Two people have been killed in an attack on Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto’s residence, police say, days before the African country’s next presidential election on August 8.

A gunman and a police officer were killed on Saturday night after police engaged in a shootout with the attacker outside Ruto’s house in the western town of Eldoret, a senior administrator said Sunday. The attack left another guard injured.

Police said Ruto, who is the running mate of President Uhuru Kenyatta in the upcoming vote, and his family were not home during the gunfire.

“From the exchange of fire we thought it was more than one attacker, because he used different firearms, but after we subdued him, we found only one man dead, plus our officer who he had killed,” Rift Valley regional coordinator Wanyama Musiambo, told reporters.

Further investigation showed that the attacker was unarmed first but was able to use a range of weapons by breaking into the police armory after making his way into the compound.

“After the operation we discovered that it was one gunman, but because he was inside there, he could change position and firearms because he had access to the guns. And the guns he was using were ours,” Musiambo said.

Police were still looking for more clues to see whether the attacker was alone or had help, the official noted. Ruto addressed the attack in a tweet, offering condolences to the family of the fallen guard. Police had initially said that the attacker was wielding a machete and holed himself up in an outbuilding after injuring one police officer. Kenyatta’s office said in a statement that Ruto had spent the day campaigning with the president.

Decades-long power struggle

The August 8 election will see Kenyatta and the ruling Jubilee Party defend their throne against Raila Odinga, who was Prime Minister of Kenya from 2008 to 2013. Odinga has been endorsed by the National Super Alliance (NASA), a group of five opposition parties.

The Odinga and Kenyatta families have been involved in a power struggle since 1966, three years after the country’s independence from the UK.

Source: Presstv

Senegalese voters cast ballots Sunday to elect a new parliament, a test run for President Macky Sall ahead of a 2019 presidential election and after a campaign marred by violence and tensions. Most of the 14,000 polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0800 GMT) but there were delays in several places after some sites were hit by a violent overnight storm, local media reported.

Polling ends at 6:00 pm and the first results are expected early Monday. More than 6.2 million people in the west African nation are registered to vote. Sall is seeking to bolster his parliamentary majority as he eyes a second term, while his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade, 91, attempts to drum up support for his own list of candidates and for his son, Karim, who is waiting in the wings with eyes on the top job.

“We aren’t talking any longer about July 30, but of 2019,” Prime Minister Mahammed Boun Abdallah Dionne, who is running for a seat with Sall’s coalition, declared at a rally.

In a sign of growing tensions, Interior Minister Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo banned inter-regional travel on Sunday until midnight. Sall’s other main opponent, Dakar Mayor Khalifa Sall (no relation), is in jail awaiting trial for what supporters say are politically motivated embezzlement charges.

The mayor had been seen as a key contender for 2019 and a potential threat to the president in parliament until he was charged in March with allegedly misappropriating 1.83 billion CFA francs ($2.85 million, 2.7 million euros) in city funds.

There are a record 47 lists of candidates contesting the election, with 165 lawmakers due to take seats in parliament. Fifteen seats are being set aside for Senegalese expatriates – the first time that the country’s diaspora, estimated at half a million, will have direct representation.

‘Violent clashes’

Police have fired tear gas and arrested dozens during at times violent campaigning that left several injured in a country normally known for its peaceful democratic traditions.

Wade attempted to campaign in a downtown square he had decreed a restricted zone while still president in 2011, an area just meters from the presidential palace. He was pushed back by security forces, leading to several arrests.

Campaigning was marred by tragedy on July 15 when eight people were killed as rival supporters clashed during Senegal’s League Cup final, and a stampede caused a wall to fall on escaping fans.

Controversy also erupted over the failure to deliver enough new biometric ID cards needed to vote, which hundreds of thousands of Senegalese have not received in time. The president asked Senegal’s constitutional council to relax the voting rules so people without the cards could use passports or other forms of identification to cast their ballots, along with proof they had applied for the IDs.

Several political parties and opposition coalitions angrily denounced the last-minute move, saying it increased the possibility of fraud. Tit-for-tat arguments between President Sall and former president Wade’s camps have also erupted over the length of motorways and number of bridges built under their respective tenures.

Wade has accused Sall of “destroying” Senegal, while the president’s side say Wade did not do enough to develop the nation while in power, boasting of their achievements in building a new airport and other infrastructure projects.

(Source: AFP)

President Biya has failed again to represent Cameroon at the 29th African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The 84 year old dictator decided to send as his personal representative, Philemon Yang, the so-called Prime Minister and Head of the Cameroonian government.

The AU summit that started since on Tuesday, the 27th of June, 2017 will come to a close on the 4th of July. Heads of state and government are expected to arrive tomorrow Monday the 3rd of July 2017 at the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa for the conclusive phase of the 29th AU summit.

The draft resolutions taken during the committee’s work since last Tuesday, June 27, will be subject to appreciation and adoption by the Heads of State and Government during the Conference and as usual, President Biya will not be attending.

The search for ways and means to combat the economic and security crisis that is going through some member countries and the reform of the AU are the main subjects on the agenda of the Conference of Heads of State and Government. It is also the first outing of the Chadian, Moussa Faki Mahamat, elected six months ago as head of the AU Commission to replace the South African Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

By Rita Akana
Cameroon Intelligence Report

The Cameroonian dictator, Paul BIYA has held talks with a special envoy of President Roch Marc Christian KABORE. Biya met with Cameroonian-born Thierry Hot, Special Adviser to the Burkinabe President on Thursday 29 June 2017 at the Unity Palace.

Thierry Hot was bearer of a fraternal message linked to ongoing measures to bolster bilateral ties between Yaounde and Ouagadougou.

President Paul BIYA and his Burkinabe counterpart initially met on Friday 23 September 2016. The meeting was on the side-lines of the 71st United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Thus, Thierry Hot’s stay at the Unity Palace is a continuation of consultations based on the engagements taken by both leaders to enhance cooperation.

Source: PRC

1. Only united among our own rows we can defeat our common enemy, which is our annexor, occupant and neo-colonialist exploiter, the puppet regime of illegitimate dictator Paul Biya backed up by puppet-holder France and its XAF = CFA currency system captured inside BEAC and the French National Bank in Paris.

2. With an enemy, which exploited, marginalized and mal-treated us for decades, there is no begging, petitioning, negotiating or federalizing. Only a clear cut with these puppets and crooks in power in Yaounde, Paris & Geneva can solve problems. Only full independence from our rapist La “Republique” du Cameroun can save our health. We say the final good-bye to LRC and Françafrique! There is no way back! Foreward ever backward never!

3. To claim a) the unconditional release of all political prisoners, b) the restoration of our statehood, and c) the withdrawal of all occupants from our Ambazonian territory is non-negotiable. Every Ambazonian must claim full independence now and all collaborators with LRC must face serious consequences. CPDM is a terrorist organization and all governmental offices, facilities or money sources of our occupant on our territory will e made inaccessible for him. And we don’t only claim, we take back.

4. Independence means independence. All Ambazonians are independent from all other powers in the world, especially neo-colonial powers. We are not dependent on any mercy of any country or organization to “give” us independence. We are not dependent on any UN document proving us anything. We are an independent people of Ambazonians and act independently and take everything we need for exercising our already God-given independence. We name ourselves and our state independently as we want, by referendum of our people or by decree. Our people are not Cameroonians. We are Ambazonians. Our own leaders and peoples decide what is good for us, not foreign ones.

5. The world media still does not know or does not want to know the truth about Ambazonia (former “Southern Cameroons”). We stopped calling us “Cameroonians” because the world does not understand the difference between southern Cameroonians and Cameroonians. We are not southern or western or whatever Cameroonians or just “Anglophones in their territory” as they say. All Ambazonians will tell the truth about Ambazonian = SC’s history and identity to any journalist, politician and organization in the world methodically, periodically, persistently, until the present narrative that the “Anglophones in the west of Cameroon” would be a “problem” has disappeared. We are not a problem, we are the solution!

6. The core of the problem with Cameroon is that its dictatorial government has sold itself to foreign neo-colonizers who steal the profits from the resources of Ambazonia into foreign accounts and do not reinvest these profits into Ambazonia. The whole thing is not a Francophone/Anglophone problem. It is a problem of robbing and stealing done by the French etc. and their puppet regimes in Africa. And all Ambazonians will tell this truth to the world consistently now until the world gets it. Additionally there will be massive demonstrations in Paris and Brussels in the middle of July 2017 which will ignite the “Second French Revolution” which means the end of France”s neocolonialism in Africa. On top of that there will be a Million Men&Women March on the government building in Buea on October 1st 2017, where we will hoist the Ambazonian flag. Our unarmed, peaceful marchers will be safeguarded by our hidden Ambazonian guerilla and all soldiers of the enemy will know that if they fire one single shot on innocent, marching people, full international media coverage will prove to the world that Biya is the terrorist not us.

7. Self-defense from violent occupation and human rights violations is fully legal according to international law. But the defeat and chase out of occupants can only be started, after SCACUF has achieved to successfully teach the international media that the Ambazonian freedom fighters are not what Yaounde’s CRTV says but the Biya regime and its occupying troops are violators of international law and terrorists. Ambazonia will not tell the occupant when its defense and guerilla forces will chase him out. They are ready. The occupant better leaves now or it will become a very bloody experience for him.

8. Sufficient finance, equipment and training of the own army, which will hold all own territory against all potential enemies forever, comes from supportive powers which oppose Camerounese-French mismanagement and which know very well that Ambazonia needs to give only a small percentage of its resources to finance sufficient self-defense. Parallel, the new, democratically elected government of Ambazonia will swear an oath to the new Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ambazonia (=SC), which has strictest anti-corruption-laws of the world and sets much higher standards of law than any French type constitution.

9. Ambazonian citizens started to register as citizen of Ambazonia online and will contribute each at least 10% of their wealth to the further liberation and modernization of Ambazonia. Better 90% left than 100% dead under the rule of the illegal French occupant. Those who refuse to give taxes to Ambazonia will feel disadvantages or dispossessions later. Big donors on the other hand will be have reduced taxes.

10. After Ambazonia has fully liberated itself and regained full control over all its territory and resources, it will also start to help the Camerounese as well to get rid of the incompetent, senile Biya regime and Françafrique’s system of corruption, exploitation and neocolonialism. After both sovereign countries Ambazonia and Cameroun have got a completely new constitution and a totally different, democratic government, both may form a Confederation, if both peoples would agree in two separate referenda.
LONG LIVE AMBAZONIA!
By Christoph Messner

More than 500 people have been killed during heavy fighting between government forces and tribal militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over the past two months, the army says. “DRC’s armed forces have been waging operations to back up the police since end March in Kasai,” the army’s Brigadier General Leon-Richard Kasonga told a news conference on Monday.

According to Kasonga, there were 390 tribal militia fighters and 124 government forces among those killed in the violence gripping the country’s central Kasai region “Our troops respect international humanitarian law and human rights… we have acted professionally,” said Kasonga, without providing a civilian death toll. The unrest was triggered by the killing of tribal chief Jean Pierre Mpandi, also known as Kamwina Nsapu, by army troops last August. The tribal leader had launched an uprising against President Joseph Kabila.

The Kamuina Nsapu uprising has become the most serious threat to the administration of Kabila, whose refusal to step down following a defeat in the latest polls sparked chaos in the vast central African country. Kabila’s presidential term expired on December 19, 2016, but ruling officials have effectively prolonged his mandate until 2018, claiming that the government would not be able to arrange elections before then.

Source; Presstv

Former Nigerian Head of State, Goodluck Jonathan has met with the Gabonese leader, Ali Bongo. Accompanied by two of his advisers; Ali Illiasso Dicko and His Majesty A.L. Turner, the former president of Nigeria exchanged views on the multi-sectoral cooperation between Gabon and Nigeria and on current African affairs.

The Tuesday meeting that held at the Seaside Palace in Libreville came on the eve of the announcement of the composition of the four joint committees and the rapporteurs for the first plenary of the political phase of dialogue in Gabon.

For almost a month now, President Ali Bongo has engaged in reconciliation with opposition groups in his country.  Committees composed of equal members of the opposition and the government – will work on specific issues related to the themes chosen for the Dialogue.

In all, 176 representatives of the opposition and the presidential majority were divided into four commissions: “reform of institutions and consolidation of the rule of law”, “electoral reform”, “modernization of public life” and consolidation Peace and national cohesion “.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Joseph Yakété, Central African Republic Minister for Defense is on a working visit to La Republique du Cameroun beginning today Sunday 16 to Wednesday 19 April 2017. Cameroon Concord News was reliably informed that he is bearer of a special message from President Faustin Archange Touadéra to his Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya.

The Central African official will have a working session with Joseph Béti Assomo, Cameroon’s Minister Delegate at the Presidency of the Republic in charge of Defense. The visiting CAR Minister will discuss Cameroon’s participation in the UN peacekeeping mission (MINUSCA), the UN Stabilization Mission of the Central African Republic.

By Sonne Peter

Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila on Wednesday pledged to appoint a new prime minister in the next two days, in line with a stalled December peace deal struck with the opposition. “The prime minister will absolutely have to be named within 48 hours,” Kabila said in a much-awaited speech to MPs and senators on the state of a December 31 power-sharing agreement, yet to be implemented. The deal brokered by the influential Catholic Church aimed to avoid a full-blown crisis in the vast restive nation following Kabila’s failure to step down at the end of his second and final mandate mid-December. It enabled Kabila to remain in office pending elections in late 2017 in tandem with a transitional body and a new premier, to be chosen within opposition ranks.

But putting the deal in place hit a major hurdle in early February with the death of veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who had gathered together the opposition in a coalition. In his speech in the capital, Kinshasa, Kabila urged the opposition group “to overcome its internal squabbles” and to hand him a list of candidates for the post of prime minister. Kabila has run one of the world’s least developed countries since the 2001 assassination of his father Laurent. Violence has flared across the country of 71 million people in recent months however, amid fears of a continued delay in this year’s promised elections.

Presstv

The Forum of the Francophone Cameroun Diaspora to be held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, from the 25^th  to 27^th of May 2017 initiated by French speaking Cameroonians living outside the national borders, will address the issue of Biya’s continued stay in power and political succession in Cameroon.

Francophone Cameroonians abroad have chosen to reflect on strategies that will lead to a lasting solution to the current socio-political situation in Cameroon. Cameroon Concord News gathered that the main objective of the Burkina Faso forum will be to identify grievances in relation to the socio-political situation in Cameroon and to plan viable therapeutics for a new Cameroon.

The participants in this forum are mainly academics, artists, journalists, businessmen, political leaders, members of the civil society, men of culture and a group calling itself “Friends of Cameroon”. The organizers of the Diaspora forum hope that this year’s meeting will provide recommendations and resolutions that will bring political change in Cameroon. Cameroonians from inside and outside are unanimous: It is time to think of a patriotic start for real change in Cameroon.

By Fru James