The eleven senior officers appointed on the 29th of June 2017 by the 84 year old Cameroonian dictator, have been installed into their functions. The attributes they received came with new responsibilities and tougher assignments.

Performing the installation rituals, the Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo, noted that the appointments made by President Biya are a strategic solution to the security situation in the Far North, East and other parts of the country. They now bear the burden coordinating their respective units and working in synergy with other active forces to protect the territorial integrity of the state.

The defense boss further pointed out that Cameroon’s military today is undergoing a process of renewal of command and the injection of new blood into the system was necessary so that it meets the challenges imposed it by the constantly evolving world marked by the transposition of conflicts and new forms of threats.

The new generals are therefore expected to strategize on a new approach to conventional menaces and adapt their operational mechanisms to counter asymmetric threats imposed by extremist groups such as Boko Haram.

Source: CRTV

For two months now, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, the Minister of Communication and so-called government spokesman has not held a press conference. To be sure, Tchiroma’s last meeting with the press was on the 27th of April, 2017. The Minister of Communication’s silence seems strange to many political commentators in Yaoundé, the nation’s capital and has given rise to many reactions.

Mindful of the fact that a lot has been happening including the assassination of the Bishop of Bafia, some analyst have attempted to explain Issa Tchiroma’s silence by evoking a medical evacuation to Europe. However, a lot of under-the-table talk is currently going on in Cameroon and the least that can be said is that for almost two months, we have not seen Minister Issa Tchiroma intervene spontaneously on the different subjects of the day.

Rumour is circulating that President Biya no longer needs his services following sweeping declarations he made at the beginning of the Southern Cameroons uprising. One of Minister Tchiroma’s secretaries recently opined that, “We no longer have any information from the presidency and my boss can only speak with the approval of the hierarchy. He does not invent anything. What he says comes from the presidency.”

By Rita Akana
Cameroon Concord News

It is difficult to say exactly when the trial involving the Public Prosecutor and Cameroon Radio and Television (Crtv) against Amadou Vamoulké will take place at the Special Criminal Court. The former general manager of the state radio and television is prosecuted for an alleged misappropriation of nearly four billion FCFA.

However, it is known that one year after the legal proceedings against the former GM of Crtv started; there is an evolution in his file. Cameroon Concord News understands that judicial investigation has been closed for two weeks now, by an order of reference to the Special Criminal Court so that the accused will be made to appear before the court. Amadou Vamoulké will have to answer for an alleged diversion of nearly four billion FCFA.

On the 28th of June 2017, the man that the Beti Ewondo political elites replaced with Charles Ndongo at the helm of CRTV, was at the Special Criminal Court. On that day he was notified of the report of the inquiry into his case. According to the order of partial dismissal and referral to the Special Criminal Court, the state prosecutor accused the ex-GM of Crtv of having falsified the amounts of the TV license fee. The inflated amounts are estimated at 3.9 billion FCFA.

The Amadou Vamoulké file is a subject that still arouses some curiosities. Sources close to this case have revealed that before completing the judicial investigation, the judges sent several reports to their hierarchy in which they explained that they had not been able to demonstrate how Amadou Vamoulké was able to intervene in the influx of the audiovisual fee charged to it. The four experts commissioned by the Special Criminal Court also demonstrated that Amadou Vamoulké could not have manipulated an account housed in the Treasury Department and not at Crtv.

Depicting the Special Criminal Court established to prosecute alleged corrupt government officials and the several Alibabas responsible for pilfering from the public treasury as the President’s court is no misnomer. We call it the President’s court because it is one instrument of power through which the President is reining in on perceived opponents from within his CPDM power conduit. An attribute of a genuine court is the fairness of the trial proceedings in cases which are brought before the court for trial. It is not the number of convictions entered against accused. A court is legitimate and recognized as such because of its exercise of judicial, executive, legislative and administrative independence. A court that is independent must be accessible to all citizens after all, is equality before the law, not a constitutionally protected value? The Special Criminal Court is lacking in these attributes of impartiality, judicial independence and accessibility. It is perceived more as the President’s Court than a Court of Justice.

Establishing this court was President Biya’s way of saving himself the embarrassment of being humiliated during his perennial trips abroad as the President of the most corrupt countries in the world. This ranking of the country as the most corrupt or one of the most corrupt countries had a potential to hamper President Biya’s personal pecuniary interests far from the borders of Cameroon. There was therefore a personal interest need to establish the court. Another personal interest need was to avail himself of a legal tool under his direct control to consolidate absolute power, blackmail potential rebels and competitors within the system and to stifle any form of institutional opposition. He perceived the court as a tool with which to whitewash his more than thirty years of corrupt governance and the rape of the economy.

With the war against Boko Haram, the fight against corruption using the Special Criminal Court has afforded Paul Biya justification contest in the next institutionally flawed elections in order to eternalize power purportedly to direct the war against terror and the war against corruption. True to the name the President’s Court, the President has exclusive preserve in referring cases to the Special Court and the power to terminate them. He decides who will be arrested, who will be investigated and who will serve time and who will not.

In one instance, he ordered a detained the late Minister Bapes Bapes released from remand custody at Kondengui when a warrant was issued for his arrest without the presidential fiat. Recently Titus Edzoa a former Secretary-General at the Presidency of the Republic benefitted from a purported Presidential pardon whose primary purpose was the release of a French citizen Thiery Atangana from jail.

The fear of a presidential referral to the Special Criminal Court on additional charges of corruption under a practice devolved under the supervision of Paul Biya called “rouleur compresseur” pushed Titus Edzoa to rejoin the CPDM Party without a public resignation or repudiation of his membership of the party on which he intended to contest presidential elections prior to his incarceration. Edzoa was a victim of this system of presidential justice when new charges were brought against him when his first imprisonment was about to end in order to maintain him in prison.

Cameroonians want the rule of law to be the guarding principle on which justice is administered in the name of the people

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Cameroon Concord News Group

The West Cameroon crisis has intensified, with the election of an interim President of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council, Sesekou Ayuk Julius Tabe. The Roman Catholic Bishops who at the very beginning of the struggle wrote a strongly worded memorandum to the 84 year Cameroonian dictator have now said schools should resume in West Cameroon.

The Francophone political elites have not made any genuine concession to Southern Cameroonians and they continue to keep hundreds of Anglophones in Francophone jails including the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.

A senior official in the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime who spoke to Cameroon Concord News late yesterday, painted SCACUF’s election of Sesekou Ayuk Julius Tabe in the following words: “Are we suppose to pay much attention any time a dog barks? Barking is their nature. They bark when they are scared, they bark when they are hungry, they bark when they need attention, they bark when they get jealous. They bark when they are lonely, and they bark to act tough.”

In this edition of the AGBAW-EBAI DEBATE, we are asking our readers what Southern Cameroonians should expect from President Ayuk Julius Tabe?

WHY REGISTERING AND VOTING IN NEXT YEAR’S ELECTIONS ARE GOOD FOR YOUR CAUSE

Dear fellow West Cameroonians,

After more than eight months of challenging a government that has hurt us for more than five decades, I deem it necessary to bring this important component of the struggle to your attention. While we may differ on the final objective of the struggle, I would like to underscore that we all agree that we have been victims of a system that has transformed us into second-class citizens and many of us have been robbed of the opportunity to serve a nation we also consider ours. Ours has been a kingdom wherein a few have usurped everything and they hold that it is their birth right to play God. They erroneously think that having a job in our country is an act of benevolence on their part. We disagree with that and strongly insist that birthright citizenship requires that we also aspire to certain positions in the country in which we were born. The pain of robbing us of our birthright is one reason we cannot just sit and watch this long party go on indefinitely.

Allow me to point out that nature has endowed us with a lot of resources, especially in the Southwest Region where our sub-soil is rich. We have oil, gold, timber and other resources, but we remain among the poorest of the poor, with many of our parents living on less than a dollar a day. The Southwest region alone accounts for more than 40% of the country’s foreign earnings, most of which come from oil revenues obtained from the oil deposits in the Rio Del Rey Estuary in the Southwest Region. Similarly, though the country’s lone oil refinery is located in the Southwest region, most of the employees are Francophones whose favorite sport is humiliating our people who only get close to their oil when they go to buy fuel at the pump.

Our people have been reduced to sorry spectators of events in their own country. Our parents and siblings who are stuck in the country are still dying of preventable and curable diseases while a few keep on organizing a never-ending party that has transformed our beloved country into a milking cow. In three decades, the Chinese government has successfully pulled more than 700 million Chinese out of poverty, but ours has remained a kingdom of poverty, diseases and death; a kingdom wherein policy- and decision-makers are bereft of the basic skills that can enable them postpone death for our people. We have continued to watch our fellow brothers live and die in despair and nobody in power has ever expressed any regrets for this preventable loss of lives.

On the contrary, these people who schooled on our parents’ taxes have continued to use their forces of law(lessness) and (dis)order to hunt our people as if they have become game. Images of those University of Buea girls being made to swim in raw sewage are stuck in my mind and they make it hard to forgive Dr. Nalova Lyonga who was the Vice Chancellor of the University at the time. She is gone, but the mentality of violence is still in force. She did not organize this alone. The governor of the Southwest Region was involved. The minister of higher education, Fame Ndongo, was aware of the plan. They too must be dismissed for West Cameroonians to know that justice is taking its course.

While the current struggle must continue until we achieve our goal, we must also understand that next year’s elections do constitute a window of opportunity for us. Whether we are federalists, secessionists or independentists, we can still use next year’s presidential, parliamentary and mayoral elections to make a strong statement of intent. The government might have taken a blow to the liver, but it is still fighting to stay in the boxing ring. It may be down, but not out and it is scheming to reinvent itself.

While we may not like the idea of being part of La République, it is clear for now that we are still part of that country and it is incumbent upon us to exercise our citizenship. In this regard, all West Cameroonians of voting age should go get registered for the upcoming elections. If we don’t get registered, we will surely not vote and the mess will continue right in front of us. Let’s stop those Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement (CPDM) parliamentarians, who have been serving themselves for too long, from helping to perpetuate a system that has inflicted pain on us. While they call their party Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement, we the suffering masses know them as “Chop People Dem Money” (CPDM) and they have been crushing our money for more than fifty years while we watch helplessly from a distance.

We can end that by getting registered for the elections that will come up next year. We should understand if we give our votes to one party for that party to defend us in the National Assembly, we will be able to make some inroads. We are capable of reversing a few things if we pool our votes.

Today, we have successfully struck fear in the minds of those who have, for more than thirty years, claimed that they have been representing us. We have made them to feel our anger. We are bitter because they have hurt us. We are angry because they have robbed us of our childhood and happiness. We are frustrated because they have reduced us to second-class citizens. We can put an end to that anger and frustration by registering and voting in next year’s elections where we will have the opportunity to replace the mayors and parliamentarians in West Cameroon who have never bothered to identify with the struggling population. Next year could usher in a lot of change. Let’s not allow that opportunity pass us by.

Make no mistake, we may not yet be in the Promised Land, but we have made significant progress in that direction. Francophones have understood our plight. We have educated them and many of them are on our side today. Even the government knows we are a formidable force. With two million of our brothers out of the country, we have a historic moment to make our voices heard. It is our right. It is our birthright and we must claim it. Next year should be that great moment for us to retire those CPDM parliamentarians who have only served their children and families for years. We should retire them and make them feel the pain we have felt for decades.

When we register, we must understand that the road ahead is still bumpy. We are not dealing with a government that believes in fair-play. We are dealing with a government that is intent on keeping us in poverty for as long as they want. But we have a trump card – our unity of purpose. We may disagree on many issues, but we all agree that our government has not served us and we have an opportunity to replace it through the ballot boxes. We will have to cast our votes and we must wait at the polling station for every vote to be counted. Our votes must count and we must use that vote to determine our destiny. We can no longer put our fate and destiny into old shaky hands that have never been there for us. It is time to be very strategic and every window of opportunity must be used to achieve our goal.

In all of this, the Diaspora has a role to play. Just as every one of you out there called their families to stop the children from going to school, so too should you use the same media to inform your loved ones to get registered for the upcoming elections. Let’s not miss any opportunity available to us to make our voices heard. Let’s punish those parliamentarians and mayors who have not served. Let’s punish them for serving people in Yaounde and not the people they are supposed to serve. The upcoming elections are a great moment. We cannot afford to miss that golden opportunity. Let each and every one of us play their role. We owe it to our children and future generations.

Sincerely,

By Joachim Arrey, PhD

About the Author: The author of this piece is a keen observer of Cameroon’s political and economic landscape. He has published extensively on the country’s political and economic development, especially in the early 90s when the wind of change was blowing across the African continent. He has served as a translator, technical writer, journalist and editor for several international organizations and corporations across the globe. He studied communication at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom and technical writing in George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. He is also a trained translator and holds a Ph.D.