20, July 2021
Mali: Interim president Goïta ‘safe and sound’ after assassination attempt at Bamako mosque 0
Mali’s interim president Colonel Assimi Goita was “safe and sound”, his office said, after an assassination attempt by two men, one wielding a knife, during prayers at a mosque in Bamako on Tuesday.
An AFP journalist who witnessed the attack said the assailants lunged at Goita, who was quickly whisked away by security.
The journalist also said he saw blood at the scene, though it was not clear who had been wounded.
An official in the president’s office later said Goita was “safe and sound”, after what was labelled an assassination attempt.
Goita arrived at the military camp of Kati, outside the capital, “where security has been reinforced”, the official added.
Security had subdued one attacker, and “investigations are ongoing”, the presidency added in a statement.
The incident occurred after prayers for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha in the great mosque of Bamako.
Assailants went for the president as an imam was directing worshippers outside the mosque for a ritual animal sacrifice.
Religious Affairs Minister Mamadou Kone, who was at the mosque, told AFP that a man had “tried to kill the president with a knife” but was apprehended.
The mosque’s director, Latus Toure, said an attacker had lunged at the president but wounded someone else.
Later, a security official who requested anonymity said that two people had been arrested and were now in detention.
Political turmoil
The shocking attack follows months of political turmoil in Mali, which is also battling a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Goita was sworn into power in June, after leading the country’s second coup in less than a year.
The colonel had already led a putsch last August, when he and other army officers ousted elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita after weeks of mass protests over corruption and the long-running jihadist conflict.
The second coup in nine months sparked diplomatic uproar, prompting the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to suspend Mali, calling for the appointment of a civilian prime minister.
Jihadist insurgency
France, which has thousands of troops stationed in the war-torn country, also suspended military cooperation with Mali.
The former colonial power followed by announcing that it would wind down its 5,100-strong Barkhane force that has battled jihadists in the Sahel since 2013.
The military junta handed power to a civilian-led transitional government, which promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022.
In June it unveiled its new government, appointing military figures in key roles.
Goita vowed at the time that the government would “uphold all its commitments”, pledging to stage “credible, fair and transparent elections”.
A large majority of the 15-nation UN’s Security Council later called for free and fair elections to go ahead in the country without the participation of its current leaders.
Mali also faces unrest outside the political arena.
It has been struggling to contain an jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north of the country in 2012, and has since spread to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.
The conflict has also been mirrored by political instability in the capital.
Source: AFP
21, July 2021
Biya should give up this hopeless and dangerous Beti Ewondo crusade to hold on to power 0
Saturday July 17 is now among the President Biya’s darkest days. Not since the April 6 coup in 1984 has the Cameroonian presidency been laid so low.
While Cameroonians did the right thing on that April 6 1984 by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with their president, the same Biya on Saturday July 17 2021 was hiding inside the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva now seen as Cameroon’s eleventh region in his desperate attempt to cling to an office Cameroonians have denied him several times.
Some pro Biya militants had dubiously chanted praises to the man who has misruled Cameroon for 38 years in front of the same Geneva hotel. But the Swiss police took interest in the massive demo organized by the BAS majority following that stormed past armed police officers and into the InterContinental Hotel, where the 88-year-old dictator was preparing to drive to Cannes in France with his wife Chantal Biya to enjoy the Cannes Film Festival.
The fault lies entirely with Biya and his criminal gang. Their rhetoric on state radio and television has been very inciteful against Southern Cameroonians and the Bamilekes of French Cameroun and each day they are marketing false narratives that Cameroonians clamouring for reforms simply want political power. Now, the nation is exploding.
Biya’s performance in Geneva was befitting his presidency, which has been crude, undisciplined and self-serving. Biya has always placed his own interest and that of his tribe’s men ahead of the nation’s.
In the days of the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo, it would have been impossible to imagine a Cameroon governor, an SDO let alone the head of state traveling abroad and making a hotel his home away from home.
Why go back to the same hotel in Geneva?
What is so special in the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva? Only the 88-year-old Biya, Cameroon’s crudest and least dignified president can tell.
Biya has devoted his presidency to denigrating Cameroonian institutions and citizens who refused to play along with his irrational denial of reality. Of course, you can do whatever you want as head of state if you keep the people frightened enough.
The Francophone leader has bullied everyone deep within his ruling CPDM crime syndicate and even beyond but he is now very surprise at seeing young French Cameroonians in the diaspora getting on his way as patriotism is in very short supply at Etoudi.
In 1982, Biya swore to uphold the Constitution but has spent more than three decades encouraging his loyalists to ignore the document and do whatever it takes to illegally keep him in power.
The late Ahmadou Ahidjo and his top aides gave Biya a rare and treasured honour — the privilege of serving the United Republic of Cameroon as president and entrusting Biya with the care of this precious homeland. Biya has abused that trust over and over.
The time has come for Biya to do the right thing by stepping aside. He and his gang must recognize the danger of continuing to hold on to power at 88 in a nation that is already disintegrating.
Dion Ngute, Maigari Bello Bouba, Laurent Esso and Philemon Yang must break into the youthful tribal clique around Biya and make him see the escalation of the chaos and violence his hanging on to power is creating in Southern Cameroons, the Far North and also in the East.
It will be a very serious matter if the military should send him packing out of the so-called Unity Palace. The Biya generation should organize a peaceful transition of power to a new administration and Biya and his kinsmen in Yaoundé have an obligation to ensure that the transfer is indeed peaceful.
Biya and his men must stop agitating their supporters, stop the war in Southern Cameroons, condemn police and army violence, free all Southern Cameroons detainees; free all political opponents, accept that mistakes have been made and give up this hopeless and dangerous Beti Ewondo crusade to hold on to power.
A stitch in time saves nine
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai