vaccine for COVID-19 “in a few weeks,” promising that “seniors will be first in line to have it.” In Florida, people over the age of 65 this year could comprise about a third of those voting for president.    In every election since 1996, the winner of Florida has won the presidency. The winner there earns 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the election.       According to an Unprecedented early voting numbers
More than 80 million people had already voted as of Thursday, well above half of the overall 2016 vote count, which was 138.8 million.    About two-thirds of America’s early voters have mailed in or dropped off their ballots, and the rest voted in person at polling places throughout the country.    Biden voted Wednesday in Wilmington, Delaware, while Trump cast his ballot Saturday at a library in West Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago resort.       Voting experts say voter turnout for the contest between the Republican Trump and Democratic challenger Biden could be the highest percentage of the electorate since 1908, when 65% of the country’s eligible voters cast ballots.  
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Ivory Coast’s 2010 election violence killed 3,000 people and sent thousands more fleeing into Ghana.  Now, many of those refugees fear the Ivorian election this Saturday could spark new unrest, as Stacey Knott reports from Ampain Refugee Camp.Camera: Stacey Knott   Produced by: Stacey Knott
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GUERNICA, ARGENTINA — Argentine police clashed with a group of protesters on Thursday while evicting them from makeshift homes on a contested property south of the capital, Buenos Aires. Six police officers were injured and at least 30 people were arrested, according to authorities.  Hundreds of families had been living in shacks on the land in the town of Guernica for more than three months, in a reflection of the growing poverty and lack of housing for many people in Argentina. The pandemic and lockdowns aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19 have aggravated the country’s economic problems.The owners of the occupied land in Guernica had gone to court to reclaim the property.  Many people left peacefully when security forces entered the property early Thursday after negotiations between authorities and the occupants failed. Some resisted, throwing stones at police.  Police then demolished the homes, some of which were made of wood, cardboard and sheet metal.  Some 600 families had previously signed an agreement with authorities to leave the property. In return, they received building materials and money to pay rent.
 
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Asian markets are mostly lower Thursday in the aftermath of Wall Street’s big losses a day earlier, sparked by growing pessimism over the tightening grip of the COVID-19 pandemic.The Nikkei index in Tokyo lost 0.3% in its trading session.  Sydney’s S&P/ASX index closed 1.6% lower.  The KOSPI index in Seoul was down 0.7%, and Taipei’s TSEC index lost 1%.In late afternoon trading, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index is down 0.4% in late afternoon trading, while Mumbai’s Sensex is 0.3% lower.The lone bright spot in the region was Shanghai’s Composite index, which gained 0.1%.In commodities trading, gold is selling at $1,881.40 per ounce, up 0.1%. U.S. crude oil is selling at $37.26 per barrel, down 0.3%, and Brent crude oil is selling at $38.96 per barrel, down 0.4%.All three U.S. indices are trending higher in futures trading, a day after losing an average of 3.5%.
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A rising tide of new coronavirus cases has prompted the leaders of France and Germany to impose a new round of lockdowns to stop the spread of the virus.During a televised speech Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a nationwide monthlong lockdown that will take effect Friday. Macron said restaurants, bars, cafes and other nonessential businesses will be closed, while residents will only be allowed to leave their homes for work, shopping and doctor’s appointments.German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a set of similar measures in her own monthlong lockdown order Wednesday after a meeting with leaders of the nation’s 16 federal states. In addition to restaurants and bars, all gyms, theaters and opera houses will be shut down under Merkel’s order, which takes effect Monday, while the majority of businesses, shops and hair salons will be allowed to remain open.Schools in both nations will remain open during their respective lockdowns.The restrictions were announced by Macron and Merkel as both nations struggle with a record number of new COVID-19 cases practically every day — with Germany posting nearly 15,000 new cases Wednesday — creating a situation that has pushed their respective health care systems to their limits.France and Germany are joining several other European nations that have been forced to impose a new set of restrictions to deal with a second and growing wave of the virus as the cold weather season approaches in the Northern Hemisphere.As of early Thursday, there are more than 44.4 million total COVID-19 cases worldwide, including over 1.1 million deaths. India has reached the milestone of over 8 million total novel coronavirus cases, second only to the United States, with 8.8 million total confirmed cases.As the effort to develop a safe and effective vaccine continues, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration says it will ensure that everyone in the United States will be able to be inoculated free of charge.Seema Verma, the head of the federal government’s Medicare and Medicaid health insurance programs, announced Wednesday the agency will cover the cost of any vaccine approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.Verma also said that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will cover a larger portion of the cost of any new COVID-19 treatments. Private health plans will also be banned from charging their customers anything for administering the vaccine.
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In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a cycling club faces an uphill struggle: getting the financial support to compete, including in pan-African races. Anasthasie Tudieshe reports from Kinshasa.
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Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is undergoing medical examination at a German hospital, a day after the government announced he was admitted to an Algerian hospital after self-isolating because several of his senior aides tested positive for COVID-19.The 75-year-old president’s treatment in Germany comes days before Algeria’s critical Nov. 1 referendum on changes he has proposed to the constitution.A government statement announced on state television did not specify what Tebboune is being treated for, even though he had a coronavirus scare.There has been no government announcement that Tebboune tested positive for COVID-19.Tebboune replaced Algeria’s ousted longtime president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in January amid political unrest in the country.
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During every U.S. presidential election, hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots are discarded by election officials for a variety of reasons, from arriving too late to missing a proper signature on the outer envelope.But this year, with more than half of U.S. voters casting ballots early or by mail, even more absentee ballots are being tossed out, raising questions about voting rights and heightening the specter of post-election uncertainty in key battleground states.Consider Florida and Georgia, two Southern states where President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, have been running neck and neck ahead of the November 3 election.While Florida and Georgia don’t publish data on ballot rejections before the election, two academics — Dartmouth College professor Michael Herron and University of Florida professor Daniel Smith — have analyzed the states’ official mail-in data to tally the number of votes at risk of rejection.In Florida, out of 3.8 million mail-in ballots cast so far, more than 15,000 face dismissal, a rejection rate of 0.4 percent, according to Herron and Smith. In North Carolina, the rejection rate is even higher. As of October 25, out of more than 780,000 ballots mailed in the state, more than 10,000 face possible rejection, a disqualification rate of about 1.3%, their research found.Minority votersAs in some recent elections, more minority than white voters are facing ballot rejections. In North Carolina, for example, Black voters were three times more likely than white voters to have their ballots flagged, the researchers found. This is something the Democrats could use as an issue should they decide to challenge the results of close races.To be sure, not every ballot marked as deficient will be automatically rejected. In both states, as in many others, voters are given an opportunity to “cure” or correct mistakes on their ballots.“It would be premature at this juncture to conclude that those returned ballots have been rejected by the canvassing board and not counted,” said Mark Ard, interim communications director for the Florida Department of State.In North Carolina, officials have started contacting voters with erroneous ballots, said Patrick Gannon, public information director for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.“A voter who for any reason does not have time to cure the ballot may vote in person during the early voting period through October 31 or on Election Day,” Gannon said via email.At first glance, the number of Florida and Georgia ballots flagged for rejection appears modest. However, in Florida and Georgia, as in other states with historically close elections, 10,000 votes can sometimes be the difference between victory and defeat.The outcome of the 2000 presidential election between Republican George W. Bush, the ultimate victor, and Democrat Al Gore came down to 537 votes in Florida. And during the 2018 primary election for a U.S. Senate seat from Florida, Republican Rick Scott won by just 10,033 votes, the researchers noted.As more mail ballots arrive in the coming days, the number of rejected ballots is likely to grow, in some cases potentially surpassing the margin of victory between candidates in closely fought presidential, congressional, state or local races in battleground states.“That’s a really nightmarish scenario when an election is so close that the number of rejected ballots is greater than the margin,” Herron said in an interview.As of Wednesday, 49 million Americans had voted by mail, according to a tally by the U.S. Elections Project.Herron and Smith first published their findings in The Conversation, a research publication. They shared more up-to-date data from Florida and North Carolina with VOA.Court battlesThe issues of how to handle ballots with signature problems and how long past November 3 mail-in ballots can arrive and still be counted have been the subject of months-long court battles by Republicans and Democrats throughout the country.With more Democrats than Republicans voting by mail, Republicans have sought court intervention, with varying degrees of success, to prevent late-arriving ballots from being entered into the final tally.In recent weeks, the conservative-controlled U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against efforts to change election procedures, including ballot receipt deadlines, invoking a doctrine that holds election rules should not be changed close to a vote.On October 19, before Trump’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, was confirmed, the justices split 4-4 over Pennsylvania’s plan to count the votes until three days after Election Day, even if they don’t have a legible postmark. On Wednesday, the justices refused to fast-track a new Republican challenge to Pennsylvania’s extended vote-counting deadline.But earlier this week, in a ruling viewed as a major setback for the Democrats, the high court blocked a Wisconsin plan to count mail-in ballots for up to six days after the election.Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, said rejected mail-in ballots are ripe for post-election litigation.“I suspect we may have big delays in the counting of ballots if there is a significant increase in absentee ballots, and I think there may also be litigation over the rejection of absentee ballots that did not comply with state law,” von Spakovsky, a former Republican member of the Federal Election Commission, said in a recent interview.Historically, less than 1% of absentee votes get rejected because of administrative errors. But with record numbers of people voting by mail this year, many of them first-time voters, at least 1 million ballots could be discarded, according to a recent projection by a joint investigation by USA Today, Columbia Journalism Investigations and the PBS series Frontline.During this year’s presidential primaries, more than 550,000 mail-in ballots were discarded in 30 states, far more than the total for the 2016 presidential election, according to an analysis by NPR in August. That happened in large part because states were unprepared for the surge in voting by mail during the pandemic, noted Tammy Patrick, a former Arizona election official now with the foundation Democracy Fund.In the months since the primaries, however, many states have adopted a number of voting-by-mail best practices, changes that will likely reduce the number of rejected ballots, Patrick said.“They have redone their voting instructions. They have redone the design of their ballot envelopes. They have adopted practices like ballot tracking,” Patrick said.Voters can now check their voting status online and in at least 19 states are notified when their mail ballots need to be corrected. In Colorado, voters with deficient ballots are notified by text message and allowed to correct the error on their smartphones.As a result, Patrick said, fewer ballots will ultimately be rejected during the general election.“It might be a little bit higher than a traditional presidential election because there still will be so many new voters, but I’m hopeful that we won’t see the same kind of numbers we saw in the primary,” Patrick said.One wild card, however, is the number of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. While some states have extended their ballot receipt deadlines, 32 states, including Florida, don’t accept ballots that arrive after Election Day, giving voters little time to cure their ballots. North Carolina accepts ballots up to six days after Election Day if they are postmarked on or before November 3. Republicans have asked the Supreme Court to block the plan.“I think the big, lurking question out there is how many ballots arrive after Election Day,” Herron said.
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Analysts say U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement this week of a landmark security agreement with India marks another step toward building closer ties to South Asia and countering China’s influence in the region. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more on Pompeo’s trip to India, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Indonesia.
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Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune is in the Ain Naadja Military Hospital in Algiers after reportedly contracting COVID-19. Tebboune was hospitalized Tuesday after reportedly contracting the disease several days ago. Algerian TV indicated in a terse statement that his health was “not a cause for worry.”The president’s hospitalization came days before a scheduled November 1 constitutional referendum that could give the country’s top leader more power, while at the same time limiting his tenure to two five-year terms.Prime Minister Abdelaziz Djerad, who announced the president’s hospitalization for “specialized treatment,” has been campaigning across the country in recent days to urge Algerians to approve the proposed constitutional changes.He said the amendments did not represent a break from the current Tebboune era, but rather a break from corruption.Khattar Abou Diab, who teaches political science at the University of Paris, told VOA that the president’s illness was cause for worry, but that he didn’t think the country would fall apart because of it.Diab said that given Tebboune’s age (74), there is always some sort of risk with this kind of illness, but he said Algeria’s governmental institutions have shown themselves to be fairly solid and that the referendum would go ahead as planned Sunday.Several French and Algerian media outlets suggested there were underlying tensions between Tebboune and the country’s military over the referendum. The Algerian military is a major power broker in the country and played a key role in the transition in 2019 between Tebboune and former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
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Sudanese Muslim and Christian religious leaders have agreed to join forces and promote religious freedom in the country, now that the Islamist government of Omar al-Bashir is out of power and a recently signed peace deal includes language saying freedom of religion is a human right.At the end of a two-day conference this week, the religious leaders signed a declaration to promote peace and freedom of worship among all Sudanese communities and to encourage community dialogue among people of different faiths.Khartoum Catholic Archbishop Michael Didi said the declaration will help create space for more religious freedom in Sudan as the country embarks on a new era following the revolution that led to military leaders removing Bashir from power.Didi said three decades of religious oppression created social stigma among different communities across the country, and change will not happen overnight.“I think we are moving well but it will take some time because many things were planted for a long time and to uproot them and make things new, and the understanding and the change of heart, the change of thinking and the change of how to deal with one, maybe it will need some time,” Didi told VOA’s South Sudan in Focus.Juba pactJibril Bilal, a member of the Darfur-based rebel group Justice and Equality Movement, said the declaration’s resolutions are in line with the peace agreement mediated in Juba, which call for a secular system of governance in Sudan with equal rights for everyone.“The state and the government and the official bodies have to stand in the same level of the people of Sudan. The state and government have to look after the interests of the Sudanese, regardless of their religion, ethnicity, colors and all this stuff,” Bilal told South Sudan in Focus.William Delvin, co-chair of the Khartoum-based organization Unity International, said the declaration paves the way for religious freedom in Sudan after decades of strict Islamist rule.He called on Muslims and Christians to forget the past and work together to build a new Sudan where citizens are treated equally.Delvin praised the transitional government under the leadership of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok for enacting religious reforms.“I think that God providentially had us here at this time after the repeal of the apostasy law, the banning and criminalization of female genital mutilation, after the peace agreement [between the government and rebel groups] and the discussion of having a secular state, the separation of mosque, church and state,” he said.Raja Nichola Abdul Messih, a member of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, said the government is committed to reforming all oppressive laws and promoting social justice.Sudan can be a shining example to the world where multicultural groups can peacefully coexist, said Messih.“Sudan is known for multiethnic, multilingual, multireligious and multieconomic social and political activities. Therefore, its culture is a mixture of African and Arab features. They deal according to an interconnected social system through which it is easy to find suitable ground for the harmony of this hybrid of all their differences,” Messih told VOA.
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