Politics

4, September 2018

Congo’s Top Court Excludes Opposition Leader Bemba From Presidential Election ⁰

Democratic Republic of Congo’s top court on Monday definitively excluded opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba from December’s presidential election because of a witness tampering conviction at the International Criminal Court.

Bemba, a popular former vice president, was tipped as one of the leading candidates to replace outgoing President Joseph Kabila. His exclusion from the race could spark a violent reaction by his supporters.

His defeat to Kabila in the 2006 election touched off deadly clashes in the capital Kinshasa between his supporters and state troops. He then spent a decade in prison in The Hague before his war crimes convictions for murders and rapes committed by his militia in Central African Republic were quashed in May.

In a judgment broadcast on national television, the constitutional court said the election commission had rightly invalidated Bemba’s candidacy last month, finding that witness tampering is a form of corruption as stipulated in the electoral law.

The Dec. 23 election is due to usher in Congo’s first democratic transition of power after Kabila agreed last month to respect constitutional term limits and step aside in favor of close loyalist Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary’s candidacy.

That announcement has calmed tensions that exploded into deadly street protests when Kabila refused to step aside at the end of his constitutional mandate in December 2016.

But fears persist of further violence with Kabila’s opponents accusing him of trying to rig the vote to ensure Ramazani’s victory.

“Congo has fallen very low!” the secretary-general of Bemba’s MLC party wrote on Twitter after the judgment.

Kabila’s camp denies that it is improperly trying to influence the election.

Besides Bemba, opposition leader Moise Katumbi was barred from re-entering Congo last month to register his candidacy after two years in exile.

Katumbi placed joint first in a rare public opinion poll in July with 19 percent of the vote. Another opposition leader, Felix Tshisekedi, also received 19 percent, while Bemba placed third with 17 percent.

Ramazani did not receive enough votes to be included in the results.

The constitutional court also on Monday upheld the invalidation of former prime minister Adolphe Muzito’s candidacy but reinstated another former prime minister Samy Badibanga as a candidate.

Reuters

4, September 2018

Trump blasts Jeff Sessions for undermining Republicans ⁰

US President Donald Trump has taken yet another swipe at his Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who heads the powerful Justice Department, for not blocking two damaging investigations that undermined two Republican candidates ahead of the mid-term congressional elections.

On August 8, Representative Christopher Collins, who was the first member of Congress to endorse Donald Trump for president, was indicted for alleged insider trading, wire fraud, conspiracy and lying to the FBI.

According to the indictment, the New York lawmaker was allegedly involved to a scheme to gain insider information about Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited, a biotechnology company headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

His son, Cameron Collins, and the father of his son’s fiancée, Stephen Zarsky, were also arrested on the same charges. Two weeks later, Representative Duncan Hunter and his wife were indicted by a federal grand jury for spending some $250,000 of campaign funds for family vacations and other personal expenses over a period of seven years.

Just like Collins, the San Diego Republican has remained defiant in face of the charges, accusing prosecutors of having political motives. Both Collins and Hunter are campaigning for re-election in November.

The Trump team is worried that the indictments would help Democrats to score a decisive victory in the House of Representatives and launch their much-anticipated attempt to impeach the Republican president.

This is not the first time that Trump is lashing out at Sessions. The president has regularly taken jabs at Sessions for recusing himself from overseeing a high-profile probe into the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia, which allowed DOJ’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller to dig deep into in the hope of finding any hints of a possible “collusion.”

In late August, Sessions finally hit back at his boss, saying he will not allow political pressure to influence the work being done at the department.

2, September 2018

British PM Theresa May says she will not ‘compromise’ on Brexit deal ⁰

British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would not compromise with Brussels over her plans for Brexit as a media report said rivals in her party were set to publish their own proposal calling for a cleaner break with the European Union.

With under two months before Britain and the EU want to agree a deal to end over 40 years of union, May is struggling to sell what she calls her business-friendly Brexit to her own party and across a divided country.

The EU has tentatively welcomed what has become known as the Chequers plan which is designed to protect cross-border trade, but difficult negotiations lie ahead. “I will not be pushed into accepting compromises on the Chequers proposals that are not in our national interest,” May wrote in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

“The coming months will be critical in shaping the future of our country and I am clear about my mission.”

The plan would keep Britain in a free trade zone with the EU for manufactured and agricultural goods. But some Brexit supporters have said that would mean parts of the British economy would still be subject to rules set in Brussels.

Two of May’s most senior lawmakers – Boris Johnson and David Davis – quit as foreign secretary and Brexit secretary respectively in July in protest at May’s plan, saying it did not go far enough and would let down the millions of people who voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum.

According to a report in the Sunday Times newspaper, leading Brexiteer lawmakers in May’s party are ready to publish their own plan for Brexit ahead of the party’s annual conference which begins at the end of September.

That would be designed to heap pressure on May who needs to get any deal with Brussels through parliamentary votes in Westminster before Britain is due to leave the EU on March 29 next year. May reiterated that Britain would be ready to leave the EU without a deal if the two sides cannot agree on the divorce terms.

(REUTERS)

1, September 2018

Trump slams poll finding support for his impeachment ⁰

US President Donald Trump has shrugged off the findings of a new poll that shows nearly half of Americans now support his impeachment.

Trump questioned the accuracy of the ABC News/Washington Post poll in a tweet without mentioning the survey’s latest finding on the question of impeachment.

“The ABC/Washington Post Poll was by far the least accurate one 2 weeks out from the 2016 Election,” he posted on Twitter Friday evening.

“I call it a suppression poll – but by Election Day they brought us, out of shame, to about even. They will never learn!”

The survey, released on Friday, has found that 49 percent of Americans believe Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against Trump. That is more than the percentage of voters – 46 percent — who do not support impeachment.

The poll also showed that 60 percent of voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president, a new low.

In the previous ABC News/Washington Post poll in April, Trump’s approval rating stood at 40 percent and his disapproval rating was 56 percent.

Several Democratic Party lawmakers have publicly supported bringing impeachment proceedings against Trump since his longtime attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty last week to charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and violations of election campaign finance laws.

Cohen’s campaign finance law violations stem from hush money payments the lawyer arranged during the 2016 US presidential campaign to women who allegedly had affairs with Trump. Trump is also under growing pressure after a guilty verdict for his former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

The Republican president has been dismissive of congressional efforts to impeach him. In an White House interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday, Trump argued that Dmeocrats would not be able to impeach him because he is “doing a great job.”

“I don’t think they can impeach somebody that’s doing a great job. You look at the economy, you look at jobs, you look at foreign, what’s going on with other countries. You look at trade deals. I’m doing a great job,” he said.

Trump had previously made a similar argument in an interview with Fox News. He has also said that the market would crash and Americans would be “very poor” if he were to be impeached.

Vice President Pence acknowledged that Democrats would l try to impeach President Trump if they regain the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections.

“They’re all talking about it, and so I take them at their word, even though some of them have decided to not talk about that quite so much,” Pence told the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview published Wednesday.

Source: Presstv

1, September 2018

Barrister Akere Muna says ‘We have a corrupt system’ in Cameroon ⁰

The lawyer and chairman of the International Anti-Corruption Conference council says it is time for a change of government and that there must be a zero tolerance policy towards corruption.

Cameroonian lawyer Akere Muna (picture-alliance/dpa/MAXPPP/J. P. Kepseu)

On October 18, Cameroonians will head to the polls to vote in the first presidential election since 2011. Lawyer Akere Muna wants to see an end to the 36-year-rule of incumbent President Paul Biya, He spoke to DW about his desire to bring to an end rampant corruption with which he says the present government is riddled.

DW: What makes you so sure you can become the president of Cameroon?

Akere Muna: Because I think I know what irks this country. I know the misery they’re in. I know that this is a country where 40 percent of the people are below the poverty line. I know what’s been happening in the north and south-west — because I’m from there. I know exactly what it is to be an Anglophone in this country. But I’m saying that we don’t want to change the country, we want to change the government. And that’s my message. We have a huge governance problem linked to corruption and all that goes with it for the past 25 years.

But if the system remains as it is, how will you become president?

Under my government, there will be zero tolerance for corruption. Absolutely zero tolerance. This country is tailor made for any kind of corrupt practice. The World Bank report on public expenses in Cameroon says so. The report says that Cameroonian civil servants don’t live off their salaries. They live from a system where they have put toll gates everywhere and they collect money. So we have a corrupt system that must be fixed.

How will you fix it if the system is so corrupt?

The system is well implanted because the government’s system of fighting corruption is to expect the fish to fry themselves. It doesn’t work. You cannot get people who are thieves to watch over thieves. Cameroon has been ‘zombiefied’. Cameroonians arrest a minister and he produces 1.7 billion CFA (€2,6 million, $2.9 million). Nobody is scandalized. We have all been zombiefied to the point where we are numb. We think everything is normal. That is the saddest fact. Government action should be to benefit Cameroonians, not to punish them, not to allow them to languish in misery.

Your critics think that you are talking a lot but you could have done more because you have worked in organizations outside Cameroon where you could have helped Cameroonians.

The first thing I did when I decided to work for Cameroon was to start the chapter of Transparency International. You know what it cost me? I was styled as [a member of] the opposition, somebody who was not patriotic and the clients from abroad who came to work with me were told that I was an opposition lawyer and they left. I lost 80 percent of my work because of that. When I was the head of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) I pushed for us to start the process; we are members since 2004, founding members, but we hadn’t even started the first stage of the review process. It has to do only with governance. So what do you want me to do? We have a government which closes its eyes so it cannot hear and closes its ears so it cannot see. And that’s a crazy way to behave.

What about all the money that is stashed in foreign banks. If you are elected president, how will you go about getting this money back?

For the past five years I have been in a committee chaired by Thabo Mbeki on illicit financial flows. And I made a proposal which was adopted by the heads of state of the African Union (AU). I proposed that all the money which is found in foreign banks which is frozen should be transferred to the African Development Bank (AfDB). Because those banks that are keeping that money are complicit with the kleptocrats who stole the money from Africa, because they knew that they would take this money illegally and they took it. So they’re handling stolen goods. So my proposal was that we should fight to ensure that all that money is put into a holding account so that when they decide whose money it is, it is sent back. That was my proposal and the AU adopted it. In this country, I did everything wi th Transparency International for us to have a framework law that covers everything about corruption so we can fight corruption with the law. All they did was make a court, but the law is still not clear in different areas. CONAC (Cameroon’s National Anti-Corruption Commission) should be more powerful and be able to investigate and prosecute. They cannot just write a report to the presidency, which gives a political twist to the process.

So what is your mission and objective?

Government action must have the interests of the people at its heart. In this country we must have justice for all, health for all and education for all.

Akere Muna is a Cameroonian lawyer and the current chairman of the International Anti-Corruption Conference council

Culled from DeutcheWelle

30, August 2018

UN Secretary General brags about mediation as his man fails in Southern Cameroons ⁰

In the mediation debate in the UN Security Council on August 29, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres who has banned Inner City Press from the UN since July 3 as it asked about his inaction on Cameroon said, “Since the beginning of my tenure, one of my key priorities has been a surge in diplomacy for peace… My special envoys and representatives pursue consultations, good offices, and formal talks, often alongside envoys and mediators from regional organizations or Member States.”

But simply as one pertinent example, what have Guterres and his envoy Francois Lounceny Fall accomplished amid the carnage in Southern Cameroons. Nothing – or worse. Fall equated secessionists with extremists, thereby providing UN ground cover for their targeting and killing. Guterres as Inner City Press has been informed by sources on the 38th floor and in the Department of Political Affairs decided to remain silent on the killing of Anglophones in order to curry favor with Cameroon’s Ambassador Tommo Monthe, chair of the UN Budget Committee in which Guterres wanted to push through proposal like his “Global Service Delivery Mechanism” which failed. This is the surge in diplomacy?

And, angry at Inner City Press’ coverage, rather than try to get mediation – a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Jose Ramos-Horta, has reached out to that effect – Guterres instead had Inner City Press roughed up right after it spoke with Tommo Monthe on July 3, and banned since, with the prospect of not banned from covering the General Assembly high level week for the first time in 11 years. What surge in diplomacy? It is censorship.

Culled from Inner Press

30, August 2018

Nigeria: Red hat movement supporters say old Buhari unfit to govern ⁰

Supporters of a former state governor in Nigeria have mocked incumbent Muhammadu Buhari stating that as old as he was, Buhari was unfit to govern Nigeria.

Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, a one-time governor of Kano State located in north-central Nigeria also leads Kwankwasiyya Movement – which has a trademark of followers wearing red caps and veils.

A former ally of Buhari, Kwankwaso, currently serving as senator, declared his intention to contest for the presidential slot of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), ahead of 2019 general elections.

The BBC Hausa service shared a video of Kwankwaso supporters busy with anti-Buhari chants in the streets of the capital Abuja. The supporters clad in red caps and veils are heard singing: “old man, he is incapable” – insinuating that Buhari had to leave office.

Kwankwaso was among over a dozen Senators who defected from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the PDP. He served two terms as governor on the PDPticket.

He was also one of the candidates who contested the APC primaries in 2015 but lost to Muhammadu Buhari who eventually beat the PDP candidate and then president Goodluck Jonathan.

With the PDP set to hand their presidential ticket to a Muslim northerner, Kwankwaso will likely come up against ex-veep Atiku Abubakar, Senate president Bukola Saraki (yet to declare his candidacy) and others.

Source: Africa News

28, August 2018

South West CPDM Forum: Martin Nkemngu is running away from Chief Tabetando and Co ⁰

A statement by Martin A. NKEMNGU rapporteur of the sub committee of the Theme “POLITICAL CHOICES OF THE SOUTHWEST REGION” presented at the Southwest Forum which held in Buea on 25th August, 2018.

Martin A. Nkemngu was appointed rapporteur in one of the four Committees of the Southwest Forum.

Their committee was under the Theme “POLITICAL CHOICES OF THE SOUTHWEST REGION ” under the chairmanship of Hon Benjamin Itoe assisted by Hon Nfor Tabetando.

The Committee had over 100 participants who deliberated on their theme.

The Committee deliberated and insisted on their choices.

The Rapporteur was mandated to readout at the plenary session what was dictated to him by the experienced statesmen who dominated the deliberations.

As a professional journalist i do not usually take sides on matters of public interest.

IF WHAT I READ HAS OFFENDED ANYBODY IN ANYWAY, I WISH TO STATE THAT IT WAS NEVER MY THOUGHTS OR BELIEFS.

I wish to use this opportunity to make it abundantly clear that I never went to the forum for any personal gain.

I further state that I left the forum without any financial or material compensation of any kind.

Thanks.

26, August 2018

South Africa summons US chargé d’affaires over Trump’s tweets ⁰

South Africa’s government has summoned US Chargé d’Affaires Jessye Lapenn over US President Donald Trump’s tweet on Pretoria’s land policy.

On his Twitter on Wednesday, Trump said he had asked his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to investigate South Africa’s “land and farm seizures and expropriations and large scale killing of farmers.”

Shortly after Trump’s comment, South Africa responded in a tweet that it “totally rejects this narrow perception, which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.”

The South African government added that the country would “speed up the pace of land reform in a careful and inclusive manner that does not divide” the nation.

Early this month, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) was moving ahead with plans to alter the constitution in order to allow the expropriation of land without compensation, as white South Africans still owned most of the country’s land nearly a quarter of a century after the collapse of the apartheid system in South Africa.

Ramaphosa is trying to accelerate land reform plans before the 2019 general elections in order to “undo a grave historical injustice” against the black people during colonialism and the apartheid era that ended in 1994.

White community in South Africa constitute eight percent of the population possessing 72 percent of farms, while only four percent of the lands are owned by black people making up 80 percent of the population.

According to the AgriSA, an association of agricultural groups across South Africa, 47 farmers have been killed in South Africa since 2017.

The number of attacks on farmers has undergone an increase from 478 in 2016-17 to 561 this year, but the government’s involvement in the killings remains unclear.

Source: Presstv

25, August 2018

Congo-Kinshasa deems candidacy of former warlord Bemba ‘inadmissible’ ⁰

Former warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba’s candidacy in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s upcoming presidential elections was deemed “inadmissible” by the country’s election commission on Friday, as opposition groups cried foul.

The commission rejected the candidacy of Bemba, a rival to DR Congo President Joseph Kabila, on the basis that he had been “convicted by the International Criminal Court” in March 2018 and handed a year in prison and a 300,000 euro fine for bribing witnesses.

Bemba’s war crimes convictions were overturned by the court in The Hague and he returned to Kinshasa in August after being acquitted.

Just ahead of the election commission’s announcement, the political opposition to president Kabila issued a fresh rallying cry, accusing the “powers that be” of seeking to “exclude” multiple opposition candidates.

Opposition groups called on Kabila to free up the electoral process and “stop giving injunctions to the election commission,” according to a statement signed by Bemba, and exiled opposition politicians Moise Katumbi and Felix Tshisekedi.

Overall, the election commission has excluded six out of the 25 candidates who had registered to run in the presidential elections, set for December 23. In addition to Bemba, the commission has barred three of Kabila’s former Prime ministers — Samy Badibanga, Adolphe Muzito, and Antoine Gizenga.

“These exclusions are unacceptable and show once again that the electoral commission is totally dominated by Kabila,” Moise Katumbi wrote on Twitter. A former governor of Katanga who joined the opposition in 2015, Katumbi said that he had been blocked from returning to the DRC to register his candidacy.

He has been living in Belgium since 2016 and has been sentenced absentia to three years in prison. Considered a fugitive by the Ministry of Justice, he is the subject of an international arrest warrant.

“With the population, the opposition, civil society, our partners, let’s keep up the pressure, refuse to accept these sham elections,” Katumbi added.

The six excluded candidates have 48 hours to appeal to the Constitutional Court. The election commission must publish a final list of candidates by September 19.

Suspicion

On August 8, Kabila, 46, eased months of tension when he signalled he would not stand again for the office he has held since 2001.

He threw his support behind a close ally as the candidate of his political majority — former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, who is permanent secretary of Kabila’s People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD).

The DRC opposition, which shed blood in protests against Kabila’s grip on power after his mandate ended in 2016, remains deeply suspicious.

It has raised concerns about nuts-and-bolts issues such as the electoral roll and the voting method, and fears Kabila is simply plotting to remain the power behind the throne.

A country of some 80 million people, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has never known a peaceful transition of power since it gained independence in 1960.

Kabila took over from his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, who was assassinated by a bodyguard.

His tenure over the vast mineral-rich country has been marked by corruption, inequality and unrest. The watchdog Transparency International ranked it 156 out of 176 countries in its 2016 corruption index.

Bemba lost presidential elections to Kabila in 2006 and was later accused of treason when his bodyguards clashed with the army in Kinshasa. In 2007, he fled to Belgium, where he had spent part of his youth.

He was then arrested in Europe on a warrant by the ICC for war crimes committed by his private army in the neighbouring Central African Republic from 2002-3, when its then-president Ange-Felix Patasse sought his help to repel a coup attempt.

He was sentenced in The Hague in 2016 to 18 years before the conviction was overturned in June on appeal.

The ICC declared Bemba could not be held responsible for crimes committed by his troops.

The European Union, like the UN and US, is closely following the election buildup.

It has frozen assets and denied visas to a dozen Congolese figures — including Shadary — on the grounds of human rights abuses since the constitutional end of Kabila’s second and last mandate in December 2016.

(AFP)