EGYPT
New Wafd Party: nationalist and liberal with free-market values;
founded in 1983, reviving the aristocratic and traditional Wafd,
abolished after Gamal Abdel Nasser's 1952 'revolution'.
It is considered a major opposition party in President Hosni
Mubarak's controlled parliamentary system, though it won only
five seats in 2005 and boycotted the run-off polls in 2010. The
party has been accused of secret deals with the regime. Many of
its key businessmen have depended on government largesse to stay
in business.
NORTH AFRICA
For now, Algiers is what locals call 'normal', a condition
in which roadblocks and tight security prevail, mixed with spiralling
living costs, massive overcrowding and poor public services. Algerians
may wish to redefine 'normal' after recent events in neighbouring
Tunisia and their old rival, Egypt. Like their North
African neighbours, a majority of Algerians are alienated
from their government and angry about high prices and unemployment.
So far, the hogra (contempt) that Algerians feel for their
rulers has stopped short of revolution because they are still
traumatised by the bloody conflict of the 1990s between the state
and Islamists (AC Vol 40 No 24).
SUDAN
Salva Kiir Mayardit, President of Africa's newest state
in July, was in demand at the 24-31 January African Union summit
in Addis Ababa. In the AU conference centre, he was courted by
contractors, diplomats and, of course, journalists. Now that the
provisional results of last month's referendum show that 98.83%
of voters have chosen secession for the South, everyone wants
to know Salva's line on key issues such as oil money, borders
and Abyei.
SUDAN
Brutal attacks last month by armed militias on convoys of Southern
Sudanese returning from the North show the security crisis in
the borderlands and the danger of war over Abyei (AC Vol 52 No
2). The attacks began in Southern Kordofan State, north of Abyei,
on 7 January: polling in the South's week-long referendum began
on 9 January. Abyei's supposedly simultaneous referendum has
not happened.