Andrew Simmons

Andrew Simmons's picture
Andrew Simmons
Correspondent | Kenya
Biography

Andrew Simmons, a senior Africa correspondent, has more than 20 years of experience in high profile television news, and is an experienced war correspondent.

He has covered Chechnya, the Bosnian conflict and the first Gulf War, during which he spent more than one week in captivity in Basra. His laurels include two Royal Television Society (RTS) awards. 

Latest posts by Andrew Simmons

By Andrew Simmons in Europe on May 8th, 2012
Francois Hollande visits a street market in Tulle on May 5, 2012 [Reuters]

Deep in rural France, the market stalls are laid out and an elderly man remarks: "We produce good mushrooms here. And presidents, too."

This is Tulle, in the Correze Department, once the national fiefdom of right-wing leader Jacques Chirac. 

At first sight, it is a place that hasn't got a lot of character.  

A little like Francois Hollande, one might say, when the president-elect was striving to make Socialist inroads here more than 30 years ago, and eventually succeeded. 

Not only that, Hollande has defied the skeptics who would never have guessed that one Saturday in the future he'd be strolling around the Tulle market stalls, preparing to be elected president of France the following day.  

He tasted the local fare, kissed the babies and the ladies, and shook hands with ruddy faced men, one of whom pointed to his fresh chicken, insisting he could do a good deal in supplying the Elysee Palace. 

By Andrew Simmons in Europe on May 3rd, 2012

One analyst of Wednesday’s televised French presidential debate described President Nicholas Sarkozy as the boxer and Hollande as the judo fighter.

For French people, aching to see a little more substance in this campaign, it was more of a Punch-and-Judy show.

There was no knock out. And really it would have been far-fetched to even contemplate.

What France did see was a close up on the 2O-camera set of this one-off debate, was an intense portrait of how different the French presidency could become within a matter of days.

The men sat 2.5 metres apart, a distance agreed upon, like the camera angles, by political negotiation. But in thought, style and policy the distance between them was immeasurable.

From the start, insults were traded.  Hollande, “ Mr Normal” as he has been projecting himself effectively, was first to speak.  

By Andrew Simmons in Africa on November 7th, 2009
Photo by Reuters

The International Criminal Court’s Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo announced before leaving Kenya on Saturday that he had a “strong case” against key suspects in the violence that followed the 2007 Presidential elections.

He emphasised the importance of avoiding any more unnecessary delays and said he hoped to present two to three cases before judges at The Hague, possibly by July next year.

He agreed to an exclusive interview. This is my transcript:

Q: What is your assurance to Kenyan people after your visit here?

"Now I will go to the judges, it’s a judicial process, you have to understand that. The judges will decide if I can open up an investigation then I will be back.

I will go to the community, I will see the victims, I will listen to them. I have to collect the evidence.

By Andrew Simmons in Africa on November 5th, 2009
Photo by Reuters

Kenyan politics was to blame for the bloodbath in the wake of Presidential elections – and the politics of this country are also to blame for the absence of justice nearly two years later.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court plans to change that. But any hope he may have had in getting the active co-operation of the Grand Coalition formed as part of the peace deal that pulled Kenya back from the brink of civil war appear to have been dashed.

His hope had been for the Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to formally request the ICC’s intervention, triggering an immediate opening of his inquiry. In a meeting that lasted less than an hour, that was not the case.

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Biography

Andrew Simmons's picture
Andrew Simmons
Correspondent
Andrew Simmons has more than 20 years of experience in high profile television news.

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