Naked winter trees at Stevelen with a view of Salene Bugt, Bornholm

I’ve found a new ‘meditation’ here on Bornholm, nothing better than walking around in the nature. With my camera. Whenever I have the time. Really been missing that in Nepal, where they’ve got plenty of great nature, but never just around the corner and usually entailing several days of uncomfortable road trips out of Kathmandu. Aarh, couldn’t bother too much, although maybe I should have. Not so on Bornholm. There are no great distances and plenty of little trips to be made. No Himalayas here but I got to say the Bornholm ‘locations’ are turning out just as interesting. When I’m out walking I can actually forget everything about time and place and my family etc. Forget myself! One afternoon I suddenly found myself a couple of hours walk away from anything when it started to get dark - and cold. Happens around 5 pm this time of year.

So as it is turning out I’ve been doing nature photography a bit. To clear my mind, though starting to wonder if I should take up some nature photo projects around here? Can’t think of anything more enjoyable to do… Well, almost! Think I’ll start to collect material for a little artsy exhibition. Would love to see some of them in 4 by 6 feet!

Below are some sample photos from around Gudhjem, and although it’s nature photo, I think some of them have more photojournalism style over them than traditional landscape photography. Slightly gloomy perhaps? Serious? They say a picture says more about the photographer than the subject - and they (used to) say that a camera never lies, right? Or perhaps it’s just the absence of sunlight. I find myself shooting 1000 ASA and f/1.4 outdoor. Loving it!… And what kind of Nature photographer would do something like that?

Ice on the rock coast around Sletten

Røverborgen - The Thieves Castle

Light almost breaks through the heavy clouds. For a moment the ligh was pure magic

Skarvs in flight, silhouette

high flying bird (falcon silhouette)

Photograph of one of Bornholm’s closed shops. It’s very seasonal here, wintertime being totally off-season. I’ll try to continue doing work as photographer here on Bornholm (Denmark) from now on.

A week ago I arrived back in my birth country, Denmark, and I’ll now try to focus my documentary photographer’s eye on my own country for a while. I’m based on the small island of Bornholm, located in the Baltic Sea between mainland Denmark, South Sweden and Poland. It’s quite remote and only home to some  44,000 people, but just half an hours flight from Copenhagen and about 1 hour by speed-ferry from South Sweden. So anyone needing a photographer in South Sweden or Copenhagen, give me a call!

It’ll be interesting to see how much work I can dig up as a freelance photographer here on Bornholm. Don’t have any real contacts yet, but I’ll just have to work on that. There’s probably more businesses here than in the entire Nepal where I’ve spent the last 5 years. I’ve got loads of ideas anyway, for personal and other projects, and I love the people and the area here! Think it’ll be a blast.

Regards
Morten, new photographer on Bornholm, Denmark

Chiang Mai 2004. Girl dressed as flower in the flower festival and beauty pageant. Buy this photo

Had the most unlucky day yesterday. I accidentally scalded my daughters finger in some hot water, she fell down from her baby chair and hit her nose, I cut my finger on a piece of glass after a glass-bowl broke, my niece fell down the stairs, we ran out of water in our house and finally, at 7 in the evening we heard a large explosion and all the lights went out…….. What happened? A nearby power plant apparently got overloaded. Didn’t think it would be fixed during the night, but 10 minutes later we actually had light again. Whew.

When I checked the calendar and saw it was the 13th, somehow, I wasn’t too surprised!

All things in perspective, could have been a lot worse I guess. It’s not like I fell off Mt. Everest or something. I finally got around to reading Jon Krakauer’s account (“Into Thin Air”) of the 1996 Everest disaster. The unfortunate chain of events that led to the death of 8 people. That helped to put things in perspective and not take it too bad. (I can’t believe the fate of that Beck Weathers guy: Left for dead, twice, whole night, in a blizzard, inside the death zone, exposed, blinded by altitude, once even buried in the snow!) Miraculously, he pulled through and got off the mountain whit his heart still beating. Lost some fingers, half an arm and a nose though… I guess the lessons are, never give up hope, keep your equanimity when shit happens all around you.

Excellent read…

But the little story I wanted to share here is about another chain of events, crossing 4 continents, starting with me walking into a noodle shop in Thailand 6 years ago to a South American boy now having an African vulture tattooed all over his back!

To make a long story short, in the Thai noodle shop they told me there would be a local festival that morning, I got my camera and went out to find it. Along with a bunch of other press photographers not having anything better to do, I covered the event that day. Subsequently, a picture I took before the big parade started (picture above) went on to win an award in Denmark, it was published, exhibited and won me two seats on an African photo safari. Among the pictures of lions and elephants I came home with , was a picture of a vulture…

Years go by, last month I get an email from South America: A boy’s uncle was in an accident and got paralyzed. Uncle’s nickname is “The Vulture”… And as a tribute, his nephew now wants to have my photo tattooed all over his back! He was kind enough to ask me permission and if I would provide the photo for free. Normally, I never give photos for free, but this was  an exceptional case. Besides, I wouldn’t have a clue about how to calculate a fair license fee for that kind of use. (Back cover, full page, derivative work, circulation=1 ???)

I just asked to get a picture of the final tattoo once it was done. Not sure if I should now include it in my tear sheet portfolio… Original vulture photo here, “published” below :

Death of a Loyalist Militiaman, Cerro Muriano, Córdoba front, Spain, September 5, 1936. OR NOT? Photo by Robert Capa.

So far I’ve just been blogging about my own personal experiences, opinions, work etc. But I’ll break the “rule” now, blog about someone else’s work. And it’s one of the old classics: Robert Capa’s 1936 photo of a combatant falling to the ground after being shot dead. Allegedly!

The photo established Capa has a heroic, top war photographer, it was used over and over as a prime example of great timing and of “Capa’s Rule” : “If your photo ain’t good enough, you ain’t close enough!”

But the thing is, the photo has always been suspected of being staged. I vaguely remember first time I saw this photo, before I became a photojournalist, and just thinking “something ain’t right here”. (Also remember thinking “what’s with the hat?”) Well, if there ever was a set of rules in photojournalism, number one would be : You don’t stage a news photo and then claim it was a spontaneous event!

So OK, Capa always claimed it wasn’t staged. And we trusted him, since he’s reputation was ok and we couldn’t prove him wrong. But now a Spanish newspaper seems to have proven that something is indeed wrong with this photo!

From "Periodico" newspaper: Picture 1, 2 and 3 are Capa's 1936 shots. If you match the inserted boxes, you can see his pictures are effectively a pan of the camera. Photos number 4 and 5 are from near Espejo, as it looks today. Clearly, location-wise 2=4 and 3=5! And since 1=2=3, photo 1 must also be from Espejo. Q.E.D.

The original caption read “Death of a Loyalist Militiaman, Cerro Muriano, Córdoba front, Spain, September 5, 1936”. The newspaper photos above prove beyond doubt that the photo wasn’t taken in Cerro Muriano, but in a place called Espejo. Look closely at the distant hills, they match!

Ok, caption is wrong. Does that make it fabrication? Yes, because there weren’t any fighting in Espejo at that time! So maybe the date is wrong too? Dead end. When the fighting broke out in that area again, the photo was already filed!

And how about the fact that the dead soldier(s) have never been identified for sure. In spite of a lot of effort. And there’s no visible bullet wounds. Not to mention the incredible coincidence of him getting the shot in the first place! Also, I’m not a military historian, but… Would a soldier really be wearing a white shirt in combat? And would the rifle platoon be sitting upright like that, pointing their rifles? With bullets allegedly flying around their ears, I’d think they’d want to lie down in the grass or something…

I’m not sure how this is going to affect today’s world of photojournalism. Probably not really any effect at all. But my belief is shaken! More than when some over-eager digital photographer goes nuts in Photoshop. This is history we’re talking about. The foundation on which we are standing!

Mr Capa, really? WHY? Not you!

The Spanish Periodico goes on to speculate – and I just include this because it makes poetic sense – that “It is tempting to think that the next 18 years, in which Capa showed almost suicidal bravery in China, Tunisia, Sicily, Naples, Anzio, Normandy, the Ardennes, Leipzig, Israel, and Indochina, where he was killed by a mine in 1954, were dedicated to redeeming an original sin.”

Buy Robert Capa products on Amazon:

A UN vehicle is speeding by in the back, while a mentally challenged, needy, third-world citizen is left to herself on the street. Kathmandu, Nepal, 2005. (C) Morten Svenningsen.

First off, apologies for this blog post which is going to be a bit of a rant about stuff in my brain, what I’ve been up to etc. Just to let you all know that I’m still here. And doing fine, by the way!

My Daughter

By far the biggest thing in my life now, Julie, soon 5 months old. I’ve set up this cute little photo blog for her (text in Danish), to keep family and friends up to date about events in her life. Boy, she’s taking a lot of our time. By now, I must have the number of all the local clinics and hospitals on my speed dial. Not that there’s anything wrong with her. But being concerned parents, we just don’t take any chances. Like today, she had rashes all over her body. Went to this little clinic in the morning just to be told, like all the other times, other issues, “Don’t worry”. This kind of rash apparently doesn’t itch and goes away by itself after a few days. Ok. Just taking a lot of time. Slept 4 hours last night. Needed a nap. Then the cooking and cleaning. And all the time she’s awake, she appreciates attention. Demands it! Needs to be carried, held, talked to, played with… That’s all fine. Just wondering: How on earth does everyone else manage to have a lovely 5 months old daughter and still get any work done?

My Work

Which brings us to this next topic. I feel better positioned, equipped and educated than ever before to do my work. But I just don’t have much time to do it! My head is filled with ideas. Would love to do an in-depth, long project, piece of investigative photojournalism.

Just to mention one idea, a story I really think needs to be told: The whole NGO scene here in Nepal. How well is it actually working? They’ve been here for 60 years. Yes six-ty years! The country is still not functioning. By some standards it could even pass as a failed state. It’s still one of the poorest and most corrupt places on earth. So, has the presence of all those NGOs (currently more than 30.000) made things better or worse? Ok, a lot of things have improved. Literacy has gone up from less than 5% to more than 50%. Road connections gone up from a few kilometers to thousands. Health conditions vastly improved. I’ll give them part credit for all that. But look at one organization, UN for instance. Would love to ask them some questions: What have you actually achieved? How much have it cost? If you pulled out tomorrow, how long will your achievements last? I see lot of UN 4WDs passing in and out of 5 star hotels. (Hence the lead photo up top…) Everyone have private chauffeurs, air-conditioned offices. UN helicopters fly over our house every day. How much is going to waste here? What is actually being accomplished? They were 500% off target when they had to count the Maoist combatants. Is this representative of their standards and understanding of this country? Just shooting of questions here, naturally. Not implying anything…

And by the way. One of the UN organizations recently had the nerve to ask me to provide a cover photo for their magazine. Only thing, they wanted it for free! Who is the UN anyway? Some poor sod sitting on the street with an eye patch and a tin cup in one hand? (To paraphrase Harlan Ellison).

Anyway, would love to do some quality piece of reportage before I leave this country.

Leaving Nepal

Which brings us to this: I’m finally leaving Nepal! After 4 years, we handed in the application for my wife’s Danish residence permit this week. So will be stationing myself in Denmark by the end of the year, if everything goes as planned. Still have perhaps 4 months left here, I guess. Won’t be leaving for good. Hoping I’ll be able to come here again, once a year or so. To do some work, say hi to everybody and perhaps time for a hike in the mountains! But looking forward to leaving all the noise, dirt and over-populated streets behind for a while.

The Biggest Problem in the World

Just mentioned the over-populated streets here. Gave it some thought. I actually regard this as the biggest problem in the world. No, it’s not poverty, war, hunger, AIDS, financial crisis, climate change or whatever. It’s the population growth! Globally speaking, the population grows with 1.2% per year. Big deal, you say. But if it continues like this on a large time frame we’ll reach a 1000 billion people in less than 500 years! 10.000 billion in another 200 years. 100.000 billion in another 200 years… (We are about 7 billion people here now). It’s just too many, man! I know, neither you or me are going to live to see the day. But no-one else will, I’m sure. If we don’t find a way of reducing the growth, nature will do it for us, I’m sure. Deaths on a massive scale! Perhaps that Swine Flu is nature’s way…

Hmm, another story that needs to be told. What better place to do it from than here, in the heart of an Asian capital…

Photojournalism

And although I’m not that much ‘out there’ shooting projects these days, not as much as I’d like to anyway, I’m still doing a lot in this field, photojournalism. For more than half a year now, I’ve been running Gaia Photos, a global photojournalism project I’ve set up. It’s coming along nicely, got a lot of good response on it. You should take a look! Anyway, it’s one thing that I CAN do these days. Whenever I have an hour free time, between feeding and nursing, I can sit down in front of the computer and work on the various creative and managerial issues that comes with it. Right now, writing a bunch of small articles on photojournalism. Just to promote the project, bring more visitors to the site, increase our collective exposure. Let me know if you are interested in those articles, I can send links when they are ready and online – it’s free.

Let me just tell you why I started this project. First, I’m a quite globally minded kind of person, I guess. For practical reasons I haven’t renounced my Danish citizenship. It’s just too damn handy. But ideally, I’d rather be a “world citizen”, I’ve never felt that I belonged to a country. Hate nationalism. So I guess this was sort of a driving factor in me becoming a photojournalist originally. Wanted to “promote inter-cultural understanding across all the borders of this world that we all share”. I think that’s how I formulated it many years ago somewhere… But somewhere along the line, I forgot that vision. And after having done this and that in photojournalism, gotten myself carried away, trying to chase the market, I got a bit bored, lost my passion. Thought about leaving photojournalism again. That was a couple of years ago. But then it dawned on me. Return to your original philosophy, the reason you started this thing anyway! And the passion returned and the idea of Gaia took form. With the help of other people’s ideas, I should say. Greg deserves some credit here!

Ok, think I’ll stop my rant here for now, leave other of the weird scenes inside to goldmine for later…

Buy Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mine, lyrics by the Doors on this album (via Amazon):

Cool old Tibetan monk. Boudha stupa reflecting in his shades. Canon 5D Mark II, Tamron 90 mm f/2.8, @ wide open aperture

Thought it’d be a good time to show some street portrait photos I took last week, just strolling around in Kathmandu for a few hours. All shot with my Tamron SP DI 90 mm f/2.8 lens at wide open aperture, f/2.8. I’ll review the lens in some detail here.

Interestingly, it was the only non-Canon lens to make it onto the Top20 Canon (compatible) lenses in a recent photographer survey (Bob Atkins’), where it was rated “very good” to “outstanding. I’d have to agree! Here’s why:

Since I upgraded my camera from a crop version (the Canon 20D) to a full frame (the Canon 5D Mark II), I’ve become much more happy with the Tamron 90 mm lens. Honestly, it was a bit tricky to work with on the 20D. The 90 mm focal length, in effect, turned into a (90×1.6=) 144 mm lens. At that focal length, and without any image stabilization, I had to shoot at a shutter time of 1/180, 1/250 or even 1/350 sec. to avoid motion blur. And shooting at 144 mm f/2.8 gives you a very narrow focus are (DOF) so I was usually shooting at f/5.6 or so, just to make sure I got something in focus! On the 20D, I could reasonably go up to 400 or 800 ISO, which all meant that I needed daylight conditions to work – or a strobe or a tripod.

But, with the full frame 5D2 camera, it is much easier to work with! The 90 mm remains 90 mm, shutter speed of 1/125 is sufficient and if need be, I’ll crank the ISO up to 1000 ASA or above! What a dream! Dark alleys at dusk, no problem. Indoor low-light portraits, bring‘em on!

The narrow DOF is still something to consider. You’ll need to shoot your subjects fairly straight-on if you want both their eyes in focus. On the below shot of a smoking Nepalese man, you can see on the 100% crop of his eyes that only one of them is in focus. If you can’t get both eyes in focus, remember, always focus on the nearest eye.

The Smoking Man, Nepal. Canon 5D Mark II, Tamron 90 mm f/2.8, @ wide open aperture

Left eye in focus, 100% crop

Right eye out of focus, 100% crop

On the next shot of the working ladies, you can get an impression of the bokeh of the Tamron 90 mm lens. (The out-of-focus points that become big circles in the back, upper-right corner.) Look at the 100% crop and tell me, isn’t it just a totally decent bokeh?

Nepalese lady carrying sand in a basket, strapped around her forehead. Canon 5D Mark II, Tamron 90 mm f/2.8, @ wide open aperture

Corner bokeh on the Tamron 90 mm f/2.8 lens

Bokeh is always a subject of heated debate among photographers. But to me it looks pretty good. On low-quality lenses you’ll often see hard rings around the edge of these out-of-focus circles. There’s still a bit of that here, but not much. And also, being in the corner of the frame, a lot of other lenses distort the circles into tear-drop shapes or so. Here, on the Tamron 90 mm lens, they remain nicely round!

So what’s the price of this lens and what are the alternatives? For Canon users like myself, there’s also the much acclaimed 85/1.2 lens and the 135/2 lens. Both ‘L’ lenses and both somewhat more expensive (especially considering I got my Tamron 90/2.8 for free!). They’re all good for shooting one thing: Portraits. Perhaps a few other niches, like food photography and macro photography. Some notable stock shooters tend to love these lenses. The two L-lenses are probably both a bit sharper and with a bit more contrast than the Tamron. But we’re really down in the nitty-gritty here. The Tamron performs excellent and personally I would probably find it hard to make good use of the more narrow DOF on these two alternative lenses, used wide open. I love the separation that the out-of-focus backgrounds give, but I still want the eyes to be in-focus. Both iris and eye-lashes, please. So the Tamron 90 mm f/2.8 is a pretty good fit for my needs. Here are the prices, served by Amazon:

Last photo here, a vertical half-body portrait of an old man in a temple. Not much to say. Just love his t-shirt!

Cool T-shirt man. Canon 5D Mark II, Tamron 90 mm f/2.8, @ wide open aperture

Julie and Sabina on the balcony, a couple of days ago. Long live still photography - even when it is in cinemascope!

So, just been playing around with some multimedia software. Long time since I really did any professional multimedia productions, so thought I’d brush up on it again, see what’s possible, with formats, bandwidth, the 5D2 camera etc.

According to the industry prophets, multimedia is supposed to be the big and bright future of photojournalism. True, it’s one of the ‘new’ possibilities of web publishing. Although we’ll probably need some more super broadband connections before it really replaces text+stills. Actually, I hope it never does replace text and stills! But put it all together in a package, leave options to users how they want to have it, then sell it through subscription, micro-payments and affiliate programs, with ads on the side. And able to run on iPhones and BlackBerries. Yep, I can see that being the future. Not too distant, in fact. Can’t wait!

But aside from this little look into the crystal bowl, I also just wanted to share some private pictures of Julie, our daughter.

She’s beginning to make a lot of funny sounds, laughing etc. So I recorded that. Not without difficulty. Every time I put the microphone close to her, she just stopped speaking and starred at it! And when I finally did manage to get a bit of audio, an airplane passed overhead, making it onto the soundtrack. Well ok, it’s just for fun today.

As an experiment, I made it as a movie file so I can play it from YouTube. Just to get some free bandwidth and see how it works out. Had to compress it a bit to get some speed, so the still photos are slightly soft. But again, just playing around today…

Enough tech talk, here’s the slideshow. Just hit the play button:

Also made a video production. The footage is about two month old, but just put it together a couple of days ago. Enjoy:

Next step I guess is making stills, video footage, ambient audio, narration, theme music, hypertext etc, all in one production. Bring it on!

And now that we’ve got all the baby photos on the blog, I’m happy to say that Julie now has both her passport (Danish) and visa (Nepalese). It took a couple of months all together, with the wonderful bureaucracy. I’ve gotten used to it by now, but to outsiders wondering how it can take two months, here’s some extracts from the conversations I / we have had at various government offices:

- Hello, I would like a visa for my daughter. Here’s her passport!
- Where’s her entry visa?
- She doesn’t have one. She was born here.
- But she needs an entry visa…
- But she never entered the country!
- Hmmm… ok…. Now where’s your relationship certificate?
- Here’s our marriage certificate.
- No, no. Relationship certificate!
- Isn’t marriage a sort of relationship?
- No. I want to see your daughters relationship to her mother.
- Aah, birth certificate! Here it is, the hospital one, the government one (which took a whole day to get) and the official translation of it (which took another whole day to get).
- It’s no good! I need one from your ward office…

And so it continued. The ward office wouldn’t issue the relationship certificate, even thought we had all the necessary documents. The guy went (to my wife):

- Yes, I can see you are a Nepalese citizen. But maybe you also have an illegal Danish citizenship?
- No I don’t!
- How do I know that?

We note how nicely he has just applied the legal principle of being guilty until proven otherwise… No. Not going down that road… So through some gentle nepotism we got his boss to call him and tell him to do his f…ing job. Had to go through a couple of other offices as well before we could go back to the visa office… Where we now had to pay a penalty for being late!

And this is not even half of it. But oh well, in the end we got the documents we needed. But what a super way of wasting everyone’s time!

Hope you enjoy the photos though!

So ok, how many Maoists does it take to close down a capital city?

You know, I bet the Maoist leaders have been wondering about that! Just in case they have to fall back to Plan B, you know, “Peoples War, Part 2″, urban combat… My own guess, this mass meet wasn’t actually organized so that the party bosses could step up on the podium and fire the usual round of allegations against -conveniently unnamed and unproven- some “foreign masters” and “reactionary forces hatching conspiracies”. No, it was a “military exercise”. How many “troops” do we need? How long time does it take to mobilize them? Infrastructure. Channels of communication. Crowd control of all the “useful idiots” - like Lenin called them. Call me paranoid tonight, but hey, would you put it passed them to think those thoughts?

I’m not saying the Maoists are about to strike. I don’t think so at all. Just keeping their options open.

About 200 people or so, held a candle light march around the stupa, chanting prayers, shouting slogans (”Free Tibet” and along those lines) and finally just stodd still and sang a song. It was all very peaceful, but with heavy police presence in the background.

I did some sound recordings as well and would love to make a little multimedia presentation. Will have to wait a bit, unfortunately, since it’ll take some time that I don’t have right now. So for now, just the pictures. Have a good weekend!

- And please contact me if you’re interested in the multimedia piece - or any of these photos, for that matter!

Police officers dosing fires, started by angry Maoist supporters protesting against the presidents move to reinstate chief of army staff. Nepal 6. May 2009. Photo by Morten Svenningsen, copyright, contact for editorial use.

Things have been happening fast here in Nepal the last two days. (Never thought I would be saying that!) A few hours after I wrote the previous blog post here (Nepal’s Maoists: Helpless in Power), things really started happening. I’ll not go into great detail since the big news media have it all covered, but these are the headlines

•    Maoist govt. sack chief of army staff
army chief refuse to step down

•    Second largest party quit coalition government
the so-called ‘united-marxist-leninist-communist party’. Oh yeah, we have some really RED parties here in Nepal!

•    18 opposition parties ask the president to revoke the sacking of the army chief.
Not because they disagree, it is not clear if they do or not, but because they weren’t asked nicely and invited for a cup of tea.

•    The president reinstates army chief
it’s now being debated who has the authority to hire/fire army chiefs. The president (who is the supreme army commander) or the minister of defense.

•    The Maoists resign from government
protesting ‘president’s unconstitutional move’.

•     Street protests for and against the president’s move
Not what I would call popular protests, but each party has it’s youth wing / student union of supporters, ranging from deadpans to intellectuals, who are called into action at times like these

•    Efforts start to form new govt.
Both the Marxist-leninist-brothers and the Maoists express desire to lead new govt. If Maoist, perhaps new person as PM (Bhattarai?)

•    Video emerges: Prachanda admits lying to the UN!
about Maoist-PLA army strength. The real number, he appears to be saying, was 7-8000, not 35000. Ha-ha, they bought it! After this video is released, he resorts to the usual round of wild “it’s a conspiracy”-allegations.

Last night at Chabahil Chowk in Kathmandu, Nepal: A Maoist torch rally ended with torches being thrown in heaps in the middle of the street and the police dosing the fires with water. Nepal 6. May 2009. Photo by Morten Svenningsen, copyright, contact for editorial use.

I’m sure this charade ain’t over yet. I’m not even going to dare guessing what’s next. Just leave you with this link to a really good account of the political mess from Rhoderick Chalmers (ICG), where he says:

“Nepal risks throwing away the chance of peace… By going it alone they [Maoists] snubbed their own partners and suggested they have little patience for building agreement on sensitive issues…

Yes, the army has been playing politics… But it is a sad comment on the state of Nepal’s politics that the generals have been far more diligent in opposing the Maoists than the parties entrusted with that task.
In response to the Maoist draft constitution, the Nepali Congress only managed to present the constituent assembly with a short letter outlining basic principles. The army, in contrast, submitted - unprompted and supposedly in top secrecy - two weighty volumes on national security policy and “fundamental national policy”, covering everything from protecting the country’s genepool to enhancing agricultural productivity. For good measure it threw in a detailed set of constitutional recommendations, including a demand that the current commitment to army “democratisation” be revoked”