← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Referendum Day
00:27:35
Millions of Zimbabweans vote on a new constitution - Andrew Harding, in Harare, quotes...
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Transcript16 lines
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Hello from the.
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From our own correspondence studios at Broadcasting
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House in London, you've downloaded the latest
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edition of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
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It's introduced by Kate Ady today.
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550 train crashes a year and still Egyptians wait for promised improvements to their railways. Once an icon, now a mere politician. The Burmese opposition leader Aung San SUU Kyi finds out why. What it's like to be heckled. There's much at stake in India as 1.2 billion people prepare to get their official identities. And Barack Obama's on his way to Israel. But what must he do to get a street named after him? But first, there's not much sign that an important referendum is taking place in Zimbabwe today. There are few billboards telling people how they should cast their votes on a new constitution for the country. And not everyone has a clear idea what's actually in the new document. The run up to the poll has been mostly peaceful, although a confrontation yesterday between supporters of President Mugabe's Zanu PF party and their rivals, the Movement for Democratic Change, left two MDC members injured. Andrew Harding says the vote is an important milestone on the road towards elections later this year, which will determine how the countries run in the years ahead.
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At his recent birthday party, President Robert Mugabe cut a rather lonely figure. All my friends gone, he said to the assembled guests. Also relatives gone. And I continue to linger on. Zimbabwe's leader is 89 now. Most of the politicians in his coalition cabinet are a generation or two younger than him. But there's no indication that Robert Mugabe is planning to retire. Today, millions of Zimbabweans are voting on a new constitution. It's been a long, expensive, bitterly contested process to get the draft together, but the main political parties here are for once all in agreement and campaigning for a yes vote. Tendai Beatty, a gruff, brooding, impressive man once beaten, jailed and accused of treason by President Mugabe's security forces, told me the new constitution was world class. He called it the midwife to a brand new Zimbabwe. Mr. Beattie is the finance minister and a senior figure in the mdc, the former opposition that was brought into a power sharing government after the last elections in 2008 were derailed by violence. If it gets approved, there's not much doubt about that. The constitution will spell out people's rights, devolve some power and set up a system of checks and balances in order to keep Zimbabwe's elected leaders in line. It will also give President Mugabe the chance to stay in office with more or less the same powers that he has now for another 10 years. Which is perhaps why today's referendum has not exactly captured the public's imagination here. Instead, everyone is craning their necks to look beyond it to the elections that may or may not take place in July. As Tendai Beatty himself acknowledged, a constitution, however world class, is just a bit of paper. It won't stop me from killing you, as he put it. It's hard to know how much support President Mugabe still enjoys here. His Zanu PF party is highly organized, well funded, and extremely effective on the campaign trail. But opinion polls in Zimbabwe don't count for much. Too many people shake their heads and refuse to answer. And it is that quiet shake of the head that still strikes me most about this country. Plenty has changed here. Hyperinflation has gone. Schools are open. The violence and chaos that stalked Zimbabwe for so long have subsided. But fear remains the instinct to whisper and look away. No one was ever punished for the torture and killings that swept the country in 2008. And whatever the new constitution says, everyone knows that the police, the military and the state media remain in the absolute control of President Mugabe and his party. I took a drive out of Harare and into the countryside. Dark green fields, bright yellow corn, red earth and impossibly blue skies like a stunning, almost gaudy oil painting. In a dip between two hills, tens of thousands of people were living mostly in makeshift shacks. I won't say where because I promised the headmaster of a local school that I wouldn't. He was tall, dignified and scared. The security services, they are clever. They will find me out, he said. It is dangerous to talk. His tiny private school, made from rusting sheets of corrugated metal, was struggling Too many orphans. No money, no textbooks. He scoffed at the idea that the last few years of political stability had brought any sort of relief to poorer Zimbabweans. I am a churchgoer, he said. We are brought up to believe that our leaders are appointed by God. But we are suffering. Education, health. It's not okay. There is still some optimism here that Zimbabwe can pull off a free and fair election later this year. Why not? Said Tenday Bets indignantly. There is nothing in our DNA as Zimbabweans that says we can't. But yesterday morning I briefly experienced the rage and violence that still lurks here. A group of NDC activists were putting up posters about the constitution when they were attacked by a mob of President Mugabe's supporters. Within seconds, we were being targeted, too. Kicks and punches followed. Next time we will kill you, they said. The urge to run was almost overwhelming, but we feared it would provoke the crowd even more. We walked to our car with the mob at our heels.
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And that's Andrew Harding. They've also been discussing their constitution. In Burma, MPs are considering changing the existing charter set up by the previous government so the opposition leader, Aung San SUU Kyi, will be able to stand for the presidency. Now. There are few politicians around the world held in such high regard. Her decision to endure more than 20 years of harassment and house arrest by the country's military rulers when she had the option to leave Burma earned her lasting admiration. But since April last year, she's been an elected member of parliament, and she's been confronted with a number of complex issues on which perhaps it's harder to take a principled stand. Jonathan Head's been looking at how she's been adjusting to the messy realities of Burmese politics.
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It's been quite a week for the woman who was once known as the world's most famous political prisoner, but these days wears the less glamorous status of a mere politician. Aung San SUU Kyi's re election last weekend as the chair of the party she helped found 35 years ago was one of the few certainties in today's Burma. As one of the party elders said, without her, the National League for Democracy is meaningless. The aura surrounding her is still an extraordinary thing to witness. Her appearance at any public event, always impeccably dressed, is akin to watching the arrival of royalty or a Hollywood superstar. Even seasoned diplomats are reduced to begging for photos with her like gushing fans. When she turns her attention to you, her charm and charisma can be overpowering. It's hard to imagine any other result in the election that's due in three years time than a resounding victory for the nld, essentially on the back of nationwide reverence for her. But preparing her party for government is another matter. During the long years of her incarceration, the party atrophied. Many of its members were jailed and some died in custody. The NLD was left in the hands of a few elderly loyalists known as the Uncles. It's poorly organized, beset by internal bickering and desperately short of money. Last weekend's congress was supposed to improve this, but the newly elected Central Committee isn't a lot different from the old one. There were complaints too, about the less than democratic way delegates were chosen. In some parts of the country, Aung San SUU Kyi urged the party rank and file not to Be afraid of her and to speak out. She says she welcomes criticism, but that's not easy for anyone confronting this famous and formidable personality, let alone a humble party activist. And it's worth remembering that she has a track record of turning against those who disagree too vehemently with her. Her other task this week was to deliver the report of a commission she headed investigating a controversial copper mine. The huge open cast mine west of Manderley has come to symbolise a new spirit of protest in Burma. The mine is a joint venture between a big Chinese arms manufacturer and a holding company for the Burmese military, and local people say it's destroying the landscape. Activists from all over Burma have gone there to support farmers who say their land was unfairly taken. Last November, police tried to clear protesters who were blocking the mine, a botched operation that caused multiple injuries. Resentment against the military and China, the biggest backer of the old regime, runs very high. And land ownership is one of the most difficult and emotional issues confronting the new government. So when pushed to start an inquiry, President Thein Sein made the smart decision to hand this hot potato to the country's most popular politician. It's characteristic of Aung San SUU Kyi that she took on the challenge, and just as characteristic that she's taken the trouble to tour the affected area, delivering a bluntly pragmatic message. Closing the mine would offend a powerful neighbour, she told them. Yes, environmental standards and compensation should be improved, but investment like this is what the country needs. For a woman accustomed to adulation, the furious heckling she received at the mine must have been an unsettling experience. I've heard anguished disappointment from former admirers over her refusal to involve herself in the vicious ethnic violence near Burma's border with Bangladesh. Her repeated expressions of affection for the army that locked her up for so long have baffled others, although these are actually nothing new. She has always spoken of her fondness for an institution that was founded by her father. The suspicion is that this one time icon of non violent resistance is now guided by political calculations that she's no longer willing to take a stand on issues which could cost her votes, or which might alienate the military, whose support she will certainly need if she's to fulfil her stated ambition to be Burma's next president. I don't think she sees it that way. She presents well reasoned justifications for the position she takes, and she's very conscious of the need to forge alliances in the new and still evolving Parliament. She certainly holds strong principles, but she can also be very stubborn when she's convinced she's right. In truth, she is no longer an icon, but a player, a powerful, beguiling and very human one on Burma's new and unsteady political stage.
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And that was Jonathan Head. Egypt's record on railway safety is not good. There are hundreds of accidents every year. The new president, Mohamed Morsi, promised improvements after 49 children were killed in November when their school bus was hit by a train at a level crossing. The crash brought a wave of criticism for Mr. Morsi from people who believed the revolution which swept him to power was doing nothing to overhaul the country's crumbling infrastructure or to reduce levels of poverty. There's now a new transport minister and fresh assurances that the problems on the railways will be tackled. But Louisa Loveluck says they're in such a bad state, Egyptians shouldn't expect speedy results.
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Dr. Rashad El Mitani peers out from behind his large desk. Once a minister in the Egyptian government, his name is now associated with tragedy. He resigned his post as transport minister in November last year after one of the deadliest train accidents in the country's history. I could not accept that, Dr. El Muteni says. So I resigned. But there was nothing I could have done, not in that environment. Two years on from Egypt's January revolution. The environment, he says, is one of corruption, deteriorating infrastructure, and a lack of political will to make the changes which will ensure public safety. On the railways, the consequences are tragic. According to official figures, Egypt experiences an average of 550 train crashes per year. Dr. El Metini pulls out a thick file and waves it at me, the official report into the crash that cost him his job. He flicks expertly through the worn pages, eventually jabbing his finger at a grainy photograph. This, he tells me, is Mandara, the village railway crossing where the collision happened. It is no different to any other intersection in Egypt, and on this day things could have been different if the bus driver had been a little bit cautious, if he hadn't moved at that critical time. He trails off. The system is broken. We need to renew everything. Passengers who pass through Cairo's Central Railway station are greeted by a spectacular new entrance hall, thanks to a 17 million pound pseudo pharaonic refurbishment. But this new facade could also be a metaphor for the recent past of a country which many believe has seen only superficial changes since its revolution. Today, it is the Muslim Brotherhood, not former President Mubarak's men, who walk Cairo's corridors of power. But for many outside the capital, life remains unchanged. 200 miles away, at the crossing in Mandara, the operators tell me that despite politicians promises, everything is still just as it was on the day of the crash. A small brick hut stands at the side of the track and through its broken window snakes the cord of a faded black telephone. This, they say, is their sole method of communication with the outside world. Whenever a train leaves the nearby station, the phone is meant to ring, a signal that they should push their makeshift barrier across the road. On the day of the accident, the track was left open. No one can tell me whether the phone rang before the crash, but the workers insist that it often doesn't, so they can only keep watch and hope to spot the oncoming train in time. We will never look at trains in the same way again, says the father of a girl called Senaar, who was killed in the accident. When my wife hears that sound as it thunders past our house, she thinks it is a nightmare, clutching her head and screaming. Our little daughter lived with us for five years. Then the train came and took her away. Perched on the edge of a deep wooden bench, the father of three more young victims says he doesn't want the money President Morsi has offered in compensation. He wants reforms that were promised by Prime Minister Kandil, improvements to the crossing and a new school so that children don't have to travel for their education. I don't think I'll ever see these changes, adds his brother. Cairo has forgotten us. But resentment at a lack of action has not led to demands for the new president's removal. These problems are not just the fault of the authorities, the brother says. Not even a revolution could shift the people who work in the Transport Ministry's bureaucracy. When I ask if he thinks this will change, he shakes his head. It's always the same. They will take a poor man. In this case it is the man who was working at the crossing on the day of the accident, and they will sacrifice him like a sheep. But when the case is closed, nothing will have altered. Back in Cairo, Dr. Al Muhtayni repeats that he couldn't have done anything to avert the tragedy. I ask him whether the government's latest announcement of an 83 million pound investment in the railways can achieve the overhaul it needs. Equipping each crossing with automatic barriers would far exceed that sum. He looks down at the stack of engineering brochures which pile his desk, and concludes, I want to be optimistic, but no.
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Louisa Loveluck in Egypt over the past 20 years or so, India has built up a global reputation as one of the great centres of corporate outsourcing and high technology expertise. And it's just embarked upon a technological venture on a scale never attempted anywhere before, to give every member of its huge population their own digitalised biometric identity. Peter Day's been finding out. It's a project which has many admirers, but also many critics.
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At first glance, there's nothing very remarkable about the brightly dressed queue outside a schoolroom in a dusty village in Rajasthan, halfway between the Indian capital Delhi and the state capital Jaipur. It's a balmy spring day. There's expectancy in the air. One by one, the men and women in the queue push into the dark inner room. They sit down in front of some paraphernalia. Computer screens are devised to capture fingerprints and one to scan the irises of their eyes. Officials look after the process. They match the biometric scans with personal data, often rudimentary age, address, etc. These cues are currently lining up all across India at thousands of centers every day. And that is where it gets remarkable. Nothing as big as this has ever happened before anywhere in the world. India has embarked on a huge scheme to give each one of its 1200 million people a unique 12 digit identity number. The number is verified by a fingerprint or iris scan, like those used by border officials at airports. The big idea is that vast numbers of India's poorest people are currently dispossessed because they have no official status. They've no way of proving to bureaucrats and companies who who they are outside their village. They really don't exist. This new scheme, called aadha, meaning support or foundation, will give them, for the first time in their lives, a legal status. Wherever in India they go. They'll be able to open a bank account to get a mobile phone, register official transactions at a bank or benefits centre. Your unique number will be instantly checked by high speed connection with the records of the new unique ID authority to see if your fingerprints or eyeball scan match one stored by the authority. The system will know when the user is genuine. That's the theory of it. Registration is voluntary, but the people in the queue in Demi village in Rajasthan were key to get their identity numbers because they thought they'd be better off. Millions of Indians, officially classified as BPL get benefits normally in kind grain or kerosene, for example. BPL means below the poverty line. A complex Indian calculation of several poverty factors. World bank figures estimate that one third of the total population of India lives below the poverty line. Internationally defined as below US$1.25 a day. But there's said to be a huge leakage of subsidised food and fuel. In millions of corrupt transactions involving a myriad of middlemen. A huge percentage of government allocated aid disappears before it reaches the poor. Maybe most of it. The BPL below poverty line people I met in Rajasthan were convinced they'd get more if they signed up to the identity scheme, though they weren't absolutely sure why or how. The man who first conceived this elaborate project and is now in charge of the ID Authority, Nandan Nilikani, is a legend in India. He's one of the small team of software engineers who in 1981 founded the Infosys computer outsourcing company, a pioneering business which became one of the main engines in shaping India's new reputation as a global corporate service centre. Nandan Nilikhani is now a US dollar billionaire. Inspired by how technology has changed his own life. He told me he thinks the Aadhaar project will change the way his country works. That's the theory anyway. But this is argumentative democratic India and it's not hard to find critics who oppose it. They say it's too big, too expensive at the projected equivalent of around £3 billion. Too complicated, that it relies on unproven technology. That fingerprints are untrustworthy, especially when they're worn and distorted by manual labour, as in rural India. One computer expert demonstrated to me how I could use an easily made plastic replica of his wife's fingerprint to fool a scanner into thinking I was her. The Identity Authority boss, Nandan Nilekani, insists his system is secure and private. Many critics are deeply concerned that despite initial safeguards, a government backed identity scheme could easily morph into a vast Big Brother surveillance of the whole population. But the Aadhaar project is pushing ahead. 300 million people already registered. If it works. They think that having an official identity will give them power over their lives and they've never had before. And if it fails or falters, then India's newfound global reputation as a high technology super hub will be very badly tarnished. There's a lot at stake as India searches for its identity.
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Peter Day Barack Obama arrives in Israel next week. It's the first foreign trip of his new presidency and it promises to be a tricky one, not least because he and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu don't apparently get on. The two are expected to discuss the West's nuclear standoff with Iran and how the war in Syria is beginning to destabilize the whole Middle east region. Addressing the Israeli Palestinian stalemate may also be on the agenda. But American officials stress the president is not coming with any specific peace plan. Kevin Connolly says even if there's not a great deal in the way of big breaking news, an appearance in Israel by US President is nevertheless a significant occasion.
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There is, for the moment, no road in Israel named after Barack Obama, no park or statue to carry his name down. The years after that soaring rhetoric and winning record are eventually forgotten. Foreigners tend to be commemorated here, naturally enough, according to the degree of enthusiasm they showed for the Zionist cause. So you'll find streets named after Balfour and Lloyd George alongside roads named after men who are now otherwise figures of total historical obscurity the backbench British MP Josiah Wedgwood, for example, or the colonial official Windham Deeds. The street map of Jerusalem can seem more like a who's he of 20th century history than a who's who. On the same principle, the long forgotten mayor of New York, Fiorella LaGuardia, who was a reliable friend of Israel, merits a major highway in the heart of Tel Aviv, otherwise famous chiefly for having an airport named after him. Mr. La Guardia is thus commemorated as handsomely as Washington or Lincoln. Mr. Obama's future position on Israeli road signs and satellite navigation systems may depend on what he says and what he does when he's here next week and on how he says and does it. He might get a couple of suburban side streets and a short stretch of motorway just for turning up. Israelis were starting to get a little worried. Mr. Obama did come here as a presidential candidate, a prudent step to woo the Jewish vote at home and to please the powerful pro Israel lobbying. But he didn't come here during his first term as president, and that set alarm bells ringing in a country whose main strategic asset is its relationship with the United States. The Obama administration could point all it wanted to the closeness of intelligence sharing and the flow of guns and money. There is something about a presidential visit which confers status and celebrates closeness. When Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Washington to speak to Congress, his demeanour was that of a high flying executive running a kind of branch office of the free world in a particularly difficult franchise area. Israel set the tone, was watching out for American and Western interest in an uncertain part of the world. The speech went down a storm. Mr. Obama is widely thought not to have warmed to Mr. Netanyahu personally, but Congress loves him. What Israelis wanted in return was a return visit, something that said that Israel is as special to the United States as the United States is to Israel. One reason, perhaps, why there was no visit during that first Obama term was the sudden fluidity of the Middle East, a kind of breaking of the political pack ice. After decades of stagnation, America suddenly needed changing policies for changing times in Tunisia and Libya and above all, Egypt. Democracy had to be encouraged, of course. But what if democracy ultimately produces regimes which are hostile to the United States? And Syria's long, miserable descent into violent chaos poses even more difficult questions. Arm the rebels and you end up with the risk that the guns will eventually be turned on Israel or on American, British or French targets around the world. Fail to arm them, and you risk being left without influence as the Middle east painfully remakes itself in a series of violent shocks. In those long years of stagnation, there was an unspoken belief that the key to unlocking everything was to find peace between Israel and the Palestinian people of the west bank and the Gaza Strip. In the last couple of years, though, that vexed issue has remained deadlocked, as the rest of the region has changed in ways which were unpredictable and, if you're an American president, unmanageable. There will be much talk of Iran while President Obama is in Israel. Its nuclear ambitions worry most Israelis, and they sometimes seem to obsess Prime Minister Netanyahu. But Mr. Obama will also want the Israelis and the Palestinians to start talking to each other again. And that will be an interesting test of how much influence America has in the Middle east these days. Enough, you would think, to force the two sides back to the table. If not enough to force them to make a deal. Israel's government may look for more commitment on Iran and more assurances about the future from Mr. Obama. But for many ordinary Israelis, it may just be enough that he has finally come as president. Mr. Obama is in the unusual position of having won the Nobel Prize for Peace before he'd really lifted a finger in the field of foreign relations. The Middle east still offers plenty of opportunities for him to consolidate his claim on that award. And if, by some miracle, he is instrumental in bringing about peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he could expect a fairly handsome piece of roadway to bear his name here in the future, alongside La Guardia and Wyndham Deeds. And who knows, there may be a street or two in some future Palestinian state, too.
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Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem there. And that's it. Two more programs next week on Thursday and Saturday. Why don't you join us? Goodbye.