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President
Goodluck Jonathan yesterday claimed his utterance in which he
reportedly referred to leaders of the south-west region of the country
as rascals was ‘grossly misunderstood.’ He however said that the region
must be ruled by “those who have what it takes.” The president had been
quoted at a presidential campaign rally in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital
last week, to have said that “the entire South-West is too important,
too sophisticated and too educated to be in the hands of rascals.” The
statement has been interpreted as an indirect reference to the
opposition party, the Action Congress Of Nigeria (ACN) which holds sway
over the region. Reacting to the statement, the Lagos State governor
Babatunde Raji Fashola cautioned the president saying that leaders
should refrain from using words that are offensive.

Choosing his
Facebook wall to clarify his statement, Mr Jonathan said that
“unreliable or mischievous behaviours or notions ought not to be
acceptable in any part of our body politic especially not in the
south-west where the population has had the privilege of a head start in
education compared to other parts of the country.” Noting that the
region is of critical significance to the economic and political
advancement of the country, he said, “it is unhelpful to public
discourse if we constantly twist words beyond intended meaning.” He
condemned the emphasis on the latter part of his sentence which he
claims “typifies the general tendency to dwell on the negative which we
must, as a country, refrain from”.

“My qualification of
the West as highly educated and sophisticated was easily dispensed
with, while the fact that we should not expose such civilized and
educated populace to rascality was played more upon, with emphasis on
the rascality” he adds.

Mr Jonathan said
that the foundation of the nation’s independence movement burgeoned from
the discussions which emanated from what he called the “Ibadan School
of thought” as the liberal Arts faculty of the then University College
Ibadan was then known.

He insisted that the
western region remains a very sophisticated and educated part of the
country, unique in its unequivocal stand for justice and equity and adds
that as he and Vice-President Namadi Sambo moves around the country on
his campaign train, they will continue to respect and pay tribute to the
hard work and patience of all Nigerians. “Our promise of a significant
turnaround in the way our country operates and is governed is an article
of faith.”

Support for President

Two civil society
groups; the Movement for Democratic Sustainability and Media for Ethnic
Equality have both welcomed the presidents explanation and called on
Nigerians and particularly the south west to be weary of people who were
“ exploiting” the statement by the President to score cheap political
point.

The groups claim the president further demonstrated his
responsiveness as a leader with the explanation and that the President
has taken the dialogue above the wish of those who seek to profit from
such calculated acts of sheer mischief in order to paint the Presidency
in a bad light. Iyiola Johnson, publicity secretary of the media for
ethnic equality praised the President for his “humility and inner
strength”.

The United Nations
agency, UNAIDS, has negotiated with European Commission for a three-year
grant of 2.4 million euros to strengthen the coordination of technical
support provision in six countries which include Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana,
Malawi, Nigeria and Swaziland. Out of this sum, Nigeria is benefitting
about 400,000 euros.

David MacRae,
ambassador of the European Union delegation to Nigeria, who disclosed
this at the weekend in Abuja at the signing of the memorandum of
understanding between the National Action Committee on Aids (NACA),
European Union and UNAIDS said the MOU provides the framework for an
EU-funded project designed to strengthen national capacity to scale up
towards universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment and
develop a national technical support plan on HIV/AIDS.

“The EU has worked
to develop a programme for action to confront HIV/AIDS, malaria and
tuberclosis through external assistance, mobilize funding and develop
effective ways to provide assistance to our partners to raise awareness
and deliver prevention, treatment, care and support to the population
affected by the pandemics,” he said. “Nigeria is one of six countries
benefitting from such grant and will receive 400,000 euros under this
grant.”

Mr. MacRae stated
that putting HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases under control is a
challenge, adding that the EU is fully committed to making a major
contribution to the success of this undertaking and desires that with
this financial support, UNAIDS will support the NACA to develop its
technical support plans and coordinate its implementation in order to
save lives of millions of people.

Kwame Ampomah,
UNAIDS country coordinator, Nigeria said technical support is critical
to addressing gaps and bottlenecks in the implementation of the national
response, while observing that technical support provided to countries
before now have remained unplanned, ad-hoc, supply-driven and
uncoordinated.

“Recognizing these
technical support challenges, UNAIDS in December 2007 developed a
guidance note on technical support planning. The guidance note provides a
general framework to assist national aids coordination authorities to
effectively plan, coordinate and better manage the technical support to
scale up national HIV/AIDS responses,” he said. “It is for this reason
that MOU for the grant agreement is being signed today. The key
deliverables of the grant is the development and implementation of a
national technical support plan that will ensure better coordination of
quality technical assistance for national aids response.

Working together

Mr. Ampomah
canvassed the support of all stakeholders for the initiative through
active participation in development and implementation of the technical
support plan, in addition to making financial contributions that will
sustain the EU, NACA and UNAIDS collaborative effort saying that they
must act fast to accelerate progress at achieving universal access to
HIV/AIDS prevention in Nigeria. John Idoko, director-general of NACA
stated that national response to HIV/AIDS will not improve without
adequate human capital in place.

“In order for us to
do all we want to do, we need to build human resources capacity and it
can be built not just by us but also by technical assistance. There is a
hidden gap you cannot see. You can see a gap of infrastructure, but you
cannot see the gap of intellectual knowledge skill. That has to be in
place to make the response more effective so as to achieve the universal
access we have been talking about,” he said.

He said that local government, states and national aids control agencies will benefit from the funds over a three-year period.

Former vice
president, Atiku Abubakar yesterday demanded investigation into the
death of some Nigerians at the PDP presidential rally in Port Harcourt
on Saturday.

In a message of
condolence issued by his media office in Abuja on Sunday, Mr Abubakar,
who lost to President Goodluck Jonathan at last month’s presidential
primaries of the party, described the death of the Nigerians as a
tragedy.

No fewer than 16
people lost their lives during a stampede at the Liberation Stadium,
Port Harcourt where the PDP held its presidential campaign rally at the
weekend.The former vice president, however, implored the ruling party
and the government not to desert the families of the deceased as they
are ‘heroes of democracy’.

The campaign
organisation of the presidential candidate of Action Congress of
Nigeria (ACN), Nuhu Ribadu also described the deaths as avoidable and
tragic loss. In a statement by its Director of Media and
Communications, Ibrahim Modibbo, the organisation said it sympathises
with the family of the deceased and prays that “God will grant them the
fortitude to bear the loss.”

The organisation
however asked all political parties to ensure that adequate security
measures are taken before, during and after campaign rallies and
programmes. The organisation also called for the police to be more
efficient in their duties, particularly during this campaign season as
“more political rallies will definitely take place.”

Medical assistance

In the wake of the
tragic incident ,the governor of Akwa Ibom State, Godswill Obot
Akpabio, has set up a team of medical experts to assist some of the
victims of the stampede.

The governor, in a
statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Usoro I. Usoro, said
that “a delegation headed by the Commissioner for Health, of the state,
Louisa Ukpe, left Uyo for Port Harcourt, immediately after the
incident, to offer medical assistance towards fore-stalling further
loss of lives.

“The team is also
expected to search all hospitals and other health facilities with a
view to identifying all Akwa Ibom indigenes who might have been
involved in the incident and offer immediate help to them.” Mr. Akpabio
said that the victims of the stampede were part of the teaming crowd of
supporters that thronged the Liberation Stadium to show overwhelming
solidarity to their son, Mr Jonathan.

The governor
however urged Nigerians to vote overwhelmingly for Mr Jonathan as a
mark of honour in memory of those who died in the incident. “Today and
always, we will always remember their loyalty and support which they
carried to the end. Our heart goes out to them. We mourn with the
families of those mourning and pray with a deep sense of sorrow that
the Almighty God should console them over this unexpected calamity”,
the governor said.

Troops took control
of Tahrir Square, the fulcrum of protests that swept Hosni Mubarak from
power, to allow traffic through central Cairo on Sunday, as military
rulers struggled to get life in Egypt back to normal.

There were heated
rows in Tahrir Square on whether to keep up protests or comply with
army orders to help put Egypt back on its feet. “The people want the
square cleared,” one group chanted. “We will not leave, we will not
leave,” replied another.

The Arab world’s
most populous country was taking its first tentative steps toward
democracy and protest organisers were forming a Council of Trustees to
defend the revolution and urge swift reform from a military intent on
restoring law and order.

Police officers
gathered to demand higher pay and a security guard said warning shots
were fired in the air. No one was hurt, however. Earlier, troops, some
wielding sticks, pushed protesters aside to reopen Tahrir square to
traffic.

“Revolution continues”

Protest leaders
want the immediate release of political prisoners, the lifting of a
state of emergency used by Mubarak to crush opposition and dissent, the
closure of military courts, fair elections, and a swift handover of
power to civilians.

Despite Mubarak’s
resignation, some protesters have said they plan to stay in the square
to ensure the military council keeps its promises on transition. They
plan a big demonstration next Friday to celebrate the revolution and
honour those killed.

The Higher Military
Council has given no timetable for a transition, but tried to reassure
with a statement on Saturday affirming a commitment to democracy and
its treaties, aimed particularly at Israel with which Egypt has a peace
treaty.

The military is
expected on Monday to ban meetings by labour unions or professional
syndicates, effectively forbidding strikes, and to tell all Egyptians
to get back to work. On Saturday, the army said it would uphold Egypt’s
international obligations.

These include a peace treaty with Israel, whose defence minister has
been in touch with his Egyptian counterpart, who heads the military
council. Interior minister, Mahmoud Wagdy, has said Egypt needs “the
speedy return of the police to duty,” saying 13,000 inmates who escaped
from prison early in the uprising were still on the run.

The governorship
candidate of the People’s Democratic Party in Ogun State, Tunji Olurin,
yesterday extended a peace offering to the opposition within the party
led by the state governor, Gbenga Daniel, asking that they work
together to move the state forward rather than sit on the fence.

Mr. Olurin spoke
with journalists in Abeokuta shortly after a church service to mark the
second year’s anniversary of Chapel of Christ The Glorious King,
located within the complex of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential
Library in Abeokuta.

“We are all
citizens of Ogun State; there is no winner or loser in this issue. It
is our responsibility to join hands together to develop Ogun State.
Those who are in opposition, I will personnaly call them, embrace them
to come together with me on board to develop the state,” he said.

Accompanied by his
running mate, Tunde Oladunjoye, the party candidate who emerged from
the Olusegun Obasanjo faction of the party said his administration’s
focus would be to make rural areas attractive and stop rural-urban
migration.

“By the time we
make rural areas attractive, we will not have rural-urban migration
anymore, because most of our children go to the cities to sleep under
the bridges because they couldn’t make ends meet in their villages,”
Mr. Olurin said. “We want to transform the villages, we want to give
them the same facilities they could not get in the cities, so they can
remain there, we shall accelerate development.”

He said he is very confident about his ticket, just as he said he would embark on his campaign soon.

The Daniel faction
of the party, however, appears to have foreclosed working with Mr.
Olurin. The state Commissioner for Information and Strategy Sina
Kawonise, said there was no going back on the stance of his group,
which he said was to stick by the recent ruling of an Abeokuta High
Court which declared the Obasanjo group as illegal, null and void.

“The court
judgement still stands; the law is clear on that,” Mr. Kawonise said,
adding that the former president was earlier given a proposal to
resolve the crisis, but rejected it.

Reports at the
weekend alleged that Mr. Obasanjo had refused to entertain the plea of
a reconciliation committee sent by the party to harmonise the list of
candidates produced by the two factions. But the chairman of the PDP’s
harmonised executives, Dayo Soremi, described as false reports that the
former president tore a purported peace list supposedly sent by
President Goodluck Jonathan.

One list

In a press
statement issued yesterday in Abeokuta, Mr. Soremi said: “Our BOT
chairman and elder statesman has absolute respect for the office of the
president, which he had occupied as a military head of state and as a
two-term civilian president. We wish to state categorically that there
were no two lists of candidates in Ogun PDP, other than the one
submitted by the harmonised executives and approved by the national
leadership of our party.

“The list
containing our party’s flagbearers have been submitted and accepted by
INEC. The only alteration we made was the accommodation of Dimeji
Bankole, as directed by President Goodluck Jonathan.”

Mr. Soremi
expressed his happiness over the reaction of people to the
Olurin/Oladunjoye governorship ticket since it was confirmed with the
presentation of flag in Ibadan last Tuesday.

“I can tell you that even opposition parties in Ogun State are already imploding since the ticket was announced,” he said.

A socio-political
organization, Gateway Democrats Coalition (GADECO) at the weekend
described the gubernatorial candidacy of Mr. Olurin as a unifying force
for the 2011 gubernatorial election in Ogun State. The group noted that
the political situation in the state required a leadership that would
return it to its prosperous past and restore hope in the citizenry.

“We believe firmly that Adetunji Olurin’s candidacy will restore
needed hope, peace and bring back the unity of Ogun State,” GADECO
National Coordinator, Adeola Shoaga, said. “The recovery of Ogun State
from the scars of political crisis that has overtaken development
activities in the state in the last five years depends solely on the
election of a credible and “big picture” leader like Mr Olurin.”

Nigerians should
draw the right lessons from the 18-day revolt which saw the end of
former Egyptian leader, Hosni Mubarak after 30 years and do the needful
to effect a regime change in Nigeria at the April polls, presidential
candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), Muhammadu
Buhari (Rtd) said .

Mr. Buhari who
praised the resilience of Egyptians who made exceptional sacrifices to
assert their collective will, said their tenacity has again confirmed
the truism that no force on earth can stop a united people.” He also
said Nigerians must gird their loins and insist on free and fair
elections that will usher in accountable leadership in April polls.

“Unlike the
Egyptians who went through self-denial for 18 unbroken days to achieve
their aspiration for leadership change, Nigerians just have to take
their voter cards, and ensure that their votes count and are properly
counted. It is time to demonstrate people’s power to free our country
from those who have held it hostage for the last 12 years and are
threatening to keep it for the next 60 years,” he said.

Peaceful doggedness

In a statement
signed by his media aide, Yinka Odumakin, Mr. Buhari equally commended
the organisational zeal of the Egypt demonstrators, their peaceful
conduct and doggedness even in the face of intimidation and provocation.

“Christians formed
rings round Muslims as they observed their Jumat prayers during the
demonstrations. For us as a people, we need to also move from balance
of hate to balance of faith as the Egyptians practically demonstrated
on the field of battle for change. Rather than allow ourselves to be
divided by our faith, we must emphasise what binds us together and
collectively fight against that hydra headed monster of corruption .
With all sense of modesty, this is part of what the Buhari-Bakare
candidacy represents,” he said.

Should we fear the
uprising in Egypt? American conservatives are caught up in an unusually
open argument about the crowds in Cairo.

“This isn’t about
Egypt,” said top-rated television personality Glenn Beck. “This is the
story of everyone who has ever plotted, or wanted, to fundamentally
change or destroy the Western way of life.” Beck is telling his
enormous audience that the protests against Hosni Mubarak are part of
an international Islamic resurgence sweeping all the way from Asia to
England. His opinions are among the most extreme in mainstream America
today, but there are a range of opinions about Egypt among Republicans
and others on the right.

“Only a child can
believe that a democratic outcome is inevitable,” writes conservative
columnist Charles Krauthammer “And only a blinkered optimist can
believe that it is even the most likely outcome.”

Broadly speaking,
members of President Barack Obama’s Democratic Party welcome the end of
dictatorship as complicated and potentially dangerous but inherently
desirable.

Obama’s stance
seems to have evolved since the demonstrations started; his latest word
is that the Mubarak regime should take prompt, careful steps to move
towards democracy. Most Republicans in Congress have quietly supported
the president’s position. But outside of Washington some prominent
Republicans are breaking ranks.

Influential
Republican strategist Newt Gingrich says the administration has been
naive about Egypt’s most popular opposition movement, because of its
roots in Islamic radicalism.

“The Muslim
brotherhood is a mortal enemy of our civilization,” he said. “This
administration, I think, does not have a clue about those realities.”
Like Gingrich, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is considered a
possible presidential candidate. She says she’s disappointed that the
Obama administration hasn’t established what’s ahead in Egypt.

“Nobody yet has
explained to us – surely they know, more than the rest of us know – who
is going to take the place of Mubarak,” she said. “They know what’s
going on and aren’t telling us.” It’s not clear that the White House is
hiding anything. A lot of America’s plans are being unsettled
unexpectedly by the sudden upheaval in Egypt.

President Obama
clearly believes that the country and the region will benefit from more
democracy. American conservatives aren’t quite as convinced.

Jonathan Mann
presents Political Mann on CNN International each Friday at 18:30
(CAT), Saturday at 3pm and 9pm (CAT), and Sunday at 10am (CAT).

The National
Working Committee (NWC) of the Peoples Democratic Party has denied
complicity in the last month’s resignation of the party’s former
chairman, Okwesilieze Nwodo.

It, however,
refused to state clearly if the former chairman left N7 billion in the
coffers of the party when he was leaving office, as claimed.

Mr Nwodo’s
political adviser, Buhari Bala had in a recent media interview accused
the Working Committee members of complicity in the resignation of his
principal last month. He also claimed that Mr Nwodo left N7 billion in
the party’s account at the time he resigned.

The NWC, in a
statement by PDP national publicity secretary, Ahmed Alkali on Sunday
in Abuja, said that Mr Bala’s comment was jaundiced, ill-timed,
uninformed and in bad taste. “When we first heard of the story, we
could not believe that an aide to a former chairman of our party could
make such allegations. We therefore waited, thought that he must have
been quoted out of context. But having waited up to this time without
him retracting the statement, we have reasons to believe that the
action was deliberately taken,” Mr Alkali said.

“It is not the
tradition of the leadership to join issues with our past leaders or
those who worked with them. There is however need for us to make some
clarifications in this case in order to put the record straight and
avoid a situation where party members and especially Nigerians will be
led to believe a lie.” he said.

Intentional attack

The PDP spokesman
said the committee finds it strange that Mr Bala could choose this
period when the party had just concluded its presidential campaign at
the zonal level and about to commence the door to door campaigns in the
states, “to throw spanner on our collective efforts and determination
to achieve success for our party in the forthcoming general elections.”
Stating that the committee will not go into the details of the
circumstances that led to the resignation of Mr Nwodo, Mr Alkali,
however, recalled that the former chairman himself said he was quitting
based on the need to “maintain cohesion in the overall interest of the
party.” He added, “For an aide to the former chairman to turn around
and make unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations against the NWC of
the party speak of mischief and indeed a deliberate attempt to create
bad blood, hatred and odium between members of the NWC and the former
national chairman whom we hold in high esteem. “We want to put it on
record that since June 2010 when Okwesilieze Nwodo was elected the
national chairman of the PDP, he enjoyed the highest level of
cooperation from members of the National Working Committee who
supported every single programme that he introduced.

Mr Alkali dismissed
Mr Bala’s claim that Mr Nwodo left N7 billion in the PDP’s purse,
saying that he (Bala) was never in a position to know the state of the
party’s finances and therefore not qualified to speak on the matter.

The PDP spokesman asked Mr Bala to give clarification on the
allegations he raised, adding that this will determine the committee’s
next line of action.

The special adviser to President Goodluck Jonathan on
Niger Delta affairs, Kingsley Kuku, has praised the federal
government’s amnesty programme for militants in the region, saying this
has helped to improve the country’s economy.

Speaking at a forum for stakeholders of the Niger
Delta held in Lagos over the weekend, Mr. Kuku disclosed that the
amnesty would go down in the history as the “sincerest effort by the
federal government of Nigeria to holistically address the Niger Delta
question”, as he noted that prior to the proclamation of the official
pardon, militancy and general insecurity in the region virtually
crippled Nigeria’s economy.

Mr. Kuku said that investment inflow to the upstream
subsector of the oil industry had dwindled remarkably, threatening the
country’s crude oil reserves.

“Nigeria had targeted 40 billion barrels proven
reserve by the end of 2010 but insecurity in Niger Delta led to the
exodus of investors from our country to more stable business
opportunities in Africa. For example, due to militants’ activities in
the Niger Delta, Shell Petroleum Development Company, by early 2009,
had declared force majeure on its operations, which caused a drop in
its production capacity from one million bpd to about 259,000 bpd.

“Worse still, citing insecurity, union officials all
too often called strikes to protest insecure working environment. It
got to a point where Nigeria’s export dwindled to as low as 700,000
bpd, compared with a targeted 2.2milion bpd for the first quarter of
2009. In 2008 alone, it was estimated that Nigeria lost over N3trillion
as a result of militancy in the Niger Delta,” he said.

The special adviser said that with the proclamation
of amnesty for the militants agitators, reasonable disarmament took
place and relative peace was restored in the Nigeria Delta, adding that
oil companies reopened shut-in wells and under four months, Nigeria’s
oil production increased from 700,000 barrels per day to 2.3milion
barrels per day.

“With cessation of hostilities, government began
giving assurances that Nigeria once again fill its OPEC (Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries) quota and be trusted by major
consumer nations to meet its contractual obligations,” he said.

Disappointment from oil companies

Mr. Kuku disclosed that oil companies operating in
the Niger Delta have not being helping the region in terms of enhancing
the lives of residents of the area, adding that the companies have
remained indifferent when it comes to recruiting ex-combatants.

“The oil and gas companies have not done enough and
they must do enough because it is a problem they caused this country.
They said they are putting together $30m and they can only support te
training of 3,000 out of 26,358 ex-combatants. We demanded if they were
going to employ them? But they said they cannot guarantee that.

“We reject that completely, because from that point
of view, the people they want those to be trained by them to be just
artisans, but we are saying that they must train our people in
employable fields that some of them can stand the chance of being
qualified to be chairman in the SPDC (Shell Petroleum Development
Company)one day,” he said.

Sustainable development Dennis Ogwaro, a participant
at the forum called for sustainable developments in the Niger Delta, as
he explained that this could be achieved by the construction and
establishment of institutions and higher education centres in the
region.

“With this kind of development, our youth will have
their minds taken away from the high demand for money and this will
increase the number of increase the number of entrepreneurs in our
Niger Delta,” he said.</

Anti-government
protesters clashed with police blocking them from marching to Yemen’s
presidential palace in Sanaa on Sunday, witnesses said. The clashes
occurred while President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the main opposition
group were preparing for talks that the government hoped would help
avert an Egyptian-style revolt in the Arabian Peninsula state, a vital
U.S. ally against al Qaeda.

Saleh decided to
postpone a visit to the United States planned for later this month “due
to the current circumstances in the region,” About 1,000 people
attended the demonstration shouting “the Yemeni people want the fall of
the regime” and “a Yemeni revolution after the Egyptian revolution,”
before dozens broke off to march to the palace.

In the harshest
response yet to a wave of protests in the capital, police prevented the
smaller group from reaching the palace, hitting them with batons, while
protesters threw rocks at the police, witnesses said. Four people were
injured. Opposition officials said 10 protesters were briefly detained
in Sanaa on Sunday and 120 more were taken into custody overnight in
the city of Taiz after protests on Saturday.

The United States
relies heavily on Saleh to help combat al Qaeda’s Yemen-based arm,
which also carries out attacks in neighbouring Saudi Arabia. U.S.-based
Human Rights Watch criticised Yemen for allowing government supporters
to assault, intimidate and sometimes clash with protesters calling on
Saleh to quit. U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Saleh to follow up
his pledges of reform with concrete action.

Algeria police stifle protest

Meanwhile,
thousands of police in riot gear blocked off the centre of Algeria’s
capital on Saturday and stopped government opponents from staging a
protest march that sought to emulate Egypt’s popular revolt.

Small groups of
demonstrators angry at President Abdelaziz Bouteflika gathered in May 1
Square shouting “Bouteflika out!” They waved newspaper front pages
reporting Friday’s overthrow of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak.

However the riot
police was deployed to suppress the protest. After about three hours,
hundreds of people left the square quietly, with police opening up gaps
in their cordon to let them through. Some 200 young men from a poor
neighbourhood nearby stayed on the square. Some threw objects at
police. Widespread unrest in Algeria could have implications for the
world economy because it is a major oil and gas exporter. But many
analysts say a revolt is unlikely because the government can use its
energy wealth to resolve most grievances.

Huge police deployment

Government
officials had banned Saturday’s protest, citing public order concerns.
A massive police mobilisation, which started on Friday afternoon,
appeared to have stifled it. Human Rights Groups condemn this move;
they say it is bad for Algeria’s image. The protest was not backed by
the main trade unions or the biggest opposition parties. Most members
of radical Islamist groups in Algeria banned in the 1990s, but still
have grassroots influence, stayed away.

Responding to
opposition pressure, government officials say they are working hard to
create more jobs and improve housing, and they have promised more
democratic freedoms including the lifting of a state of emergency in
force for 19 years. The Interior Ministry statement on Saturday’s
protest said: “An attempt to organise a march was recorded today at May
1 Square by a crowd estimated at 250 people. Fourteen people were
detained and immediately released.” But contradicting his statement,
officials with the opposition RCD party, which helped organise the
protest, told Reuters the demonstrators totalled between 7,000 and
10,000 and that 1,000 people were arrested.