The current President of Malawi, Bingu WA Mutharika, was elected on Sunday by the Heads of State and Government of 53 Member States of the African Union, to hold the rotating presidency, succeeding Muammar Gaddafi. Elected head of the organization in February 2009, Gaddafi was officially designated as the guide of the great revolution of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, as more generally shortened to “Brother Guide”. Some countries such as the South Africa, the Ethiopian or the Uganda had opposed the idea of a second term of the Libyan leader, and several other countries, including the Sahel and West Africa, supported his possible candidacy.

Within the Commission and delegations, it is some relief: “It’s a very good decision. In addition, the Guide did not leave, so eventually the African stays together “, commented a senior official of the AU.”Gadhafi was not even an official candidate. It went smoothly and actually quite fast “, slid a second. The chairmanship of Colonel Gaddafi was generally very controversial and “very harmful to the image of the AU, including crisis management policies as Madagascar and Guinea”, confided this week a near Jean Ping, President of the Commission of the African Union. Mr. Gaddafi, he finally said: “I do not need any title; I’ll stay on the front for the struggle for the AU”.

The African Union is an organization of African states created in 2002 in Durban, South Africa, under the Sirte Declaration of 9 September 1999 on the same model as the European Union. Its goals are to work for the promotion of democracy, of human rights and development across Africa, mainly through increased foreign investment through the program of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development Africa (NEPAD).

The agenda also covered the situation in Somalia, where the AU peacekeeping mission in three years with a contingent of 5,000 men. The country is no real system of government for twenty years, and the pirates control the coast and hunt or attack oil tankers and cargo ships abroad.