Mother Africa: November 2016

Sunday 27 November 2016

Jeff Koinange Live: TV show dropped after rape comment

Kenya's top political TV show hosted by former CNN journalist Jeff Koinange has been dropped after a male guest made a rape remark about a female guest.

Mr Koinange apologised Thursday night for the 17 November incident, saying it was the show's last episode on KTN.

He was hosting Miguna Miguna and Esther Passaris, aspirants for the Nairobi governor seat, when the off-air personal attack was made.

Mr Miguna said "Esther is so beautiful everybody wants to rape her".

"You are chasing men all over, nobody wants you," he continued. "You think you're beautiful, you are not. Esther is just colour. Without colour you are nothing."

Ms Passaris, a politician and businesswoman, then accused him of being a racist.

The footage of the incident was shared online with many people criticising Koinange for failing to intervene.

Kenya's Gender Affairs minister Sicily Kariuki accused KTN of allowing guests on its show to engage in personal attacks and for the "trivialisation" of rape.

Tweet Screen grab — Image captionMr Koinange posted the tweet after announcing it was the last programme

Mr Koinange said that he was prepared to "man up" over the incident and said he was apologising to those who had been "aggrieved".

"It was regrettable in most parts but again it was one show out of 300 we've done here at KTN for the last three years." he added.

A former aide of Kenya's opposition leader Raila Odinga, Mr Miguna has filed a complaint with the Media Council of Kenya saying that he was filmed "secretly" and portrayed as unfit for the position of governor in next year's elections, reports say.

Ms Passaris tweeted after the show saying "men like Miguna have no place or role to play in our empowerment. He is part of the problem."

Award-winning journalist

Koinange is an award-winning journalist who has worked for top broadcasters in the US including CNN where he was the Africa correspondent until 2007.

He started working for K24, a local TV station in 2009, before moving his popular show to KTN.

He said the show would be making a return on another station in the coming weeks:

"JKL is not going anywhere it is just changing homes", he said.

Trump blasts Clinton for backing election recount calls

Hillary Clinton's decision to join an effort to force recounts of votes from the November 8 election in up to three crucial states has been labelled "sad" by US President-elect Donald Trump who added "nothing will change".

In a Twitter post early on Sunday, Trump said Clinton, his Democrat rival, had already "conceded the election when she called" him prior to his victory speech in the early morning of November 9.

"So much time and money will be spent - same result! Sad," Trump tweeted, posting part of Clinton's speech telling her supporters to accept that "Donald Trump is going to be our president".

Kellyanne Conway, a senior Trump adviser, also called Clinton's decision to join a recount effort "incredible".

She said that the president-elect has been "incredibly gracious and magnanimous" to Clinton, yet she is joining an effort to try to "somehow undo the 70-plus electoral votes that he beat her by".

Conway added that Trump had not ruled out the possibility of pursuing a criminal investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while being the US Secretary of State, even if the President-elect had earlier indicated he would move past the issue.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein is pushing for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Trump earlier called Stein's effort a "scam".

The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralized Dems
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016

Trump won Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and as of Wednesday, held a lead of almost 11,000 votes in Michigan, with the results awaiting state certification on Monday.

Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to two million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton's 232, not counting Michigan.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency, and the three states in question could tip the electoral balance to Clinton in the remote event that all flipped to her in recounts.

State officials in Wisconsin said on Friday that they were moving forward with the first presidential recount in state history.

Sanders: Change electoral college system

Clinton joined the effort on Saturday, with her campaign attorney Marc Elias saying, "We intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides."

Elias said Clinton would take the same approach in Pennsylvania and Michigan if Stein were to follow through with recount requests in those states.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a Clinton rival during the Democratic primary who turned ally during the general election, defended the recount effort, telling CNN that leaders in both parties commonly request them.

"No one expects there to be profound change, but there's nothing wrong with going through the process," he said.

He also suggested he would support a change to the nation's electoral college system, which allowed Trump to win the presidency despite lagging behind in the popular vote.

"We have one candidate who got two million more votes than the other candidate and she is not going to be sworn in as president," Sanders said. "And I think on the surface that's a little bit weird."

'French Thatcher' Fillon wins France's Republican primary

French conservatives have picked François Fillon as their presidential candidate in next year's election.

Fillon easily beat Bordeaux Mayor Alain Juppé in the Republican party's first ever US-style primary runoff Sunday, getting about 66% of the vote.

"Victory is mine. It is a substantive victory built on belief," Fillon said as he spoke to supporters after his win. "We have all the assets to be a modern, sovereign nation in the lead in Europe."

Fillon could face far-right National Front Party leader Marine Le Pen in the final round of the presidential vote next spring, as voters are widely expected to boot out the Socialist Party that has ruled France since 2012 under the leadership of President Francois Hollande, whose popularity is waning.

"This past presidential term has been pathetic," Fillon said in criticizing Hollande. "It is time to end it and start moving forward as we have never done in 30 years. For this we will need everyone."

Sometimes called the "French Thatcher" for his apparent admiration of Britain's former leader, Fillon is a social conservative who has talked of ending France's famed 35-hour work week and getting tough with the country's powerful trade unions. He has also spoken of cutting public spending, abolishing the wealth tax, reducing immigration and investing billions in security, defense and justice.

A hard line on immigration has also bolstered Le Pen, whose anti-Europe stance is gaining popularity among French voters. In an interview with CNN last week, she said she'd been emboldened by Donald Trump's surprise victory in the United States.

"It makes the French realize that what the people want, they can get, if they mobilize themselves," she said.

Just a month ago, Fillon was considered an unlikely bet for the presidency, but he won over voters with a polished performance in televised debates.

Polls had him mostly in third place, but he apparently struck a popular tone in the country's fight against Islamic terrorism and ISIS after publishing a new book, "Beating Islamic Totalitarianism."

The first round of the primary, on November 20, put Fillon well ahead, with 44.1% of the vote. Juppé received 28.6% and former President Nicolas Sarkozy came in third with 20.6%, eliminating him from the final round.

Fillon, 62, is a lawyer who served as prime minister between 2007 and 2012 under Sarkozy. He has been compared to Britain's "Iron Lady," the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for his hardline social policies.

French newspaper Liberation morphed Fillon's face with Thatcher's in a cover image this week -- no doubt inspired by the Republican's tough talk on unions and pledge to cut 500,000 jobs from the civil service.

As a Catholic from Le Mans, a city in northwest France, Fillon symbolizes the traditional provincial right.

The father of five lives with Welsh-born wife Penelope in a 12th-century castle near where he grew up. Fillon also is a race car enthusiast who once appeared on France's "Top Gear" TV program.

Juppé, 71, also served as prime minister -- from 1995 to 1997 under President Jacques Chirac.

He's seen as a reliable and experienced politician, and a center-right moderate who has promised to promote a "happy national identity" if he comes to power.

But he's also been tainted by scandal. While deputy mayor of Paris in charge of finance in the 1980s and 1990s, Juppé was accused of using public funds to pay political allies.

He was found guilty of corruption in 2004 and sentenced to 18 months in prison and barred from holding public office for a decade. His sentence was later reduced to 14 months imprisonment and one year of ineligibility.

Juppé was reelected mayor of Bordeaux in 2006, beginning a political comeback.

The father of three lives in the Bordeaux region with his journalist wife, Isabelle Legrand-Bodin.

Clinton to join recount that Trump calls 'scam'

Hillary Clinton's campaign said Saturday it will take part in efforts to push for recounts in several key states, joining with Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who has raised millions of dollars to have votes counted again in Wisconsin.

But, in a post on Medium, Marc Elias, the campaign's counsel, said the campaign's own investigation has not uncovered any evidence of hacking of voting systems.

In the campaign's most detailed comments to date on the recount, Elias wrote that while the campaign was not going to contest the results itself, it has decided now to take part in the effort to "ensure that it is fair to all sides."

But President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday dismissed the recount and said that "the election is over."

"The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, 'We must accept this result and then look to the future,'" Trump said in a statement, which called the recount "ridiculous" in a headline.

A 'scam'

The President-elect blasted the Green Party's effort as a "scam" and accused the party's nominee, Jill Stein, of trying to reel in donations that she won't actually spend on a recount.

"This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn't even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount," Trump said. "This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing."

Stein dismissed Trump's suggestion that the funds wouldn't be spent on the recount.

"For his information, this is all going into a dedicated and segregated account so that it can only be spent on the recount,".

"He may be creating his own facts here as he's been known to do some times in the past," Stein added. "He himself said it was rigged election unless he won it."

On Saturday night, Trump tweeted, "The Green Party scam to fill up their coffers by asking for impossible recounts is now being joined by the badly defeated & demoralized Dems."

Discrepancies

Green Party officials filed Friday for a recount in Wisconsin after reports of voting discrepancies.

Wisconsin Green Party co-chairman George Martin said that the party was seeking a "reconciliation of paper records" -- a request that would go one step further than a simple recount, which is expected to begin next week, and that he hopes will spur an investigation into the integrity of the state's voting system.

"This is a process, a first step to examine whether our electoral democracy is working," Martin said.

Stein tweeted Saturday that she's willing to expand the recount to other states.

"I will do a recount in any state where the deadline has not passed. Help my staff find state deadlines ... #Recount2016," she said.

Elias said the campaign had been quietly investigating accusations for a while and had received hundreds of requests that it do so.

"Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides," Elias wrote on Medium.

"If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well," he added.

Brian Fallon, spokesman for the Clinton campaign, said the team would not have sought the recount on its own and that they see no evidence of tampering so far.

"We note we are guarding our prerogatives now that someone else has launched a recount. Not sure what you could point to to suggest there is anything here that calls the results into question,".

Interference?

In addition to Trump's total combined margin of victory in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania being about 107,000 votes -- by contrast, the Florida margin in Bush-Gore was 537 ballots -- Elias said concerns about Russia's interference in the election continue to raise concerns.

"This election cycle was unique in the degree of foreign interference witnessed throughout the campaign: the U.S. government concluded that Russian state actors were behind the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the personal email accounts of Hillary for America campaign officials, and just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that the Russian government was behind much of the "fake news" propaganda that circulated online in the closing weeks of the election," he wrote.

A senior administration official said in a statement that there is no evidence of any hacking.

"The federal government did not observe any increased level of malicious cyber activity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day," the official said. "As we have noted before, we remained confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out on Election Day. As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective."

Two million

The Clinton campaign has met with lawyers, data scientists and analysts to assess anomalies in the results that would suggest a hacked result. Private meetings with outside experts involved sharing both groups concerns about the data and findings.

Clinton's team said they investigated every theory presented and examined laws and practices pertaining to recounts, contests and audits.

"And most importantly, we have monitored and staffed the post-election canvasses -- where voting machine tapes are compared to poll-books, provisional ballots are resolved, and all of the math is double checked from election night," Elias said. "During that process, we have seen Secretary Clinton's vote total grow, so that, today, her national popular vote lead now exceeds more than 2 million votes."

The campaign plans to move forward in monitoring activities to better understand the results.

"In the coming days, we will continue to perform our due diligence and actively follow all further activities that are to occur prior to the certification of any election results," he said.

It is "unfortunate" that all states don't conduct "post-election" audits.

"Wisconsin and Pennsylvania conduct post-election audits using a sampling of precincts. Michigan and many other states still do not," Elias wrote. "This is unfortunate; it is our strong belief that, in addition to an election canvass, every state should do this basic audit to ensure accuracy and public confidence in the election."