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Robert Bourgi- wounded pride or strategy?
Robert Bourgi, the name is everywhere right now, though not so unknown. The lawyer claims that he handed over briefcases full of cash from African heads of states to former French leaders such as Jaques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin.
Robert Bourgi is a private lobbyist, basically paid by different African heads of states, who have special favors and services in Paris. Over these past years Bourgi has maintained a remarkable close relationship to the presidential family of Senegal, the Wades. While the son of President Abdoulaye Wade, Karim calls Bourgi “uncle”, Rasseck Bourgi, the younger brother of Robert, has even made his internship in Me Abdoulaye Wade’ office at Thiong Avenue. It was nobody else than Robert Bourgi (with the help of Sarkozy as an intermediator) who made the handshake between Karim Wade and Barack Obama possible. Why would the same man give then secret informations to a journalist to vilify his “protected nephew”? Maybe that’s just how Robert Bourgi is. In June, he apparently contacted Karim Wade before metting former Prime Minister Idrissa Seck in a Parisian coffee house. Later he revealed contents of that conversations to a dakar newspaper.
So when did this story actually start to get out of hands?
If we take the exuded information into consideration, one can even bet that Karim’ surroundings were responsible. Robert Bourgi lived then for Wade’s family. It is with hazard that Karim has the freedom to call him at 2h40 am, from Paris. So what makes that Robert Bourgi has successively briefed a journalist from the “ l’ Express” about this call and give more details about it after the denial of Karim, and ends by affirming that his “nephew” lied and he in fact, asked him to intercede with the French army on behalf of Karim to suppress the 27 June demonstration in Dakar?
Is it strategy or wounded pride?
It’s June 23. 2011, when President Abdoulaye Wade is forced to withdraw his constitutional review project. That’s the day Robert Bourgi has understood that, from that day on, Wade has started to lose the power. Wade must finish his mandate in 2012 and leave power with his son. The end is then imminent and all ends of a reign give place to this pathetic spectacle of passengers who leave the lurching ship to avoid shipwreck.
Jacques Chirac teaches us in his Memoir that there is nothing more harder for a political man the moment when the power leaves him with it, all his fans, sycophants, and other occasional friends worrying about their future. This is all about power’s friendship: they do not survive out of gold, pallening, shining of palaces.
Who on the coming Senegalese presidents will trust Robert Bourgi?
(Source: dakartu.com, google.ch/images, wikipedia.org)
Kagame: “Africa Has Taken Its Place On the Global Pedestal…”
“Africa has taken its place on the global Pedestal”, this is Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s conclusion addressing members of the Institut Francais de Relations Internationales (IFRI) in Paris, yesterday, as he continued his two-day official visit to the European country.
“I think the answer to this complex question is that Africa, the West, and other partners must recognise and accept that times have changed,” so President Kagame.
Speaking about changing global reality, Kagame says that recent developments and the progress registred in Africa over the last 20years should give the continent a place in the new world order.Plus he added that it is time for Africans to get to know what role they should play in shaping the new world order and to ensure that they are well integrated in it and the West to understand this global reality.
President Paul Kagme’s first official visit to Paris since the genocide of 1994 aimed to complete the reconciliation with France, but has raised a stir in political circles and among the French soldiers, still accused by Kigali of involvement in the massacres of Tutsis. Several former military officials have deemed “insulting” that Nicolas Sarkozy, who had recognized in 2010 in Kigali, “a form of blindness” of France for not “seen the genocidal dimension” of the Rwandan Hutu regime then, welcome Paul Kagame Kigali maintains as its “serious accusations” against the army.
“He (Nicolas Sarkozy) has said, there are people who were against this development. I do not know this policy, the policy of evil. We have passed this kind of policy, that is despicable. The people who practice it are despicable. And what is despicable is wasting time, “ so Kagame.
[…]“We know that this visit does not please some people, but President decided to turn the page of painful relations between France and Rwanda “, said Saturday it had in the entourage of Nicolas Sarkozy. For the academic André Guichaoua, “this visit comes at a time when both parties are in a weak position”: Paris, which “seeks to break its isolation in the Great Lakes region”, where the little Rwanda remains a key player and Kigali, which is seeking new international support while its traditional U.S. allies are more distant.
His visit attracted protests for example when he visited Spain the prime minister refused to receive him in respect of the voices of the people, when he visited Belgium, the EU did not give him the deserved respect as a head of state following the demonstrations from the Rwandan opposition and their Spanish friends. Probably in France, Kagame will be shielded by the fact that he is visiting on the invitation by the French President Sarkozy, but drama is also expected especially from the officials in both governments.
The Kagame regime is also criticized for “repeated violations” of human rights by NGOs, who asked the French presidency will not sacrifice the issue on the altar of reconciliation.
The Rwandan opposition also expected to be heard by holding rallies in Paris, including Tuesday morning at a meeting between the leader of Rwanda and the French employers.[…]
It will be interesting to know how President Kagame and Minister Mushikiwabo will sit at the same table with President Sarkozy and his Foreign Minister Alain Juppe after the unfriendly words they exchanged some time back!
Good articles:
– Le président rwandais Kagame a “parlé d’avenir” avec Sarkozy
– France – Rwanda : échapper à l’histoire
Amakuru 