African press review 14 March 2016

In Uganda, an army of lawyers are getting ready to fight over the results of the Presidential elections. Meanwhile, Egypt has woken up to the fact that President Sisi might not be the country's savior. All that, and more, in today's African press review.

DR

The East African

We start with regional paper The East African, which reports on Uganda and on 60 lawyers preparing to argue about the country's presidential elections in front of the Supreme Court this Monday.

Those represents "President Yoweri Museveni, the Electoral Commission, the Attorney-General and petitioner Amama Mbabazi" explains The East African.

The issue in contention here "is whether there was nonconformity with the country’s Electoral Commission Act and the Presidential Elections Act", "whether the alleged noncompliance affected the outcome of the 18 February vote in a substantial manner and whether President Museveni personally or through his agents perpetrated the same".

It's all technical, but depending on the outcome of the hearings, this could either validate or cancel the results of last month's elections that saw Museveni reelected by a landslide.

Lawyers from Mbabazi and Opposition candidate Kizza Besigye's camp are asking for a recount of the vote, but the high court has already rejected it.A decision will be given at the end of this month.

Egypt Independent

Today's Egypt Independent says Egyptian are starting to blame President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for the poor state of the economy.

And the best example of that, according to the daily, is that even some state medias talk-show hosts have started criticising him. "Your exellency: you are not working" said television presenter Azza al-Henawy last week.

"After years of publicly lionizing Sisi as the savior of the nation, many of the country's most influential figures have emerged to blame the president for an economy in crisis, an Islamist insurgency raging in the Sinai peninsula and the brutality of an unreformed police force" writes The Egypt Independent.

And boy the story was different three years ago when Sisi rose to power: "Sweet shops could not sell cakes with his face on them fast enough" says the paper.

It's not just the state of the economy that is angering Egyptians. The human rights situation has started to worry the general public too according to the daily.

"Last month, more than 10,000 doctors protested against police brutality after policemen beat two doctors at a public hospital". It was the largest demonstration since authorities curbed the right to protest in late 2013.

The Daily Nation

The Daily Nation says well-off Kenyan parents are driving up maternity charges but we're talking about private hospitals here where "young moneyed Kenyans" are looking for "fast, quality health care" they couldn't find in public hospitals.

The paper explains, "maternity fees was abolished in public health facilities nearly four years ago".

And this means, at least according to some relatively rich Kenyans, that there's too many people in public hospitals.But now the high demand for private hospitals means that they have "set up luxurious birthing suites ".

As the result "charges for both normal and C-section deliveries rose by 90 per cent since 2013" says the paper.