Politics

8, November 2019

US: Democrats discussing multiple articles of impeachment against Trump ⁰

Democrats in the US House of Representatives have considered drafting as many as three articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, as they prepare to take their Ukraine impeachment inquiry public next week after a month of closed-door depositions, according to multiple sources familiar with the deliberations.

No decisions have been made, and what happens will ultimately be shaped by the conclusions and findings of the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

In the last two modern impeachment proceedings against Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, the House Judiciary Committee sent three and four articles of impeachment, respectively, to the full chamber for consideration, including articles charging abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and contempt of Congress for defying congressional subpoenas.

Democrats have floated the possibility of charging Trump with abuse of power for efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s family and the 2016 election, as well as obstruction of Congress for the administration’s refusal to comply with subpoenas for records and witness testimony.

They have also weighed an obstruction of justice charge centered on the president’s efforts to obstruct former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Mueller’s findings in the second volume of his report, focused on obstruction, are repeatedly referenced in the report accompanying their resolution laying out the impeachment inquiry.

Some Democrats have suggested that the article charging Trump with obstruction of Congress could resemble the article drawn up on the same charge against President Nixon, and itemize all the subpoenas the administration has defied.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office declined to comment on the potential articles of impeachment at this stage in the process, and the speaker has not endorsed any number of articles or specifics suggested in the caucus.

The topic of the number of articles was raised by a lawmaker in one recent meeting Pelosi held with a group of Democrats focused on impeachment messaging, according to sources familiar with the discussion, though Pelosi did not appear to engage with the comment one way or another.

The focus is on what’s in front of us right now: making the public case about the president’s abuse of power and his actions to undermine the 2020 election,” a senior Democratic leadership aide told ABC News.

While some lawmakers also support charging Trump with violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, though others have advocated for keeping the impeachment push narrowly focused on the Ukraine matter.

Although the bulk of the impeachment hearings will happen in the Intelligence Committee, the Judiciary Committee will draft the articles of impeachment. It’s not clear whether they will include accusations of criminal wrongdoing.

The Judiciary Committee is expected to move forward with the process after receiving a report from the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees summarizing their inquiry in the coming weeks. Other panels, including the House Ways and Means and Financial Services Committees, could also share information with the Judiciary Committee from their ongoing investigations that could be used to craft the articles of impeachment.

Politically, putting forward multiple articles of impeachment could benefit some House Democrats – including the freshman lawmakers from moderate and GOP-leaning districts who have raised concerns about the administration’s obstruction of Congress, but who have yet to say conclusively whether they believe Trump’s actions towards Ukraine are impeachable.

It could also focus pressure on some Republicans in the House and Senate who have disapproved of the administration’s refusal to comply with some of House Democrats’ oversight efforts, but rejected concerns of whether Trump has abused his power as president.

in 1998, the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee approved four articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, though the House only passed the first and third articles – charging Clinton with providing false testimony to a grand jury in the Paula Jones case, and obstruction of justice related to evidence in the Jones case.

The second and fourth articles were defeated, with 28 Republicans voting with Democrats against a second perjury charge, and 81 siding with the minority against charging Clinton with abuse of power.

“It gives Democrats in tighter districts the opportunity to say they’re open-minded,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who voted against Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, told ABC News.

But King, who said he did not find Trump’s comments to Ukraine’s president impeachable and defended the White House’s ability to challenge congressional subpoenas, predicted that few Republicans would cross party lines in any vote to impeach Trump in the House.

“Most if not all Republicans will look at all the articles as being tied together,” he said.

(Source: ABC News)

7, November 2019

French President says NATO is suffering ‘brain death’ ⁰

French President Emmanuel Macron said he believed NATO was undergoing “brain death”, lamenting a lack of coordination between Europe and the United States and unilateral action in Syria by key member Turkey, in an interview published Thursday.

“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron told The Economist magazine.

The president’s explosive comments, appearing to question the very future of NATO, threatened to send shock waves through the alliance ahead of a summit in Britain next month.

“You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States and its NATO allies. None,” said Macron.

“You have an uncoordinated aggressive action by another NATO ally, Turkey, in an area where our interests are at stake,” he added, according to an English transcript released by The Economist.

Turkey’s latest military operation against Kurdish forces in northern Syria was staunchly opposed by fellow members like France, but made possible by a withdrawal of US forces ordered by President Donald Trump.

“There has been no NATO planning, nor any coordination,” Macron said.

And while NATO works well in communicating between armies and commanding operations, “strategically and politically, we need to recognise that we have a problem”, he said.

“We should reassess the reality of what NATO is in light of the commitment of the United States,” he warned, adding that “In my opinion, Europe has the capacity to defend itself.”

‘Drastic words,’ says Merkel

Macron said that while “it’s not in our interest” to expel Turkey from NATO – as has been urged by some politicians – member states should “reconsider what NATO is”.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday rejected Macron’s view that NATO was experiencing “brain death”, saying that such comments were not necessary.

Macron “used drastic words, that is not my view of cooperation in NATO”, said Merkel after talks with visiting chief of the translantic defence alliance Jens Stoltenberg.

“I don’t think that such sweeping judgements are necessary, even if we have problems and need to pull together,” she added.

Stoltenberg meanwhile stressed that “NATO is strong”, adding that the United States and Europe “work together more than we have done for decades”.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking during a visit to the German city of Leipzig as part of anniversary events for the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago, also dismissed Macron’s remarks.

“I think NATO remains an important, critical, perhaps historically one of the most critical strategic partnerships in all of recorded history,” he told a press conference.

That was why it was “an absolute imperative that every country participate and join in and contribute appropriately to achieving that shared security mission,” he added, in a nod to Washington’s longstanding gripes about some member countries not paying their way.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, speaking at the same press conference, also said he believed strongly in the military alliance “especially as we face ever more and ever greater global challenges”.

However, Moscow on Thursday hailed Macron’s comments.

“These are golden words… a precise definition of the current state of NATO,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on her Facebook page.

‘Strategic dialogue with Russia’

In the interview, Macron also emphasised it was crucial to seek a rapprochement with Moscow, which regards NATO and its expansion into ex-Communist bloc states with huge suspicion since the alliance was set up to counter the USSR.

“We need to reopen a strategic dialogue, without being naive and which will take time, with Russia,” said Macron, who is seeking to broker an end to the conflict in Ukraine and has courted President Vladimir Putin as a partner.

He said NATO did not reexamine its future in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and “the unarticulated assumption is that the enemy is still Russia”.

“So, the question about the present purpose of NATO is a real question that needs to be asked,” especially by the United States where Trump sees the alliance as a “commercial project”, he said.

And Macron said he believed that Putin, for all the anti-Western bombast from the Kremlin, would find his strategic options limited, in the long term, to “a partnership project with Europe”.

“If we want to build peace in Europe, to rebuild European strategic autonomy, we need to reconsider our position with Russia,” said Macron.

He praised the stance on the issue of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban – criticised by many in Europe for being authoritarian and close to the Kremlin.

“He’s quite close to our views and has a key intellectual and political role” in central Europe, said Macron.

‘Edge of a precipice’

The French president, seen by analysts as Europe’s most prominent leader amid Brexit and the looming exit of Merkel in 2021, has sought to stand tall on the foreign policy stage and implement a vision of reforming Europe.

But he said the European Union had been brought “to the edge of a precipice” by a dwindling focus since the mid-1990s on the bloc’s political integration.

“Europe has forgotten that it is a community, by increasingly thinking of itself as a market, with expansion as its end purpose,” said Macron, who recently blocked expanding the EU to include North Macedonia and Albania.

He also said he wanted European nations to break the “taboo” against using deficits to stimulate growth and investment, and scrap a strict limit on eurozone deficits.

Macron said it was a time of turmoil with Europe losing track of history, a risk of the US and China becoming the sole global powers, and authoritarian regimes emerging in its neighbourhood.

“All this has led to the exceptional fragility of Europe which, if it can’t think of itself as a global power, will disappear, because it will take a hard knock,” he said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

7, November 2019

UK parliament dissolved as five-week election campaign kicks off ⁰

Britain’s five-week election campaign officially began Wednesday, when Parliament was dissolved ahead of the December 12 vote. However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s campaign launch was marred by the resignation of one of his ministers, a gaffe about the victims of a deadly tower blaze and a doctored video of an opponent released by his party.

Johnson called a snap election in a bid to break the Brexit deadlock that he says has paralysed Britain for more than three years and had started to undermine confidence in the world’s fifth largest economy.

But just an hour after meeting Queen Elizabeth to formally begin the election campaign, Johnson’s minister for Wales, Alun Cairns, resigned after being accused of lying about his knowledge about an aide who allegedly sabotaged a rape trial.

At the start of the campaign, Johnson’s Conservatives enjoy a lead over the opposition Labour Party of between 7 and 17 percentage points, though pollsters warn that their models are wilting beside the Brexit furnace.

“Let’s get Brexit done,” Johnson, 55, said outside his Downing Street official residence, adding that Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn would bring yet more turmoil with fresh referendums on EU membership and Scottish independence.

“Come with us, get Brexit done and take this country forward, or, and this is the alternative next year, spend the whole of 2020 in a horror show of yet more dither and delay,” he said.

Boris Johnson✔@BorisJohnson

We will have a General Election on December 12th. It’s now up to you, the great British public, to make your voice heard.

Do you want to #GetBrexitDone or have two more referendums next year with Corbyn?

Johnson said Corbyn hated wealth and was thus like Soviet leader Josef Stalin – who sent millions to their deaths in labour camps. Corbyn said such remarks were “nonsense” that the super-rich came up with to avoid paying more tax.

Earlier, Conservative Party Chairman James Cleverly spent the morning defending distributing a doctored video clip of a rival Labour Party politician instead of touting Johnson’s election campaign launch.

Another prominent Conservative, Jacob Rees-Mogg, apologised on Tuesday after he suggested that victims of the blaze at London’s Grenfell Tower should have used common sense to ignore firefighters’ instructions to stay in the burning building.

Election gamble

Johnson, 55, hopes he will win a big enough majority in parliament to get the Brexit deal he agreed with Brussels last month ratified and lead Britain out of the EU at the end of December or in January.

After failing to deliver Brexit on October 31, Johnson said his party offered the only way to deliver Brexit and painted Labour’s Corbyn as a socialist wrecker determined to bring in yet more political crisis.

Jeremy Corbyn✔@jeremycorbyn

We will:

reduce NHS waiting times

get Brexit sorted in six months

kick start a Green Industrial Revolution

build a million genuinely affordable homes within 10 years

We will end:

in-work poverty

food bank use

rough sleeping

tuition fees

“They pretend that their hatred is directed only at certain billionaires – and they point their fingers at individuals with a relish and a vindictiveness not seen since Stalin persecuted the kulaks,” Johnson wrote in an article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper. “They would destroy the very basis of this country’s prosperity.”

Millions of people were executed under Stalin and many more perished from abuse and disease in a vast network of prison camps, known as the Gulags. Relatively affluent farmers, known as kulaks, were among the groups targeted.

Speaking at a campaign event in the English town of Telford on Wednesday, Corbyn said Labour would deliver real change and share power and wealth with people who “don’t have friends in high places”.

“They quite shamefully think the victims of Grenfell fire died because they didn’t have the common sense to save themselves,” Corbyn said. “I’ll tell you what’s common sense -don’t put flammable cladding on people’s homes.”

He also cautioned against believing the consensus view that Johnson was assured victory, citing the 2017 election when Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, bet on calling a snap election when also far ahead in the polls but lost her majority.

“In the 2017 election, there were queues of experts … lining up at the beginning of the campaign to write off the Labour Party, and what happened then?” Corbyn said.

On Tuesday Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson said she firmly refuses to back Corbyn and wants to become prime minister herself.

“I am absolutely, categorically ruling out Liberal Democratic votes putting Jeremy Corbyn into Number 10,” Swinson said at the launch of her party’s election campaign in London. The Liberal Democrats are currently running in third place with around 18 percent of the vote.

“On the biggest issue of the day, he has prevaricated and will not give a straight answer — even now, when you will ask him if he is Remain or Leave — he will not tell you how he will vote,” Swinson told reporters.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

7, November 2019

Biya pushing the North West/South West Divide in Southern Cameroons to stifle the Ambazonia resistance ⁰

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government Dabney Yerima says the Biya Francophone regime is resorting to North West/South West divide in British Southern Cameroons in order to continue to marginalize Ambazonians and stifle the resistance while advancing French Cameroun’s political and economic agenda in the territory.

Vice President Dabney Yerima noted on Monday in Holland that the Southern Cameroons battle for independence is at a dangerous juncture, and there are real threats that Ambazonians must face coming from some dissident Southern Cameroons groups created by the French Cameroun government.

Comrade Dabney Yerima revealed that the French Cameroun occupying regime in Yaoundé is pouring fuel on the North West/South West divide fire using some disgruntled Southern Cameroonians who served previously in the Interim Government as part of efforts to obliterate the Ambazonian quest for independence.

The exiled Southern Cameroons leader opined that Swiss French Cameroun lobbyists are also at work deceiving the international community about the so-called Geneva initiative. The high-ranking Southern Cameroons official warned the Biya French Cameroun regime against escalating the conflict, saying Yaoundé will face the consequences sooner or later.

Dabney Yerima also condemned attempts by some pro Yaoundé Southern Cameroonians calling for an end to the resistance noting that the Special Status announced after the Major National Dialogue was an insult to the people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Vice President Dabney Yerima went on to say that Ambazonia think tanks are being formed in Europe, the US and in the Republic of South Africa including Ground Zero in order to deal with every problem impeding the implementation of the revolution plan, emphasizing that there are certain Ambazonia forces seeking to prolong division among Southern Cameroonians.

Elsewhere in his Monday speech, the Southern Cameroons Vice President highlighted that the French Cameroun army was currently being assisted by some Ambazonia internal agents. Yerima said the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has agreed to general demand to end divisions.

Dabney Yerima concluded that Southern Cameroons Interim Government will no longer accept the persistence of the humanitarian crisis in Ground Zero, neighboring Nigeria and at the Mexican border with the USA and will also not be patient any longer with the international community.

By Chi Prudence Asong

7, November 2019

Ambazonia: Vice president Dabney Yerima urges global consultation on Southern Cameroons ⁰

Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima has stressed the need for the United States and the European Union to begin consultations on war-ravaged Southern Cameroons and its displaced people in Nigeria and Mexico including in French Cameroun territory.

Vice President Dabney Yerima made the remarks in a recent meeting with his top aides in which the Amba Bonds Project featured prominently during discussions.

Comrade Dabney Yerima thanked US President Donald Trump for his recent action against the Biya Francophone regime in French Cameroun and called on the European Union to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the US administration to put an end to French Cameroun military atrocities in Southern Cameroons.

Dabney Yerima said that Western sanctions targeting the French Cameroun leader Paul Biya and prominent members of his ruling CPDM crime syndicate were needed to force Yaoundé to engage the Ambazonia Interim Government for genuine peace talks in the presence of a third party and on a neutral ground.

Vice President Dabney Yerima furthered that Washington should apply maximum pressure campaign that will bar Cameroon government officials and senior citizens from carrying out financial transactions in Europe and the USA.

By Asu Isong in London

6, November 2019

US: New poll shows less support for Trump’s impeachment ⁰

A new poll shows support for impeaching US President Donald Trump has slipped since mid-October.

According to the Morning Consult survey released Wednesday 47 percent of the Americans back impeachment, while in mid-October, a record-high majority, 51 percent, supported it.

American Republican Senator Rand Paul claimed earlier that he had found the identity of the whistleblower, whose revelations lie at the heart of the impeachment inquiry into Trump in the lower chamber of US Congress.

Paul told reporters Tuesday that he was “more than willing” to reveal the name but he preferred to stay focused on the process rather than the person.

“There is no law preventing anybody from saying the name,” he told reporters.

The US president has for a while been hunting for the anonymous whistleblower in part by asking media to release his name.

PressTV-More Democrats pursuing Trump impeachment

“There’s nothing that prevents me from saying it now,” Paul said. “I can, and I may, but I can do it right now if I want. Nothing stops me.”

During a Fox News interview he asserted that unlike Trump he did not want the name released for now.

“I want it to be more about the process and less about the person,” Paul argued. “Nothing stops me. There’s no law that stops me from doing it other than that I don’t want to make it about the one individual.”

PressTV-Trump’s top ally admits quid pro quo

Trump claims he was investigating corruption in Ukraine involving his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden, but Democrats argue that he was engaged in a quid pro quo.

“We also now know the name of the whistleblower. The whistleblower needs to come forward as a material witness because he worked for Joe Biden at the same time Hunter Biden was getting money from corrupt oligarchs,” Paul said at the rally after Trump invited him onstage.

Source: Presstv

5, November 2019

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Mayor Ekema dies out of frustration ⁰

Ever since the notorious mayor of Buea, Patrick Ekema, passed away, there have been many theories surrounding his demise. For those who bought into his philosophy of protecting the city of Buea and its people, Ekema was a hero who should be buried with pump and pageantry.

But behind the façade Ekema put up, there is an entire story of manipulation, self-aggrandizement, greed and gluttony which connived to bring him down like a pack of old retired cards.

On the outside, while the former notorious Mayor of the City of Buea, Ekema Patrick Esunge, gave the impression that he was a staunch member of the ruling CPDM party, he was, indeed, a schemer and a scammer who was making the most of the CPDM crime syndicate to feather his nest.

Ekema was enriching himself at supersonic speed while using intimidation, a CPDM trade mark, to silence his critics. Ekema had robbed the City of Buea of millions of dollars and most of this money was spent on women and alcohol.

His home, which he built in a very short time, is estimated at USD1 million and for a man whose salary was not more than USD 600 a month, it was clear that he was engaged in something unorthodox.

In a well-managed system, this should have caught the eyes of the authorities and an investigation should have been opened to determine the source of the money he was using to build such a mansion. But since Ekema had given the impression that he could die for the CPDM, any thing he told his Yaounde sponsors was taken down hook, line and sinker.

But while he gave the impression that he was working for the Yaounde government, Ekema had a plan B which he held so close to his chest. He had already moved his five children and his wife to the United States. Today, his wife, Katherine Ekema, and their children are well settled in the United States, thanks to the money Ekema had stolen from the Buea City Council.

Ekema was successfully keeping a family of six in the United States. With USD 600, which was his monthly salary in Cameroon, Ekema could not underwrite such a lifestyle in the United States. His four children with Katherine and the one she had before getting married to Ekema were all school in the United States and this was costing him a pretty penny.

The last child, who turned 4, two days after Ekema collapsed as a result of a massive heart attack in a lady’s house in Douala, was born in the United States. He has no problems. His birthright citizenship kicked in when he got to the USA. The rest were born in Cameroon and with their mother, they are now seeking asylum on the grounds that they are Southern Cameroonians who are being persecuted by the same Yaounde government for which Ekema worked so tirelessly so that other Southern Cameroonians could continue to live in appalling and inhuman conditions.

While Ekema is quietly renting space in a mortuary today in Douala, his wife, Katherine, has been caught up in a long thinking process prompted by the absence of money and stress because she cannot travel to Cameroon due to her refugee status in the United States.

According to international refugee law, she cannot go back to the country she accuses of persecuting her and her children when she had not had the papers of her adoptive country. The wads of cash that used to leave Cameroon for the United States every month are no longer there, and this spells frustration to a woman who was wont to spending money without thinking twice. The tap has been turned off forever.

Ekema has died and with him are the millions he embezzled from the Buea City Council. Katherine has to figure out how to feed such a large family in the United States and her new status as an asylum seeker does not give her any right to any American money. She must learn how to work off her butts if she wants to meet the needs of her five children.

While Ekema had pulled off a good one on Cameroonians by sending his wife and children abroad to seek asylum, he did not know that the pressure he was mounting on others would end up consuming him. What goes around comes around.

Southern Cameroonian fighters always made sure that they kept him under surveillance. He had body guards everywhere and all the time but living under such conditions for long periods of time was simply not tenable.

Ekema had wanted to rid himself of such a restrictive lifestyle and had made up his mind to leave the country. That was why early this year, he applied for an American visa. As fate would have it, Ekema showed up at the American embassy with another woman, claiming that she was his wife. Ekema was not only uncut, he also had a very low IQ. His ability to think through things was questionable. He thought he could beat the American system. He thought the American system was like the Cameroon system where everything could be manipulated.

But the visa officer who interviewed him told him that he had sent his wife and children to the United States, adding that they had not returned to Cameroon. The visa officer told him that he could not have two wives, pointing out that polygamy was an offense under American law.

Using his crude CPDM mentality, he promptly lied that he had divorced Katherine who was enjoying the Cameroonian taxpayers’ money in the United States. The visa officer knew that he was lying but respectfully asked him to produce a divorce certificate. Documents are easy to produce in Cameroon and it is a lot easier to have documents in Cameroon, especially if you are a mayor.

Ekema rushed to Buea where he was produced a brand-new divorce certificate that was backdated. But the American visa officer had seen through him and had made up his mind. His visa application and that of his girlfriend were turned down. He rushed to the Canadian embassy to secure another visa but met with a rejection. He tried the Belgian embassy and it seemed as if Western embassies had connived to turn down his application for a visa.

Ekema was sick and tired of living the dirty life in Cameroon. He wanted to leave the country with two women. He was not only fond of food, he also loved women and alcohol. His size clearly spoke to his gluttony. His love of expensive booze spoke volume of his false sense of achievement which would later come back to bite him.

He loved every woman, or everything in skirt and he thought he was a lady’s man, forgetting that where there is money, there will be women. Money is to women what honey is to bees. As one philosopher rightly put it, what kills a man comes like appetite and Ekema was brought down by his greed, theft and gluttony.

A product of a poor family, Ekema struggled very hard, most often by crook to climb the social ladder. He faked certificates to get registered into the University of Buea and from there he quickly learned that if he aligned himself with the CPDM crime syndicate, he would gain influence and money, something he did with relative ease.

But there is always a price to pay for the earthly possessions we acquire in a dishonest manner. He might have built a beautiful house, but he will never live in that house. His children who are today refugees in the United States will not live in that house. Poetic justice is prevailing.

He might have wired some money to the states as he prepared to throw in the towel as a means of escaping the stress and pressure that Southern Cameroonian fighters had mounted on him, but nature knew that he would not be enjoying that loot for a long time. His family may be in the United States, but they must know that they are in for a long rough moment as Southern Cameroonians are prepared to send their father’s dirt to the American immigration.

They cannot be running away from persecution when their father was one of the officials who had his nose to the grindstone just to ensure that the status quo ante continued.

Ekema was already a dead man from the time he failed to secure a visa. The massive heart attack was simply a finisher. His love of liquor and food had transformed his body into a conference center for diseases to hold their meetings. He will be remembered as the mayor who worked for himself but deceived the people that he was working for them. Cameroonians must wake up and smell the coffee as more “Ekemas” will be coming up soon.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

5, November 2019

Southern Cameroonians determined to continue with the struggle for independence ⁰

The leadership of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government (IG) has reaffirmed the determination of the people of Ambazonia to continue with the resistance until their demands for separation are met by the international community.

The exiled leaders headed by Vice President Dabney Yerima, said in a statement on Monday that the people of Southern Cameroons have increasingly witnessed French Cameroun’s genocidal campaign, corruption, tyranny and recklessness over the years and that only an independent state of Ambazonia would bring the war to an end.

Comrade Dabney Yerima described French Cameroun’s army atrocities in Southern Cameroons and the deteriorating security situation created by armed militia groups sponsored by the regime in Yaoundé as frightening and warned of a bleak future if the Ambazonian diaspora failed to invest in the Amba Bonds Project. Three years on, the Southern Cameroons people are still sticking to their demands for complete independence, and they are resolved to keep up the struggle for freedom, Yerima added.

Yaoundé has responded to the protests with lethal force, drawing international criticism. French Cameroun authorities have also detained human rights campaigners, broken up major Ambazonia Interim Government institutions and jailed the leaders of the Southern Cameroons resistance to life in prison.

Since the start of the Southern Cameroons popular protests, the Biya Francophone regime has arrested prominent Ambazonian figures and rights activists, and conducted mass trials of civilians at the Yaoundé military tribunal.

The United States government has lashed out at Yaoundé for the rampant torture of Southern Cameroons prisoners as well as numerous lengthy jail terms meted on Ambazonians.

By Chi Prudence Asong

5, November 2019

France-Afrique: Minister Ousmane Mey meets President Ali Bongo ⁰

Alamine Ousmane Mey, Cameroon’s Minister of Economy, was received on 1 November 2019, in Libreville by Ali Bongo Ondimba, President of Gabon.

According to the Gabonese Presidency, the member of the Cameroonian government was a special envoy and carried a written message from President Paul Biya to the Gabonese Head of State. “The Cameroonian emissary’s presence on Gabonese soil is part of the regular consultations held by the Heads of State of the sub-region on current issues,” the source reports.

The Gabonese source added that economic, security and other issues of common interest were also on the agenda of the meeting. At the end of the hearing, Alamine Ousmane Mey indicated he was honoured and privileged to have been received by President Ali Bongo Ondimba and welcomed the excellent bilateral relations between the two countries.

A few days earlier, Paul Biya sent his Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze, to Equatorial Guinea’s president Téodoro Obiang Nguema and Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso. Little information filtered out about these meetings but sources suggest that these Cameroonian emissaries were carrying an invitation to a summit of CEMAC heads of state, convened by Paul Biya in Yaoundé, Cameroon, for December 2019.

Source: Business in Cameroun

4, November 2019

US: Poll suggests heavy 2020 defeat for Trump ⁰

US President Donald Trump is facing a big defeat at the ballot box in 2020 amid an ongoing impeachment probe by Democrats, according to the latest polling.

Trump is projected to lose by 10 points to Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, one new survey shows, which also predicts Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both beat him comfortably.

The survey conducted by Investor’s Business Daily/TIPP shows that just less than 45 percent of voters support Trump in comparison with his rivals, Biden, Warren and Sanders, who get 53%, 52% and 51% respectively.

Political Polls@Politics_Polls

2020 National GE:
Biden 53% (+10)
Trump 43%
.
Warren 52% (+8)
Trump 44%
.
Sanders 51% (+7)
Trump 44%

IBD/TIPP 10/24-31https://www.investors.com/news/joe-biden-leads-elizabeth-warren-both-beat-trump-2020-election-ibd-tipp/

This comes as Trump is under mounting pressure after Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry in September after a whistleblower alleged the Republican president pressured Ukraine to investigate his Biden.

That request by Trump, and accusations he conditioned nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine on the political favor, form the basis of the impeachment inquiry that now threatens his presidency.

PressTV-Dems lay out case for Trump impeachment probe

House Democrats say Trump has abused his office for personal gain and jeopardized national security by asking Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter, who had served as a director for Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Meanwhile, two impeachment polls by Fox News and NBC/Wall Street Journal showed Sunday that 49 percent support Trump’s impeachment and his removal from office.

A total of 46 percent of the respondents expressed opposition to Trump’s impeachment and removal from the Oval Office.

The poll found that opponents to Trump’s impeachment have shrunk by 3 percent according to another poll from earlier this month, which said 49 percent wanted him to stay in office.

Asked whether they approved of the impeachment effort, 53 said they supported the bid while 44 percent disapproved.

Source: Presstv