Is Kenya’s democracy in crisis?
We ask Kenya’s Raila Odinga about running for president again and debate whether the Syrian opposition lost the war.
In this week’s UpFront, we speak to Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga about the annulled election. Will he present himself for the rerun? And could the recent Supreme Court ruling finally lead him to victory?
And in the Arena, six years into the war in Syria, we debate whether it could be said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won the conflict and ask if foreign backing of the rebels made the situation better or worse.
Can Raila Odinga win Kenya’s re-election?
Following protests and a legal challenge from defeated opposition candidate Raila Odinga, the Kenyan Supreme Court annulled a presidential election for the first time in the country’s history.
The decision was hailed by some as a victory for Kenya‘s democracy but Odinga says he won’t participate in the rerun of the election scheduled for October unless his conditions are met.
Responding to concerns that there would be increased violence and protests if he lost the fresh elections, Raila Odinga stated, “If I lose elections fairly, I will accept and tell my supporters we lost fairly.”
“But if there is a rigging of elections, the people are entitled to protest. As you know, our constitution provides for peaceful demonstrations, picketing, strikes and so on,” he added.
In this week’s Headliner, Kenyan opposition leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga discusses his presidential ambitions and the future of Kenya’s democracy.
Has the Syrian opposition lost the war?
After repeated attempts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the last six years and the latest setbacks, the opposition may not only be losing the war but also losing support on the international stage.
The US appears to no longer be focused on removing Assad from power, and the UN’s special envoy to Syria said that if the opposition was planning to win the war, “facts are proving that is not the case.”
So, after many initial successes, how did it all go wrong? And was it a mistake for outside powers to back the various groups in the Syrian opposition to Assad?
In this week’s Arena, veteran Middle East correspondent for The Independent, Patrick Cockburn, and Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, a policy adviser to the Syrian American Council, debate whether the Syrian opposition has lost the fight against Assad or whether they are still a force in play. Patrick Cockburn’s latest book is The Age of Jihad.
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