Nigeria's President sounds out supporters for 2015 re-election bid

President Goodluck Jonathan won backing for a re-election bid from several People's Democratic Party (PDP) state governors and House of Representatives members at a meeting held at the Aso Rock presidential villa in Abuja in the week ending 19 July.

Insiders say Jonathan will officially declare his candidacy in late August, following the end of Ramadan and out of respect to Muslim members of the PDP. He also wants to pre-empt any rivals. His most likely opponent within the PDP for the nomination is Jigawa state’s governor Sule Lamido who has the backing of former president Olusegun Obasanjo (1999–2007).

Lamido, a quietly spoken former foreign minister, is scarcely more charismatic than Jonathan but the PDP’s northern caucus would find him more acceptable. If he mounts a serious campaign, with strong backing from PDP governors in the north, he could really damage Jonathan. This, however, requires courage and money and no one is certain about Lamido’s reserves of either commodity.

Despite this Jonathan may need to offer him a very important job if he is to be persuaded to cease and desist.

For more news and expert analysis about Nigeria or East Africa, please see Nigeria Focus and Nigeria Politics & Security.

© 2014 Menas Associates

Egypt: Morsi trial date set

Judge Nabil Saleeb announced that Mohamed Morsi and other Brotherhood members have been charged with "inciting the killing and torture of protesters in front of the Etihadeya (presidential) palace". The incident outside the presidential palace in December was seen as a turning point in the fortunes of the former president. Those killed had been protesting at his decree extending his own powers.

The trial date has been set for 4 November. The former president has been held at a secret location since he was deposed.
 

In another move against the organisation, the ministry of social solidarity officially dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood as a non-profit organisation and ordered all of its funds and assets be put under the control of the military-appointed government.

The moves underline that the authorities currently in power have no intention of heeding the advice of others that they should seek reconciliation with the Brotherhood: this hardline approach risks storing up problems for the future.
 

The armed forces have suffered their own casualties in the past week, mainly in Sinai, at the hands of jihadist extremists. The authorities are trying to conflate the Islamists in the Sinai with the Muslim Brotherhood in the popular imagination although the two Islamist groups are ideologically very different. Six soldiers were killed in an attack by gunmen on an army patrol near Ismailia on the Suez Canal; two were killed outside the security headquarters at Al Tour, regional capital of South Sinai; and four were killed by a car bomb in Al Arish in north Sinai.
 

An RPG was also fired at the satellite ground station used by Nilesat.
 

For more news and expert analysis about Egypt, please see Egypt Politics & Security.
 

© 2013 Menas Associates

The MB remains the best organised of the opposition groups

Egypt is a very religiously observant country. But Egyptians practise their religion in different ways. There are different trends among the 90 per cent of the population who are Muslim which in recent days have clashed. Earlier in the year, there had been attacks on Christian churches. There have now been reports of the desecration of the shrines of Sufi saints, revered by millions in towns and the countryside. These Sufi practices, however, are regarded as un-Islamic and polytheistic by the more puritanical trend of Islamic thought now described as Salafist. Antagonism had long existed between the Sufi tariqas and the radical Salafists. But clashes between the groups, and fights among Muslims, had been rare.

The senior religious figure within the State structure, the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, appealed for restraint. “Calls that the shrines of the saints are against Islam stir up sedition among Muslims,” he said.

The Salafists have exploited Koranic satellite TV stations, some funded by Saudis, to propagate their vision of an Islamic world. And they have been entering more into the political arena. Salafists were active before the referendum on constitutional changes in declaring that a yes vote was a vote for Islam. And a Salafist sheikh evoked a word from the Islamic conquests in the years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad by calling the victory in the vote a ghazwah.

The best organised of the groups representing the Islamist trend remain the Muslim Brothers. They have successfully mobilised voters for previous elections and are set to do well in the elections in September. But they will be competing as much against the Salafists as against those secular voices who believe in a true separation of religion and politics.

For more news and expert analysis about Egypt, please see Egypt Politics & Security.

© 2011 Menas Associates