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/ 17 February 2006
For many reasons, President Yoweri Museveni’s army is the key to Uganda’s first multiparty election in 25 years. Not surprisingly then, his people are trumpeting his National Resistance Movement as the only party that can control the army. Museveni won elections in 1996 and 2001.
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/ 16 February 2006
There are a few staples in Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s annual Budget speech that seem to get an airing each year. Last year he thanked everyone who offered Budget suggestions, including the person who recommended scrapping income taxes altogether. After giving it due consideration, Manuel decided against it.
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/ 16 February 2006
The removal of the social security grant function from provinces will allow the national government to shift its priority away from social assistance towards welfare services, which it says has been neglected over the past five years as social grants consumed as much as 92% of the provincial equitable share.
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/ 16 February 2006
Denel, the loss-making defence parastatal, is to get a government rescue package that could reach more than R5-billion as it struggles to ward off insolvency, to restructure and to attract new strategic partners. The new funds should clear the way for the announcement of an equity partnership with the Swedish firm Saab.
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/ 16 February 2006
The government is making an extra R9,6-billion available to the provinces this year, but at the same time is cracking the whip on accountability and better service delivery. A nationally applicable performance assessment system for top municipal officials will be in force by the start of the new municipal financial year, from July 1.
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/ 16 February 2006
The South African National Defence Force appears to be escaping somewhat from the stranglehold of expenditure on the strategic defence procurement package as the repayment peaked last year and drops off from 2006 to 2008. Of the total defence costs of R23,5billion for 2005, R9,2billion was allocated to the Strategic Defence Account.
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/ 16 February 2006
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy branded Iran’s nuclear programme for the first time on Thursday as a ”clandestine, military” project. In response to sharp protests from Iran, however, France’s foreign ministry reiterated Paris’s official position, which is that Tehran’s nuclear activities ”raise doubts about their peaceful nature”.
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/ 16 February 2006
Russian biathlete Olga Pyleva was expelled from the Winter Olympics and stripped of the silver medal she won the women’s 15km race for failing a dope test, the International Olympic Committee announced on Thursday. It was the first failed dope test since the Games began on February 10.