Separatist militias have stepped up attacks and abductions in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions ahead of parliamentary and council elections likely to hand a sweeping victory to the party that has ruled the central African nation since 1985.

Anglophone armed groups last month called for a lock-down of the Southwest and Northwest regions and militants have targeted electoral staff and abducted at least 40 candidates running for parliamentary and municipal posts in polls on Sunday. Opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who was jailed for eight months last year, has withdrawn his party from the vote, saying it won’t be credible.

As many as 3,000 civilians are estimated to have died and hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee their homes since the Anglophone revolt erupted late 2016 following a heavy-handed government crackdown on protests against the dominance of the French language in schools and courts. Cameroon is divided in 10 semi-autonomous regions and the English-speaking minority accounts for about a fifth of the population.

The ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement already holds 148 out of 180 seats in the National Assembly and is running unchallenged in about 20% of all races, according to the International Crisis Group. Sunday’s vote will almost certainly strengthen the grip of President Paul Biya over state institutions, ICG Central Africa Director Richard Moncrieff said by phone from Nairobi.

Special Status

Africa’s second-longest serving head of state, Biya, who turns 87 next week, has been accused of allowing the crisis to spiral out of control by ignoring it in its early stages. Last year, he initiated a national dialogue that led to a bill granting the Anglophone regions special status, which means their assemblies are to be consulted by the central government over educational policy as well as the application of common law.

Yet most separatist leaders were either in prison or abroad when the dialogue started in September, fueling widespread skepticism about its purpose.

“For the special status given to the Anglophones to come into force, elections must take place,” said Fuh Calistus Gentry, a ruling-party member.

The decision to grant greater autonomy to the Anglophone regions won’t have much of an impact if the population is too scared to vote, said Kah Walla, head of the opposition Cameroon People’s Party.

“Those to be elected in parliament and in the councils will have very little powers in the Northwest and Southwest regions because they will have very little legitimacy,” Kalla said.

Oil-dependent Cameroon is a key hub in central Africa, with roads and ports that are vital for landlocked neighbors including Chad and Central African Republic. The revolt has also slashed output of palm oil and other agricultural export crops, which are mainly grown in the Southwest and Northwest.

The government has postponed the vote twice since September 2018, citing logistical and security concerns. Voter turnout during 2018 presidential elections was as low as 5% in the Northwest region, compared to 53% in the rest of the country. To provide better security, the government this month deployed additional troops in the restive regions and grouped voting centers together.

Biya’s decision to push ahead with the elections appears to be motivated by a desire to “present some form of normality” as the U.S. and the African Union have increased pressure on his government to solve the crisis, Moncrieff said.

“Instead, the vote risks reinforcing the separatists’ argument that they’re being marginalized,” he said.

The U.S. cut $17 million in military aid to Cameroon last year and said in December it planned to terminate the government’s eligibility for trade preference benefits due to reports of “persistent human-rights violations” by security forces. About 300 U.S. troops are stationed in the country to monitor Islamist militant insurgencies in the region.

Source: Bloomberg

Long-delayed elections are due to take place in Cameroon on Sunday, but in the country’s violence-torn English-speaking areas, the fear is almost palpable.

“Everyone is holed up at home,” a civil servant said in Buea, capital of the Southwest Region, one of two provinces gripped by bloody separatist violence.

Ahead of polling, the streets were empty except for heavily-armed military patrols; shops and homes were shuttered; and many people were tight-lipped — “there’s fear of reprisals,” taxi driver Derrick Mbua said.

The elections, to renew Cameroon’s legislature and local councils, should have been held in 2017 but were twice postponed.

Their credibility has already been dented by a boycott by the country’s biggest opposition party.

Its leader Maurice Kamto spent nine months in jail after contested presidential elections in 2018 won by Paul Biya, who has ruled Cameroon for 37 of his 86 years.

But Sunday’s vote also faces a mighty security challenge in the Northwest and Southwest Regions.

They are home to Cameroon’s anglophones, who account for around four million of the 23 million population in this mainly French-speaking country — their presence is a legacy of decolonisation in the late 1950s.

Violence

Decades of anger at perceived discrimination, and refusal by the central government to meet demands for autonomy, triggered a separatist movement which declared independence in 2017.

Bitter fighting has claimed more than 3,000 lives and nearly 700,000 people have fled their homes, according to NGO estimates.

Tensions have escalated in the runup to the vote, which the separatists have vowed to block. In the 2018 presidential elections, the turnout in these two regions was just five percent.

According to a Buea-based NGO, in the past three weeks, an election commission worker has been kidnapped, an election commission building burned down and a candidate’s home torched.

In the Northwest Region, separatists machine-gunned a convoy of election campaign vehicles operated by the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC), injuring five people.

Hundreds of troops have been sent to reinforce the troubled regions.

Police and army roadblocks dot the main highway in Buea, and commandos in balaclavas patrol aboard trucks armed with machine guns or in armoured vehicles.

Amnesty International on Thursday said 14 people were killed in an army attack on the village of Ndoh, in the Southwest Region, on January 23, a day after reports of a killing of a soldier in the area.

More than 50 homes in the region were set ablaze, it said.

“The security measures and increased military presence announced by the Cameroonian government to ensure this weekend’s vote can take place, appear to have been a pretext for a much more sinister operation,” the watchdog’s specialist for the Lake Chad region, Fabien Offner, said.

“(…) Brutal military operations have been conducted while crimes committed by armed separatists continue unabated. Civilians are finding themselves trapped in a spiral of violence.”

Voter fatigue

The ruling CPDM is the only party that is campaigning visibly in the two regions, but its presence is low-key.

Cameroon’s other large opposition party is the Social Democratic Front (SDF), which traditionally draws its support from the anglophone areas.

Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute addressed a rally of several hundred supporters in Buea on Thursday, which took place behind a thicket of armed troops.

He said the government had acknowledged anglophone grievances by giving the two regions a special status, the outcome of a “national dialogue” last year.

The forum was boycotted by the separatists and they dismissed its decisions.

“We are going to have to wait for the changes to have an impact on daily life for people to step back from the separatists,” said James Fotabong, a Buea businessman.

Many residents said they would not bother to cast their ballot and were dismissive of voting for representatives who were unable to restore peace.

“I won’t go out to vote,” said Francis Mukwele, the manager of a dry-cleaning store. “And I can’t imagine that people will go out to vote here in Buea — I don’t even know where I’ve put my voter’s card.”

Security has been stepped up in the troubled anglophone regions ahead of Sunday’s twice-postponed vote.

Culled from Pulselive

Voters in Cameroon will cast their ballots Sunday in a country where the mood has been darkened by separatist violence and calls for an election boycott.

Elections to renew the central African country’s legislature and local councils are taking place for the first time in seven years, after two postponements.

Despite the delays, the campaigning has been low key.

In the capital Yaounde, the few banners put up by the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC in its French initials) are barely more numerous than posters calling on people to pick up their litter.

The RDPC supports President Paul Biya, one of the world’s oldest and longest-serving leaders, who has ruled with a steely fist for 37 of his 86 years.

The main opposition party, the Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) is refusing to field a single candidate.

Its leader, Maurice Kamto, spent nine months in jail after his defeat in 2018 presidential elections and is now abroad.

“We could have had a few seats in parliament and some town councillors, but how would that enable us to influence events in Cameroon?” Kamto said in an interview with AFP in Paris last month.

“I would have voted for the MRC but on Sunday I’m going to stay at home,” a young Yaounde voter, who gave his name as Xavier, told AFP.

The boycott will all but guarantee a crushing victory for the RDPC, which in the outgoing legislature had 148 out of 180 seats.

“Where’s the opposition?” was the whimsical question aired by a local RDPC chief, Augustin Tsafack, on the sidelines of a party rally in Yaounde.

The other large opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), which currently has 18 seats, will take part in Sunday’s vote, going back on a threat to snub it.

– Violence –

In parallel with the leaden political mood, Cameroon is struggling with two conflicts.

In two English-speaking regions in the west, the armed forces are battling separatists who want to secede from the majority French-speaking country.

The 28-month conflict has claimed more than 3,000 lives and caused more than 700,000 people to flee, according to tolls compiled by NGOs.

“How can the state guarantee security for elections in the anglophone regions, given that some towns are now inaccessible by road?” an independent observer from one of these regions asked at a meeting of the electoral commission in Yaounde on Wednesday.

The SDF traditionally draws much of its support from the anglophone regions but now fears that it has been outflanked by the radicals — and says its candidates there have come under attack.

Similar worries are being voiced for the safety of polling stations in Cameroon’s Far North region, which has been battered by Boko Haram jihadists crossing from Nigeria.

– City power –

Municipal elections will also take place on polling day, something that has excited most media interest given the seemingly inevitable outcome of legislative vote.

Some cities, including Douala, the country’s economic hub, could swing to the opposition, according to some forecasts.

City chiefs are to gain powers under measures taken in December to decentralise some of the authorities out of Yaounde.

The reforms have been triggered by the anglophone crisis although they fall far short of meeting the separatists’ demands.

“The stakes (on Sunday) are local,” said Stephane Akoa, a researcher at the Paul Ango Ela think tank in Yaounde.

“Things are going to change,” he said. “Mayors who aren’t ready will pay the price.”

Source: AFP

Cameroon’s Prime Minister, Dion Ngute, arrived in Buea on Thursday, February 6, 2020, where he campaigned for his party, the Cameroon Peoples Dictatorship Movement (CPDM) that has been in power for 37 years with nothing to show for.

The low-energy Prime Minister came to the Southwest regional headquarters in an attempt to demonstrate that there is security in the region.

Before reaching Bongo Square where the long and empty campaign speeches were read, there was gunfire in Muea, some 2 km from where he read his long boring speech. The gunfire was a reminded that the residents of that land were still unhappy with the government he is serving.

As a native of the Southwest region, Dion Ngute is expected to drum up support for his disintegrating party in his region.

But there is nothing that can really make the people of this rich land to admire a government that has killed many of its citizens. Selling the CPDM in the Southwest is like trying to sell a pig to Americans, claiming that it is a beautiful girl.

The people of the Southwest have resoundingly rejected a party they consider as a crime syndicate presided over by a conman they consider to be worse  than Al Capone, the once upon a time Mafia boss.

Before visiting the region, some 700 prisoners from the Yaounde Maximum Prison had been shipped to the region to welcome him and to hoodwink the population into believing that Mr. Ngute and his party are popular.

The 700 criminals will be voting in the upcoming twin elections whose results are already known. However, despite PM Ngute’s presence in Buea, it has been reported that the region is in total lockdown.

In Kumba, not even flies could visit some of the corpses that litter the streets after the military went on a killing spree a few days ago.

The same is reported of Ekona, Mamfe, Tiko, and Muyuka where soldiers rounded up all young men on Monday. The young men are being asked to pay CFAF 50,000 if they want to be free.

For those who do not have the money, they are being threatened with death, and many of them have already been taken to Buea and other towns in the region with larger prison facilities.

This year’s election will be taking place in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, as the government seeks to prove that there is peace across the country.

But there is no peace in the two English-speaking regions of the country. Many soldiers were killed on Wednesday in Manyu Division as Southern Cameroonian fighters threw a grenade into their truck.

Many were wounded and they have been rushed to hospitals in East Cameroon.

Cameroon Concord News Group correspondents on the ground are gathering more information on the slaughtering of army soldiers who had been sent to the region to intimidate the population into submission.

More will be yours as the information becomes available.

By Rita Akana in Buea

On 9 February over six million Cameroonians will be called to vote in twin legislative and municipal elections. Initially planned for 2018, the polls were postponed twice for organisational and financial reasons. Voting later this week will still take place under tenuous security and political conditions.

Since 2013, Boko Haram has recurrently attacked in the Far North Region of Cameroon bordering Nigeria and Chad (see map). While the country’s defence and security forces have repelled most attacks, Boko Haram maintains sleeper cells in remote enclaves from where it stages deadly sporadic incursions.

Further south-west, armed groups threaten to prevent the vote from taking place. Since 2017 government forces have been fighting a multitude of separatist factions claiming the independence of anglophone regions from a majority francophone Cameroon.

The fighting has forced about 40 000 people to seek refuge in Nigeria and over 450 000 have been internally displaced. This situation accounts for the 2018 presidential election turnout of just 5.36% and 15.94% of voters in the North-West and South-West Regions respectively (see map).

Political tensions added to the security impasse after the 2018 election, which saw President Paul Biya win another seven-year term. Despite losing his appeal at the Constitutional Court, opposition figure Maurice Kamto – the closest contender who officially secured 14% of the vote – claimed he had won.

In January 2019 Kamto was arrested for sedition, insurrection and incitement to violence. This came after a rally organised by his party, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC), and which had been banned by administrative authorities, ended in violence.

Under pressure internally and externally, Cameroon’s president organised a national dialogue in October 2019 aimed at finding solutions to the anglophone crisis. Among other measures, the dialogue recommended greater autonomy for the anglophone regions.

Two months later a law was passed in Parliament enacting the special status of the North-West and South-West provinces and extending the scope of decentralisation. To further de-escalate political tensions, Kamto was released in October 2019 after eight months of detention. Some have called for the further postponement of the elections until the anglophone crisis is resolved and a more consensual electoral law is passed.

Cameroon’s leading opposition political parties remain ambivalent regarding their participation in the polls. They legitimately criticise the electoral law and the government’s control over the elections’ governing bodies. However, they know that boycotting the polls can affect them negatively.

Biya still uses the machinery of the state to guarantee a single-party type of political domination

In March 1992, at the peak of its popularity, the strongest opposition party at the time – the Social Democratic Front (SDF) – boycotted the legislative elections. It was protesting against the management role in the polls of the Ministry of Territorial Administration. The SDF’s boycott probably prevented the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) from a humiliating electoral defeat, and enabled the emergence of the National Union for Democracy and Progress as the main opposition bloc in Parliament.

The SDF then performed admirably in the October 1992 presidential election. But the party had a relatively weakened institutional position, as the election management rules hadn’t changed much and it had no representatives in Parliament for political leverage. The SDF never really recovered politically from that legislative boycott, and has since always participated in elections.

This partly explains why other political parties haven’t followed the MRC’s decision to boycott this week’s elections. Currently the MRC has only one representative in Parliament, and so will neither be present in the next legislature nor in any of the city councils. This could be a missed opportunity for a party that – though riding on the popularity of its candidate at the last presidential election – has much to lose if it doesn’t secure representation across the country.

Since the re-introduction of multiparty politics in 1992, only seven opposition parties out of over 253 registered political parties have been represented in the 180-seat National Assembly. Biya’s CPDM has won absolute majority since 1997 (see table below) and continues to use the machinery of the state to guarantee a single-party type of political domination.

Despite the extreme centralisation of Cameroon’s political system in which the president supersedes all other institutions and presidential decrees are law, Parliament still plays a crucial deliberative, if less legislative, role.

This is seen in the way the ruling party guarantees its hold on the low threshold of a one-third majority. It uses this position to block discussion of important issues such as the anglophone problem, or seeing bills pass the lower house unopposed, and through the upper house, where the president appoints three out of every 10 senators per region.

Given the difficulties faced by opposition parties to present candidates in all constituencies, the CPDM’s victory is likely in both elections. In the National Assembly, the main issue will be around the designation of the main opposition party, a role currently played by the SDF with 18 seats.

The biggest challenge for these elections remains the capacity of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) – the national agency tasked with organising, managing and supervising the elections – to organise free and fair elections. Regularly criticised for its perceived bias towards the ruling party and government, ELECAM officials must demonstrate the body’s neutrality and professionalism.

Above all, the 9 February elections are important to renew the legitimacy of Parliament and municipal councils in the wake of a new decentralisation that is expected by many citizens. Unfortunately, the current political and security climate might make that difficult – leaving a permanent marker on the upcoming elections.

Culled from Reliefweb.int

According to a release signed by the chief of cabinet at the prime minister’s office, the head of government, Dion Ngute, is scheduled to visit football infrastructure that will host the African football Championship (CHAN) and African Cup of Nations AFCON.

Some analysts hold the low-energy prime minister might be going to the Southwest to campaign for the ruling and ruining party, the CPDM.

Cameroon Concord News Group correspondents in the two regions will bring you full coverage of the visits.

Well aware of the surveillance capabilities of major companies in the sector, Africa’s heads of state try to make their phones as secure as Fort Knox. Every leader is geared up and takes extra precautions to prevent the ever-looming risk of being tapped. We take a look at the phones used by Africa’s presidents and politicians’ practices.

In West Africa, some leaders have been won over by French technologies.

French presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande used a Teorem, an ultra-secure clamshell phone with physical buttons created by Thales. However, using it requires a certain amount of patience, and Sarkozy hated it for that reason.

Recently, the French company acquired Ercom and added another jewel to its collection: CryptoSmart technology, developed in partnership with Samsung, which protects communications and mobile data. Emmanuel Macron uses the system, a fact that Ercom’s marketing department has not let go unnoticed. The France’s President has a Samsung Galaxy S7 with a touch screen, equipped with a tamper-proof encryption key and a data protection chip. Orange Cyberdéfense is behind this black box-like system, whose data can be destroyed remotely if the phone is lost or stolen.

Other political figures prefer to use cheaper alternatives such as Hoox, a phone developed by the French company Bull and later acquired by Atos (priced at around €2,000 [$2,200]), Sectera Edge from US-based General Dynamics (priced at under €3,000), BlackPhone, designed by US-based Silent Circle (priced at around €550) and GranitePhone by Archos (priced at around €800).

From texts to Telegram

BlackBerry products have also been a big hit in Africa, with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Senegal’s President Macky Sall reportedly loyal users of the brand, just like Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé, who was one of the first presidents in French-speaking Africa to communicate via text messaging some 15 years ago.

While Guinea’s Alpha Condé, who never leaves the house without his three or four phones, made the switch from classic text messaging to WhatsApp and eventually to Telegram without a hitch, other heads of state from the pre-independence generation have opted for more “radical” solutions.

Cameroon’s Paul Biya, the Republic of Congo’s Denis Sassou-Nguesso, Mali’s Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and Djibouti’s Ismaïl Omar Guelleh can almost never be reached on their mobile phones, which they use very selectively.

Côte d’Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara puts his complete trust in an old Nokia model while also keeping an additional phone by his side. One of his close allies and former counterparts, Sarkozy, did the same during his presidential campaigns. Or maybe it was his alias, Paul Bismuth. . .

Backdoors

Just like these heads of state, most of the continent’s political figures have had to switch from one technology to another to shield themselves against prying ears. Over the past few years, conversations starting with “Hello, can we talk?” and ending with “Yes, of course, but not on this line” have become extremely common in the African political scene.

Opposition members, thinking rightly or wrongly that their local phones are being tapped, have been using WhatsApp for a long time now. “It’s for security reasons,” said one of them.

However, an expert we consulted smiled as he told us that this sense of security is an “illusion. Most governments have acquired technologies that are able to circumvent the app’s security protocols (Facebook bought it in 2014). It’s more complicated than retrieving a traditional text message, but it’s doable. There are backdoor points of entry into the system.”

More cunning than the others, a (very) senior official in Central Africa divulged his secret to us: he has switched to Telegram.

Created by Russian developers and today based out of Berlin, the app built its reputation around strict data encryption. As a result, quite a few political figures prefer it over WhatsApp. “That’s bogus,” said our expert, amused. “Both apps have the notorious backdoors.”

The alternative: Signal

Nevertheless, the most knowledgeable experts, i.e., those familiar with the security sector and spy games of every sort, are increasingly using Signal. Brought into the spotlight by the famous American whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the app was developed by Open Whisper Systems, a company from San Francisco which is entirely funded by donations and supported by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit organisation.

As our expert put it rather vividly: “WhatsApp and Telegram are like locked cars on the side of the road, whereas Signal is like an armoured car inside of a tunnel. Hackers can still get in, but it’s going to cost them a lot.”

Culled from The Africa Report