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7, November 2018

France: 6 far-rightists nabbed over plot against President Macron ⁰

French domestic intelligence forces have arrested six people linked to ultra-right movements in the country on suspicion of planning a “violent” attack against President Emmanuel Macron.

One female and five male suspects, with ages ranging from 22 to 62, were taken into custody by the agents of France’s DGSI intelligence bureau, which did not identify the detainees, AFP reported Tuesday, citing sources close to the case.

According to the report, four of the suspects were arrested in the northeastern city of Moselle, within a close distance of the city of Verdun, where Macron was on a visit on Tuesday as part of week-long memorial festivities marking the end of World War I.

The other two suspects were seized in southeast and western France.

One source said the investigation of the case — by the Paris Prosecutor’s Office, which handles terrorism inquires — is dealing with “a vague and ill-defined project at this stage.”

French President Macron stands at the cemetery by the Ossuary of Douaumont near Verdun on November 6, 2018, during ceremonies marking the centenary of the end of the First World War. (Photo by AFP)

The plot was not the first known attempt on the life of the French president. A 23-year-old man was charged in July 2017 with plotting to assassinate Macron at France’s Bastille Day military parade. Three kitchen knives were found in that suspect’s automobile, and analysis of his computer found that he had carried out internet searches as part of his scheme.

Several other suspected far-right members have been arrested since 2017 — the year Macron was elected president — after police found they might be preparing imminent attacks.

Thirteen suspects affiliated with the country’s far-right Action des Forces Operationnelles (Operational Forces Action) group were also arrested by France’s anti-terrorist forces over an alleged plot to wage attacks against Muslims.

Ten more people were also taken into custody in October 2017 over suspicions of aiming to target Muslims as well as politicians such as France’s far-left politicians Jean-Luc Melenchon and Christophe Castaner, who now serves as the country’s interior minister.

Castaner had warned on Monday that the nation remained “on alert” over what he referred to as threats posed by “extremist networks both on the right and left, which are quite active in our country.”

Macron himself warned of the threat from far-right movements across Europe in an interview earlier this week, saying complacency during the 1930s was what opened the way for the rise of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in Germany and fascist leader Benito Mussolini in Italy.

Culled from Presstv

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7, November 2018

Biya Promises Defeat of Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces ⁰

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, the second longest serving African president at 36 years in power, has been inaugurated for another seven-year mandate. In his speech, Biya promised to defeat terrorism in the country but made no mention of 82 people kidnapped Monday in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone region.

Cameroonians sang the national anthem Tuesday as Biya was sworn in.
In his speech, Biya promised to solve Cameroon’s problems and urged unity. He said they would continue fighting terrorism until separatists in the two English-speaking regions drop their guns or are defeated.

He says in the northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon, negative forces took advantage of some worker complaints to execute their separatist plans and acts of terrorism.

FILE - A bus burned by separatists in Akum, Cameroon, Sept. 9, 2018. — FILE – A bus burned by separatists in Akum, Cameroon, Sept. 9, 2018.

Violence broke out so the government responded with measures to preserve public order, he says, and assure the safety and security of people and their property. Secession is against Cameroon’s constitution, says Biya, and the indivisible nature of the nation.

Biya made no mention of gunmen kidnapping 79 students and three teachers on Monday from a school in the northwest region.

Cameroon authorities say the gunmen are separatists, while a separatist spokesman claims the military is framing them for the abduction.

On the walkway of Yaounde city council, hundreds of people displaced by the region’s fighting watched the inauguration on a giant-screen TV.

Fifty-five-year-old Julius Tetang says he has been hosting 30 displaced people from the English-speaking town of Mbengwi. He wants Biya to find a solution to the region’s unrest.

“They have about 18 secondary schools and none is going,” he said. “They have about 76 primary schools and all are empty. Most of the inhabitants have abandoned their areas. The rate of killings is heavy. People are running away from bullets.”

Cletus Fonyuy, 32, fled fighting in the English-speaking town of Kumbo. He says his wife and brother were killed last month in clashes.

“Mr. Biya has been given another chance to stop killing our people of the northwest and southwest regions,” he said. “He should ask his military to stop killing our people, these are our brothers. We are one so he should do something to show that we are one.”

Biya was declared the winner of the October 7 presidential poll with a landslide victory of 71 percent of the vote. His strongest challenger, Maurice Kamto, was a distant second with 14 percent.

FILE - Cameroonian President Paul Biya casts his ballot while his wife Chantal Biya watches at a polling station during the presidential election in Yaounde, Cameroon, Oct. 7, 2018. — FILE – Cameroonian President Paul Biya casts his ballot while his wife Chantal Biya watches at a polling station during the presidential election in Yaounde, Cameroon, Oct. 7, 2018.

Kamto and his supporters claim the poll was rigged by election bodies chosen by Biya and loyal to him. Security forces on Tuesday’s on stopped Kamto’s supporters from trying to protest Biya’s inauguration.

Christopher Bime, 24, says police prevented him from protesting what he called Biya’s stolen victory.

“So he has been there for 36 years, youths are suffering too much. Youth that have gone to school and they are having certificates in their pockets but they suffer all over the country,” he said.

Biya has been in power in Cameroon for over four decades — serving seven years as prime minister and 36 as president.

In 2008, he removed term limits from the constitution, allowing him to serve indefinitely.

When his new term is finished, he will be 93 years old.

Source: VOA

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7, November 2018

Yaounde Detains Journalists Reporting on Unrest for ‘Propagating False Information’ ⁰

Media rights organizations are calling on authorities in Cameroon to release five journalists detained without charges in the past month after reporting on the country’s unrest. TV host Mimi Mefo is the latest journalist believed to be targeted by Cameroon authorities for her critical reporting.

A Cameroonian gendarme summoned popular TV host Mimi Mefo, who heads English news for privately-owned Equinoxe broadcasting.

Mimi Mefo on the field in Mbengwi, North West region in Aug. 2018.

Mefo was called Monday to appear before the military legal body after several threats were made on her life.

But Mefo believes authorities are trying to intimidate her because of her reporting.

“I contacted my lawyer, barrister Tamfu Richard, who told me that an investigation has been opened against me on propagation of false information and cyber criminality. The problem here actually are my reports, my debates, my social media reports and my day to day, minute by minute updates on my website and social media on political and social issues in Cameroon. When you report the atrocities, you are threatened and considered as an enemy,” said Mefo.

Media rights groups say Cameroon authorities have targeted several journalists for critical and detailed reporting on the country’s insurgencies.

Cameroon police detained journalist Michel Biem Tong on October 23. Tong is known for critical reporting of the military’s atrocities in the fight against Boko Haram terrorists in the north and Anglophone separatists in the west.

Publisher Gustave Flaubert Kengne, whose publication Orientation Hebdo specializes in human rights reporting, was among those detained in October.

While Cameroon authorities accused the reporters of “propagating false information,” none of them have been officially charged.

Cameroon Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma says everyone should stop publishing information that jeopardizes Cameroon’s unity.

“As far as the fight, the battle against the terrorism is concerned, whoever respects the law will be at peace in our nation. What is unacceptable is the fact that the journalists would lie [to] the international community to exert influence on President Biya to get the journalist released,” said Tchiroma.

The Union of Cameroon Journalists is calling for authorities to immediately release the reporters.

Union President Charlie Ndi Chia says the government is persecuting journalists.

“Journalists have the right to receive information, any information. They are wrong and it is intimidating,” he said. “The government is just deceiving the world to thinking that there is press freedom in Cameroon.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists has criticized the attacks and also asked charges against the journalists to be dropped for those detained to regain freedom.

CPJ says since 2016 Cameroon has repeatedly jailed journalists for reporting on unrest in the western regions of the country.

Reporters Without Borders 2018 World Press Freedom Index ranks Cameroon 129 out of 180 countries in the world.

Source: VOA

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6, November 2018

Yaounde: Kamto released, but under house arrest ⁰

Prof. Maurice Kamto, the man widely believed to have won last month’s presidential election in Cameroon has been released after briefly arrested for addressing a crowd in front of his house when Mr. Biya was being sworn in at the National Assembly.

Prof. Kamto was taken back to his residence in Santa Barbara by armed police officers where he is expected to be under house arrest, but the legal mind has refused to be quarantined in his house and is asking the police to provide a document that subjects him to a house arrest.

It should be recalled that after his swearing-in on Tuesday, November 6, 2018, Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, ordered the arrest of prominent members of the MRC, the party led by Professor Kamto who actually won last month’s presidential election.

Among those arrested with Prof. Maurice Kamto are Barrister Emmanuel Simh, Prof. Alain Tedom Fogue, Mr. Okala Ebode and Mr. Christian Penda Ekoka who has served as Mr. Biya’s economic adviser before resigning to join the opposition. Some 20 other member of Prof. Kamto’s closest collaborators were also arrested while attending an impromptu meeting with some of their party members.

Addressing his party members at the meeting, Prof. Maurice Kamto, a legal expert, stated clearly that he had been elected by Cameroonians based on merit and not based on his ethnic background, adding that he had been elected to represent all Cameroonians.

He stressed that he had been elected based on his political program that focused on the poor, the humble and the suffering masses who have been working hard to enable the country stay afloat.

He added that today was a very bad day for democracy in Cameroon. He deplored that fact that many Southern Cameroonians were living in the bushes in the North West and South West regions of the country, with thousands seeking a safe sanctuary in Nigeria.

He said the people could count on him as he and the winning coalition that enabled him to win the election would continue to fight on the people’s behalf.

He stressed that Cameroon belonged to all Cameroonians and that no Cameroonian should be judged based on their tribe.

He pointed out that Biya had been sworn-in as the country’s president because of the system is corrupt, adding that for the past 36 years, Mr. Biya and his collaborators had fostered tribalism.

Shortly after addressing the crowd, Prof. Kamto and his collaborators were whisked away to the Elig- Essono Judicial Police where they are being questioned.

Mr. Biya’s iron feast has started striking his opponents even as he promised during the swearing-in ceremony that he would work hard to reunite the country; something he has failed to do in 36 years.

He promised to restore peace in the North West and South West regions, but did not provide details on how he was going to achieve that given that for more than 24 months, the English speaking regions of the country have been under the control of separatists who have made them ungovernable despite the government’s violent military adventure.

He urged the youths in the two regions who have given government troops a run for their money to return to the path of peace by dropping down their weapons.

“I want to call on the youths engaged in hostilities to drop their arms and follow the right path…especially the younger ones who have indulged in a fruitless cause,” he said.

He added that “I am convinced the majority of Cameroonians in the North West and South West regions want peace and I am determined to address the root causes of their frustrations.”

He pointed out that negative forces had taken advantage of the genuine demands of the people to foster a secessionist agenda which he stressed was against the country’s constitution and the notion of living together.

Shortly after the swearing-in ceremony, the Cameroon Concord News Group reporter in Yaounde spoke with a senior member of the ruling CPDM from the North West region who has been pushing for dialogue and reconciliation. From the discussion, it was clear that there were lots of frustrations within the ruling party as the conflict in the English-speaking regions continues to escalate.

The CPDM member who elected anonymity said that Mr. Biya might have been sworn in as the country’s president, but he knows that he did not win the election and should use this opportunity to undertake actions that will enable the country heal.

“He knows he did not win the election. He knows that a lot of fraudulent things have been done to keep him in power. I think he should now start thinking of bringing the country together by calling for inclusive dialogue that will enable the country heal,” he said.

“He should be thinking of the type of Cameroon he would be leaving behind. He has been robbing other people of their victory for more than two decades. In 1992, he robbed Mr. Fru Ndi of his victory and today, he has been sworn in as the president of the country, robbing Professor Maurice Kamto who is very much admired by the people and the international community. He cannot continue to usurp power. He has pushed the country to the brink. He has transformed himself into a monarch and this makes it hard for those around him to tell him the truth,” the CPDM senior member regretted.

“I know Cameroonians are always expecting Mr. Biya to die as they believe his death could herald the beginning of a new era and the end of hostilities in the two English-speaking regions, but I strongly believe that he has been sentenced to life by God. He will not be dying anytime soon and he might live long to see the country change. People like him spend more time regretting in the later part of their lives. I hope he will use this term in office to reverse some of the damage his inefficient management has brought to the country,” he stressed.

“Mr. Biya has had a long time to bring peace and security to the country, but he seems to be happy seeing others bleed to death. I am a member of the ruling party and I can tell you that many in the party want the issues that have weakened our country to be addressed very fast. But the hawks in the regime like Prof. Fame Ndongo are insisting that only an all-out war can resolve the Anglophone crisis. We have already lost more than 1,500 soldiers and some 3,000 civilians in the English-speaking regions of the country. How many more Cameroonians have to die before Mr. Biya realizes that he has failed the people?” he quipped.

Though Mr. Biya has been sown in today, it is clear that not much will change. The next seven years will not witness any fundamental political changes and this will make many people to continue to think that the country is a ticking time bomb.

Cameroon is replete with many problems and many of them are off-shoots of the mismanagement, tribalism and corruption that have become the country’s hallmark. Corruption has robbed the country of the financial resources it needs to undertake major development work.

By Kingsley Betek

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6, November 2018

Paul Biya sworn-in for a seventh term, Preaches imaginary unity ⁰

Cameroon’s long serving Head of State Paul Biya popularly known as the monarch has been sworn-in to serve a seventh term, having rigged the disputed October 7 presidential polls. Biya’s acolytes declared him winner of the presidential election with 71% of votes cast, but the Francophone dominated opposition rejected the results citing electoral fraud.

Maurice Kamto, the man widely believed to have won the election has since called for a resistance movement against the outcome of what he describes as a flawed process. Biya’s swearing-in ceremony, conducted before a joint sitting of the legislature in the capital, Yaounde, has however been overshadowed by news of the kidnapping of 79 students and three officials at a school in the English-speaking Northwest region. Cameroon Intelligence Report understands the kidnappings were done by agents of the Biya Francophone regime operating under the direct supervision of Minister Paul Atanga Nji.

Over the last 20 years, the monarch has become very dictatorial and he has successfully deleted any lines that existed between the executive, judiciary and legislative branches of the government. It should be recalled that Mr. Biya appoints all magistrates and judges in the country and has a huge influence on members of parliament and senators, 30% of whom are directly appointed by him, while 70% are elected in a counterfeit election whose results are usually known many months ahead of time. And this same influence could be seen during the just-ended presidential elections.

Right from the beginning, it was clear that beating the incumbent through the ballot box will be a Herculean task. The electoral code is beautifully written to ensure that the incumbent is maintained in power. Even the election organizing body, ELECAM, is replete with members of the ruling party and this makes it hard for real impartial elections to be held in a country like Cameroon that lacks basic, transparent and fair election rules.

From every indication, ELECAM is just another wing of the ruling CPDM (Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement), a party considered by many Cameroonians are a crime syndicate due to the type of people who are its members. This party’s membership comprises ex-convicts, hardened criminals, murderers, business-people evading taxes and embezzlers. It has been banned in Southern Cameroons by the Ambazonian Interim Government and designated as a terrorist organization.

ELECAM, by its very nature, cannot organize free and fair elections in Cameroon and this explains why there were many irregularities in this year’s presidential polls, a fact recognized by the American government which clearly indicated in its congratulatory message to the contested winner of the rigged poll.

It should be recalled that Cameroon has just held a presidential election whose results were known by almost everybody, as members of the election-organizing body are appointed by Mr. Biya and most of them are members of his ruling party. Similarly, members of the Constitutional Council were also appointed by Mr. Biya in January and all of them had been compromised. All of them are members of the ruling party, and many of their spouses hold positions in government.

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6, November 2018

Oh Lucky Man: Can’t Find President Biya? Try Geneva’s Intercontinental Hotel ⁰

Blinds were drawn at a back office of the Intercontinental Hotel one day last year, as a man known to staff as The General emptied a white cloth bag stuffed with euros. It was time to pay for one of the world’s longest-serving leaders.

For weeks, several former hotel employees recalled, the five-star hotel had been locked in a secret routine serving its best two customers, the first couple of an impoverished oil-exporting Central African country. Paul Biya, president of Cameroon since 1982, and his wife, Chantal, clock so much time on private visits to Switzerland that staff in the Intercontinental’s gilded corridors refer to them by simple code names: Him and Her.

“It’s like they are at home. They live there,” said one of three former senior employees who regularly witnessed the bill-payment ritual.

As with other employees, this person recalled signing a nondisclosure agreement concerning the details of Mr. Biya’s monthlong stays: “If the Cameroonians are not coming, the hotel will close.”

The Intercontinental Hotel said it wouldn’t comment on guests for confidentiality reasons. “Our employees are fully trained not to disclose any information,” a representative said.

The Intercontinental Hotel, Geneva

World leaders dropping top dollar at luxury hotels isn’t by itself unusual. What distinguishes Mr. Biya’s Geneva getaways is the abundant time and hard cash the 85-year-old and his dozens-strong entourage spend here. The president has passed a cumulative four years on personal travels since 1982, the vast majority in Switzerland, according to flight data collected by the website Geneva Dictator Alert, and Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative group specializing in anti corruption and organized crime that has tracked his travels. In some years he spent a third of the year out of his home country.

“He always pays in cash,” said Herbert Schott, a retired Intercontinental manager who first hosted Mr. Biya in 1969. “Next year he will mark 50 consecutive years of patronage. It’s a record.”

Mr. Schott welcomed a quarter-century’s worth of American presidents and once gave Ronald Reagan a mattress to replace the White House bedroom’s harsher one. But he said Mr. Biya was his best client. “He prefers to come to Geneva and sit down and nobody would bother him.”

“Lion Man,” as Mr. Biya’s supporters call him, is currently the world’s longest serving elected leader, if counting from his June 1975 arrival as prime minister, the same week McDonald’s Corp. introduced its drive-through. Since 1982, he has served as president. He is Africa’s highest-paid leader, with a $610,000 official salary annually, according to Africa Review, a periodical.

In Mr. Biya’s fourth decade in power, armed separatists are battling soldiers in Cameroon’s southwest, while Islamist terror group Boko Haram seizes villages and kidnaps children en masse in the northeast. Hundreds of thousands have fled their homes in the past two years. Cameroonian migrants now represent the fourth largest nationality sailing into Greece.

Last month, Mr. Biya won another seven years in office, taking 71% of the vote in an election in which riot police dispersed protesters. In some areas, less than 5% of the population voted. No Western government sent observers.

“We love him, we voted for him and there is nothing new in his habits,” said Cameroon’s Communications Minister Issa Bakary Tchiroma in response to questions about Mr. Biya’s Geneva hotel stays. “We ask everyone, all foreigners, to respect the will of our sovereign people.”

Mr. Biya has rarely given interviews to foreign media in recent years.

In Geneva, the president reserves the entire Intercontinental’s 16th floor, with some 20 rooms and two corner suites overlooking the United Nations’ Europe headquarters and Mont Blanc, said ex-employees, former Cameroon officials, and hotel reservation records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The staff haul armfuls of white flowers for his wife and fresh fruit platters—never cut, per presidential orders—for Mr. Biya, according to former hotel staff.

Mr. Biya’s trips cost millions of dollars apiece, said Christian Penda Ekoka, a longtime chief adviser to the president, turned opposition activist.

Mr. Biya and his wife arrive at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., in 2014

“He gets the money from Cameroon’s treasury” and pays in cash to keep the trips off books, said Mr. Ekoka, who used to be chief adviser to Mr. Biya and had access to trip details. “They want to avoid any trace.”

The Biyas in Switzerland in 2010

A hotel reservation receipt seen by the Journal shows the size of the president’s entourage. In one September 2017 stay, he booked at least 48 rooms. Other Cameroonians stayed in less expensive hotels, former employees said, depending on their standing with the president.

To the U.S. and Europe, Mr. Biya is a valuable if awkward ally against terrorism and migration. The U.S. keeps 200 troops and several predator drones at a base in north Cameroon. American and Israeli special forces train Mr. Biya’s troops.

The European Union has pledged 282 million euros in aid for Cameroon. The hope is the country will grow wealthier, creating jobs to lure Cameroonians back to Cameroon.

The first protests, violently repressed by the Cameroonian armed forces, broke out two years ago. Mr. Biya was at the Intercontinental. He stayed another three weeks after, according to publicly available flight data and Cameroonian state press.

In Geneva, Mr. Biya seldom leaves his corner suite, former hotel staff said. For privacy, the Cameroonian delegation installs its own internet connection and phone switchboard. He enters and exits through the service exit for daily jogs, according to former hotel employees.

Mr. Biya’s suite overlooks tranquil Lake Geneva and a boulevard with placards extolling the virtues of human rights, democracy, rule of law: Geneva is a global capital for humanitarian and pro-democracy institutions.

Then U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan with Mr. Biya in Geneva, 2004

“I find there, each time, an excellent welcome,” wrote Mr. Biya in a 1998 letter to Intercontinental management.

His wife—38 years younger than him—is at times seen in the lobby, robed in fluorescent dresses, standing more than 6 feet tall thanks to a voluminous bouffant hairstyle nicknamed “The Banana.” A Cameroonian journalist recently called her “The Belle of the Banana Republic,” and was sentenced to two years imprisonment for insulting her.

Her aides and hairdressers tip doormen hundreds of euros to run errands. “Cameroon is like a cash machine for the hotel,” said one former employee.

“Everything we can sell them, we do,” said another.

Chantal Biya greets her husband’s supporters in Cameroon in September

Visits begin unannounced, said current and former hotel employees, when an advanced team arrives laden with oversize luggage. Hotel management ejects guests from the 16th floor and moves them to other rooms.

Next comes a kitchen team—the president’s personal chefs from Cameroon—hauling jugs of palm oil and equatorial spices. Housekeepers taking days off are called in.

An enforcer nicknamed The General roams the hallways on the president’s behalf, chastising hotel staff, former hotel employees said.

Last comes an uninvited member of the presidential ensemble, a factory worker from Birmingham, England, who makes YouTube videos of himself shouting at Mr. Biya from outside the hotel.

“Two months again? In Geneva? At the Intercontinental Hotel?” screamed Emmanuel Kemta, a Cameroonian-born dissident in one of his more popular videos. “What are you doing here all this time, Biya?”

Two days before last month’s election, Mr. Biya made his only campaign speech. “What we have to do now is ensure peace reigns,” he said in brief remarks.

Back at the Geneva Intercontinental, staff were watching the elections closely. “They were so afraid he wouldn’t get re-elected,” said one former employee. “They would have a heart attack.”

Culled from The Wall Street Journal

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5, November 2018

Southern Cameroons: Over 80 people reportedly kidnapped in Bamenda ⁰

Cameroon’s military said on Monday more than 80 people, mostly children, were kidnapped from a school in the city of Bamenda, and located in the Anglophone Northwest region.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the abduction in the English-speaking region where separatists are fighting to form a breakaway state.

The separatists have imposed curfews and closed down schools as part of their protest against President Paul Biya’s French-speaking government. In total 81 people were kidnapped including the principal. They were taken to the bush.

“In total 81 people were kidnapped including the principal. They were taken to the bush,” a military source told Reuters. A government spokesman said it was keeping track of an event but that it could not comment further.

The separatist movement gathered pace in 2017 after a government crackdown on peaceful demonstrations. Many people have fled Bamenda and other centres to seek refuge in more peaceful Francophone regions.

Source: Africa News

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5, November 2018

The Attack on the Cameroon Development Corporation ⁰

Armed groups in Cameroon’s restive English speaking regions have been attacking and chopping off fingers of workers of the country’s second largest employer, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), in what has been described as renewed efforts to destabilize the central African state ahead of the Tuesday inauguration of President-elect Paul Biya, who has been in power for 36 years.

Four men and two women were rushed to a government hospital Saturday in the English speaking southwestern town of Tiko. Nurse on duty Stephanie Ako said she is waiting for directives on what should be done.

‘What we have to do now is to clean their wounds and stop blood from oozing out while waiting for doctors and laboratory technicians. They are the ones to decide if the fingers have to be amputated or not, but their lives are not in danger even though some of them have completely fractured phalanges, metacarpal and carpal bones,” she said.

The six are workers on a rubber plantation near Tiko owned by the Cameroon Development Corporation. 27-year old Christopher Ongene said armed men attacked them Saturday evening.

“The people arrived when we were packing our bags and farm tools to leave. One of them shouted, how many times have we asked you not to work here again. Then one of them ordered us to put our hands on tree trunks and they started cutting. Some of our colleagues who wanted to escape were shot,” he said.

Ongene said they were accused of defying instructions from the separatists not to go to work on the farms to protest President Biya’s reelection and his expected inauguration on November 6.

The CDC runs banana, palm oil, and rubber plantations in Cameroon’s troubled southwest and northwest regions. In August the agro-industry said that more than 6,000 of its 20,000 workers had fled sporadic attacks, killings and kidnappings from armed separatists seeking an independent English-speaking state.

Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai of the southwest region said the armed groups aim to create social tension.

He said the military has been deployed to stop the terrorists from attacking workers as part of their strategy to create tension and destroy the regions two main agro-industries, the Cameroon Development Corporation and the Palm Oil Plantations Company. He said besides inflicting wounds and suffering, some workers have been killed, others kidnapped and held hostage and some plantations have been completely destroyed.

Separatist groups had vowed on social media to make the English speaking regions of Cameroon ungovernable. They consider the state-run CDC a legitimate target.

Conflict began in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon in 2016 when teachers and lawyers complained of discrimination from the French-speaking majority in education and the justice system. The government responded with a crackdown and separatists fought back.

Source: VOA

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5, November 2018

US: 30 million vote early in midterm elections ⁰

More than 30 million Americans have cast early ballots ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, eclipsing the 2014 early totals nationally and suggesting a high overall turnout for contests that could define the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term.

At least 28 states have surpassed their 2014 early votes. And perhaps even more indicative of the unusual enthusiasm this midterm cycle, some states are approaching their early turnout from the 2016 presidential election.

Here’s a look at some highlights:

Massive turnout

The 30.6 million ballots includes data from 48 states, with several of those still collecting absentee ballots and welcoming in-person early voters. The total early vote in 2014 was 28.3 million in an election where more than 83 million Americans voted. That was a low turnout (about 36 percent) even by usual standards of a midterm, when there’s an expected drop off from presidential elections.

Forecasters aren’t predicting that overall turnout this year will hit 2016 levels (137.5 million; more than 60 percent of the electorate), but Democratic and Republican analysts, along with independent political scientists, say turnout could approach 50 percent, levels not seen for a midterm since the turbulent 1960s.

Booms in states not used to exciting midterms

It’s one thing to see Virginia more than doubling its 2014 early turnout. Voters there showed their intensity last year in their governor’s race, with record absentee ballot requests and returns and a solid turnout for both parties.

But then there’s Tennessee. The state has settled firmly into Republican-dominated territory. In 2014, there wasn’t a single statewide race that received national attention or a truly competitive House election.

But with an open Senate seat thanks to the retirement of Republican Bob Corker, voters are more than eager this year. Through Thursday, early turnout was 217 percent of what it was in 2014. It’s even approaching early turnout from 2016, at 80 percent of that presidential-year mark.

Several other states with competitive Senate or governor’s races — Texas, Nevada, Georgia, among others — are nearing double the 2014 early totals.

Democrats edging Republicans nationally

In states that require party registration, Democrats have cast 41 percent of the early ballots, compared to 36 percent for Republicans. Party strategists on both sides say they are far exceeding their usual numbers in key locales — urban strongholds for Democrats and more rural counties for Republicans.

A word of caution from prognosticators: The party analysis isn’t always an indicator of final outcomes. There are crossover voters, even in this hyperpartisan era. And there are independents and third-party voters, as well. For the record, those latter groups account for about 23 percent of the ballots in party registration states.

For the scorekeepers, though, Virginia, among the states that doesn’t have party registration, is replicating its 2017 voting boom — and Democrats swept the top offices last year even amid strong GOP turnout.

Young voters in Florida

Trends in Florida’s early voting suggest a surge in young voters, a group that historically has low turnout in midterm cycles.

Of the 124,000 Floridians aged 18 to 29 who had voted in person at early polling stations as of Thursday, nearly a third did not vote in the presidential election in 2016, according to analysis by University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith. About half of those new voters were newly registered.

“There are newly energized voters who sat out in 2016, or have registered since then, who are turning out. There’s no question about that,” Smith said.

In contrast, for people 65 and older who had voted early and in person, about 7 percent didn’t vote in 2016.

New voters in Georgia

It cannot be said enough: It’s the voters who don’t often participate in midterms who can make the big difference. There’s plenty of evidence that both major parties’ bases are enthusiastic, but a frequent Election Day voter being so excited that they vote early doesn’t change the math.

So candidates like Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp in the Georgia governor’s race are keeping their eye on how many non-2014 voters have cast ballots.

An analysis by Georgia-based data analyst Ryan Anderson finds that 36 percent of the 1.8 million early votes in Georgia are new voters. If that held through Election Day, it would be a huge number. Abrams’ campaign believes it would benefit them, though Republicans nationally note that President Donald Trump brought many new voters to the polls in 2016 — and those voters are still “new” midterm voters.

That said, at least in Georgia, the racial and gender breakdown of the new voters bodes well for Abrams, who is trying to spike turnout among nonwhites, women and millennials.

Anderson’s analysis finds that barely more than half of the new voters are white in a state where the GOP wants the white share of the electorate to be push toward the mid-60s. Among the other findings: new female voters outnumber men by more than 70,000.

The bright spot for Kemp: More than half of early votes come from voters over 65 (though that total includes all races), and there is intense turnout in many of the state’s most conservative areas beyond metro Atlanta.

(Source: AP)

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4, November 2018

UK:Prime Minister May denies Brexit deal reached with all-British customs mechanism ⁰

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s office has dismissed as “speculation” a newspaper report that suggests an all-UK customs deal will be written into the legally binding agreement governing Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

A spokesman at May’s office said Sunday that a report in the Sunday Times suggesting that the EU had agreed to include the entire United Kingdom in its customs union after Brexit was not entirely true.

“This is all speculation. The prime minister has been clear that we are making good progress on the future relationship and 95 percent of the withdrawal agreement is now settled and negotiations are ongoing,” said the spokesman.

The EU and Britain are at odds over how to treat the border between Ireland, an EU state, and Northern Ireland, a UK province, after Brexit so that there will be no return to a hard border on the island.

May has resisted EU’s plan for including Northern Ireland in its customs union for a two-year transition period and beyond that until a permanent solution is found for trade.

The premier says that will separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, insisting the EU could instead include the entire UK in the customs union as an interim solution.

British housing minister James Brokenshire said on Sunday that differences still remained on the Irish border, saying British and EU negotiators had yet to finalize a “backstop” arrangement.

“That very much remains our focus and attention in getting that deal,” Brokenshire told the BBC.

May relies on Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in her minority government. The DUP has threatened that it would stand against any Brexit deal that would include Northern Ireland in EU’s customs union.

Presstv

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