10, February 2018
N Korea’s leader invites South’s president for visit amid Olympic rapprochement 0
In a major diplomatic overture to Seoul, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, invites President Moon Jae-in of the South for a visit after senior officials of the two Koreas held rare top-level talks on the sidelines of Winter Olympics.
A spokesman for the presidential Blue House in Seoul said on Saturday that the invitation, delivered verbally by Kim’s visiting sister Kim Yo-jong, expressed the North Korean leader’s willing to meet Moon “at the earliest date possible.”
The South Korean president made a rare appearance in the North’s official media Saturday, with four pictures of him in the Rodong Sinmun state newspaper, AFP reported.
The announcement came after Moon hosted talks with high-ranking North Korean officials, including Kim Yong-nam, the North’s 90-year-old nominal head of state, and the younger sister of the North’s leader, along with other officials at the presidential Blue House in the South Korean capital of Seoul.
The talks, which took place after the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, mark the most significant diplomatic encounter between the two countries in years.
The elderly Kim is technically the highest-level Northern official ever to go to the South and the North Korean leader’s sister is the first member of the ruling Kim family to cross the border into the rival South since the end of the 1950 to 53 Korean War.
Bearing a smile, Moon shook hands with each of the delegates ahead of their talks at the presidential palace and as and television footage showed, the 28-year-old Kim was carrying a blue folder emblazoned with a seal.
The South Korean president and the delegation from the North had their first face-to-face encounter at the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday and they cheered as athletes from the two neighbors entered the arena and marched under a unified peninsula flag.
Seoul hopes to use the games as an opportunity to restore regular communication with Pyongyang and resolve the standoff over its missile and nuclear programs.
Moon’s efforts received a boost when Kim called for improved ties in his New Year’s Day speech.
A delegation of US officials led by Vice President Mike Pence also attended the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang.
Pence, who was seated in the same box, had no interaction with the North Koreans at any point, according to US officials, and the VP did not shake hands with Kim Yong-nam while making a brief appearance at a leaders’ reception ahead of the ceremony.
North Korea’s official KCNA news agency had earlier cited a senior Foreign Ministry official as saying that Pyongyang had “no intention” of meeting with Washington’s officials during the Winter Olympic Games.
The two neighbors have been separated by a heavily-militarized border since the end of Korean War.
The situation on the Korean Peninsula has been tense due to Pyongyang’s development of its nuclear and missile programs, which the North views as a deterrent against potential foreign aggression by the South’s allies, particularly the US.
North Korea has been the target of harsh international sanctions for its military program.
The tensions have seen a sharp rise under US President Donald Trump, who initiated a war of words with the North Korean leader after taking office in January 2017.
Source: Presstv
10, February 2018
Yaounde: A nation waits for a speech 0
Millions of Cameroonians, especially youths, are impatiently expecting the annual head of state’s speech that precedes the celebration of the country’s youth day, a day highly contested by Anglophones who have been fighting for a separate state since October 2016.
The wait stems from the fact that for more than two weeks, there have been speculations concerning the whereabouts of Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, 85, who has been missing in action. Mr. Biya is expected to deliver a live speech on Saturday, February 10, 2018, directed at the youths at 8pm Cameroon time to urge the country’s impoverished and unemployed youths to continue persevering in their efforts to find work.
He will also use the occasion to point out that though the economy has not been delivering the results expected of it, it is, more because of external factors resulting from a struggling global economy and internal attacks coming from Anglophone secessionists and Boko Haram.
However, Cameroonians are still very concerned about the absence of their president. Many analysts hold that the country’s president might either be dead or his health situation might have taken a turn for the worse.
It should be noted that Mr. Biya has been having serious health issues for some time now and a source close to the ailing dictator has intimated that he has been suffering from prostrate cancer and a failing heart.
Cameroonians need confirmation about their president health. They want to be sure that Mr. Biya’s collaborators are not working behind the scenes to change the country’s constitutional order just to ensure the Betis who have been mismanaging the country for more than three decades do not wrestle power out of the hands of the real constitutional successor.
According to a source at the Presidency which elected anonymity, the Secretary General at the presidency has been holding a series of meetings with some of his collaborators who have been advising him to issue decrees that would usher in constitutional changes on Mr. Biya’s behalf. The appointment of Clement Atangana early last week as president of the constitutional council is one of the changes, many argue, are aimed at changing things to the advantage of a Beti Mafia that has been running the show for many years.
The scheduling of senatorial elections next month, our source added, was one of the moves designed by the Beti Mafia to kick out the current senate president, Marcel Nyat Njifenji, so that it could retain power even after Mr. Biya’s death.
Under the country’s current constitution, the constitutional successor is the president of the senate, Marcel Nyat Njifenji, a man many hold has played a key role in the corruption and mismanagement that have become the country’s hallmark.
Many Cameroonians want to see a new republic and they hold that if the country has to witness any significant political changes, figures like the senate president and the national assembly speaker have to disappear from the political scene.
But the doubts are continuing even when the government has been arguing that the president is alive and in good health. A few days ago, an empty presidential motorcade was mounted and made to travel to Mvogmeka just to give the impression that the president was really hale and hearty. This ruse, which did not convince many Cameroonians, caused a lot of traffic in the nation’s capital, Yaounde, a gimmick that frustrated many people in the capital city.
Some analysts are already concluding that Mr. Biya’s entourage, which is predominantly Beti, might use still images just to create an impression. A live speech by the ailing president, they argue, might reassure the population. Anything short of that will only fuel the suspicion and rumor.
But there are speculations that the Beti Mafia that is struggling to keep things under wraps might have already had a taped speech from the dying president before he slipped into a coma.
Sources close to the Unity Palace have indicated that Mr. Biya’s collaborators have been busy, working day and night just to prove that Mr. Biya is alive. They have also indicated that Mr. Biya’s entourage might put the president’s still image on the screen while broadcasting a taped speech just to prove their point.
An inside source has also said that all tricks are on the table, adding that the secretary-general at the presidency and his men are capable of manufacturing anything just to prove their point.
“They may cut off power supply across the country so as to blame everything on the country’s energy corporation. They can even blame it on technical issues resulting from CRTV’s aging equipment. These people are capable of any and everything,”our source said, arguing that from what he has seen over the last two weeks at the Unity Palace, the country’s leaders cannot be trusted.
“They behave like mercenaries. You can never think that they are Cameroonians. They don’t love this country and they are certainly going to cause a more complicated civil war if power leaves their hands,” he lamented.
“Whatever they do, the truth will always come out. Nobody is eternal. The country does not belong to Mr. Biya and it will be preposterous for anyone to think that they can manipulate everybody, every time,” he stressed.
It should be recalled that the Betis have always felt that they must continue to govern the country. They hold that since the seat of government is in Yaoundé, they deserve to run the country’s political show.
Their strong desire to head the country even after Biya’s departure has already been manifested a few times through some of their actions. In 1992 when the Social Democratic Front chairman, John FruNdi, won the presidential election, the Beti Mafia did all it could to grant the victory to Mr. Biya who has continued to run the country as his personal estate. He has been using the institutions to his advantage and his method of choice has been the appointment of only those who are loyal to him, regardless of their ages.
This week’s establishment of the constitutional council and the appointment of its members through presidential decrees has caused the rumor mills to be very busy. The presidential decrees finally established a constitutional council provided for in the 1996 constitution and appointed members of the said council.
77-year-old Clement Atangana, a legal expert of Beti extraction, who has been on retirement for more than ten years, was appointed to head the constitutional council, while other very familiar faces were appointed as members of the same council in the same decree. It should be underscored that members of the constitutional council are members of the ruling party, the CPDM, and people who are personally loyal to the country’s president and his collaborators.
The appointment of these familiar faces underscores the fact that Mr. Biya is not yet ready to give Cameroonian youths a place in today’s Cameroon. Besides marginalizing youths, Mr. Biya is still pursuing his policy of Anglophone marginalization by appointing only Francophones to head major government institutions.
It should be underscored at this point that all heads of important structures in Cameroon are Francophones despite the ongoing Anglophone crisis which was triggered by the government’s marginalization of the country’s English-speaking minority.
As Mr. Biya’s entourage works hard to deceive the population, Cameroonians, for their part, are quietly looking forward to the annual youth day speech which will either confirm or disconfirm rumors that the head of state is no more.
By Kingsley Betek in Yaounde