Politics

19, March 2024

Deposing the Beti-Bulu Monarch after 42 years in power ⁰

Paul Biya, the tribal chief passing for a head of state, has faced allegations of corruption and authoritarianism during his long tenure. Critics have accused his Beti-Bulu-Ewondo government of widespread corruption, human rights abuses and political repression. And he remains the master at curbing press freedoms.

Is Biya taking the last kicks of a dying horse? The Francophone dominated Cameroon government military is presently occupying most of Southern Cameroons. Cameroonians are being told that the dictator intends to run again in the 2025 presidential election.

Boko Haram is alive and active in the Far North region. The security situation in the East region is deteriorating. Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces have now killed more than three thousands government soldiers and police, an indication that the Ambazonia conflict is intensifying.

Meanwhile the prolonged, miserable plight of large numbers of citizens both in English and French Cameroun has grown. The on-going ill-treatment of innocent Southern Cameroons civilians in the seven year conflict is now unacceptable in the eyes of many deep within the African Union, even to Yaounde’s friends. Pretending in French speaking Cameroun that all is well, allowing crime to flourish and spread in the cities of Douala and Yaoundé, while refusing to dialogue with the jailed Southern Cameroons leaders is not the proper way to conduct politics.

Some of Cameroon’s European allies including Canada and the US, understandably, are out of patience with the government of the 91-year-old President Biya. The general consensus is that Biya should go! After 42 years in power, even prominent Francophone CPDM officials are now recalibrating their positions and saying Biya should be replaced.

We of the Cameroon Concord Group are pushing the military to begin setting out the various ways in which Cameroon as a nation could dump Mr Biya as leader. Biya is not a cure. He has never been a cure. He was never going to be a cure.

We now know that Cameroon’s presidential election is coming up next year, though no campaign has started but threats from the Minister of Territorial Administration against some progressive political parties.

The 2025 election offers the right opportunity for Cameroonians including those in the military and the National Gendarmerie to depose the Beti Monarch.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

17, March 2024

Trump warns US voters of a ‘bloodbath’ if he loses presidential election ⁰

Former US president Donald Trump warned of a “bloodbath for the country” if he is not elected in November.

Donald Trump told a rally in Ohio on Saturday that November’s presidential election will be the “most important date” in US history, painting his campaign for the White House as a turning point for the country.

Days after securing his position as the presumptive Republican nominee, the former president also warned of a “bloodbath” if he is not elected – though it was not clear what he was referring to, with the remark coming in the middle of comments about threats to the US auto industry.

“The date – remember this, November 5 – I believe it’s going to be the most important date in the history of our country,” the 77-year-old told rally-goers in Vandalia, Ohio, repeating well-worn criticisms that his rival, President Joe Biden, is the “worst” president.

Criticising what he said were Chinese plans to build cars in Mexico and sell them to Americans, he stated: “We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected.”

“Now if I don’t get elected it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole – that’s going to be the least of it, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country. That’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars.”

As Trump’s comment gained traction on social media, Biden’s campaign released a statement calling the Republican a “loser” at the ballot box in 2020 who then “doubles down on his threats of political violence.

“He wants another January 6 but the American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence, and his thirst for revenge,” the campaign said, referring to the deadly attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters in 2021.

Later, Biden spoke at a dinner in Washington, where he also warned of “an unprecedented moment in history.”

“Freedom is under assault… The lies about the 2020 election, the plot to overturn it, to embrace the Jan. 6 insurrection pose the greatest threat to our democracy since the American Civil War,” he said.

“In 2020, they failed, but … the threat remains.”

The 81-year-old, who has waved off concerns that he is too old for a second term, leavened his rhetoric with humor.

“One candidate’s too old and mentally unfit to be president,” he said of the presidential race. “The other guy’s me.”

Border issues

Earlier this month Trump and Biden each won enough delegates to clinch their party nominations in the 2024 presidential race, all but assuring a rematch and setting up one of the longest election campaigns in US history.

Among the issues Trump is campaigning on is sweeping reform of what he calls Biden’s “horror show” immigration policies, despite the ex-president successfully pressuring Republicans to block a bill in Congress that included the toughest border security measures in decades.

On Saturday he invoked the border again as he reached out to minorities who have traditionally voted Democrat.

He said Biden had “repeatedly stabbed African-American voters in the back” by granting work permits to “millions” of immigrants, warning that they and Hispanic Americans “are going to be the ones that suffer the most.”

For decades Ohio had been seen as a bellwether battleground state, though it has trended more strongly Republican since Trump’s White House win in 2016.

The rally came a day after Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, said he would not endorse his old boss for a second White House term.

Source: AFP

13, March 2024

Biya’s continued stay in power: Etoudi warns opposition groups ahead of election ⁰

Cameroon’s government has branded two political coalition groups as having an “illegal character” and warned them to suspend their activities 18 months ahead of a presidential election.

International NGOs accuse the regime of President Paul Biya, who has ruled with an iron fist for more than 41 years, of systematically suppressing opposition.

“The Political Alliance for Change (APC) and the Alliance for Political Transition in Cameroon (ATP) are not political parties under the law,” said Territorial Administration Minister Paul Atanga Nji in a statement late Tuesday.

“These clandestine movements cannot carry out any political activity.

“Despite the illegal character of these movements, their promoters hold meetings, press conferences and consultations looking to recruit new members,” he said.

The statement also expressed concern over “pseudo-associations ahead of the 2025 presidential election”.

The APC dismissed what it called “curious threats,” in a “statement which indicates panic”.

The alliance said it was “ready to face the elections victoriously” next year.

The APC, led by former deputy Jean Michel Nintcheu, was set up in December at a congress of the leading opposition Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (MRC), which backed Maurice Kamto for president in the 2018 ballot.

Kamto came second and called Biya’s re-election a fraud. He was jailed without trial the following year, after staging peaceful protests.

The movement boycotted legislative elections in 2018 and over the next two years saw 700 of its supporters imprisoned, including Kamto.

Most were freed after eight months in detention without trial but 47 were jailed by a military tribunal in 2021 — 44 remain in prison today.

Rights group Amnesty international last year charged 91-year-old Biya’s regime with using military tribunals to arbitrarily detain the opposition, civilians, journalists and civil society figures on the pretext that they had committed terrorist acts.

Source: AFP

6, March 2024

Senegal sets March 24 as new date for delayed presidential election ⁰

The Senegalese government has set March 24 as the new date for the country’s delayed presidential election, according to an official statement issued Wednesday after a meeting of the Council of Ministers.

President Macky Sall who faces term limits at the end of his second period in office, said in early February that he was postponing an election for 10 months, just weeks before it was set to take place on Feb. 25.

But Senegal’s highest election authority, the Constitutional Council, rejected that move and ordered the government to set a new election date as soon as possible.

“The President of the Republic informed the Council of Ministers of the setting of the date of the presidential election for Sunday March 24, 2024,” government spokesperson Abdou Karim Fofana said in the statement. “The President of the Republic also informed the Prime Minister and ministers of the formation of a new Government.”

Source: AP

5, March 2024

US Supreme Court rules Colorado cannot ban Trump from presidential ballot ⁰

The US Supreme Court has struck down efforts by individual states to disqualify Donald Trump from running for president using an anti-insurrection constitutional clause.

The unanimous ruling is specific to Colorado, but it also overrides challenges brought in other states.

Colorado had barred Mr Trump from its Republican primary, arguing he incited the 2021 Capitol riot.

The court ruled that only Congress, rather than the states, has that power.

The top court’s decision clears the way for Mr Trump to compete in the Colorado primary scheduled for Tuesday.

Mr Trump is the front-runner for the Republican nomination and looks likely to face a rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s general election.

On Monday, the ex-president immediately claimed victory following the ruling, taking to his Truth Social media platform to claim a “big win for America”. The message was followed by a fundraising email sent to supporters of his campaign.

Speaking from his estate in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, soon afterwards, he said that the decision was “very well crafted” and will “go a long way towards bringing our country together, which it needs”.

“You can’t take someone out of a race because an opponent would like it that way,” Mr Trump added.

Colorado’s Secretary of State, Jena Griswold, said that she was disappointed by the ruling and that “Colorado should be able to bar oath-breaking insurrections from our ballot”.

Additionally, the watchdog group that brought the case in Colorado, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), said in a statement that while the court “failed to meet the moment”, it is “still a win for democracy: Trump will go down in history as an insurrectionist”.

Maine and Illinois had followed Colorado in kicking Mr Trump off the ballot on similar grounds.

The efforts in both those states were put on hold while his challenge to the Colorado ruling was escalated to the Supreme Court.

“We conclude that states may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office,” the court’s opinion says. “But states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Sections 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the presidency.”

The nine justices ruled that only Congress can enforce the 14th Amendment’s provisions against federal officials and candidates.

Part of the Civil War-era amendment – Section 3 – bars federal, state and military officials who have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the US from holding office again.

Groups including Free Speech For People had argued that the attempt to delay the peaceful transfer of power on 6 January 2021 matched the definition of insurrection outlined in the amendment.

One of the court’s justices, Amy Coney Barrett, wrote separately that the fact that all nine justices agreed on the outcome of the case is “the message that Americans should take home”.

Source: BBC

4, March 2024

Putin seeks to ‘destabilize’ Germany with wiretap leak, defense minister says ⁰

Germany on Sunday accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to sow disunity with the wiretap leak of a confidential German army discussion on the Ukraine war, at a time when Berlin is under pressure to supply the Taurus missile to Kyiv.

A 38-minute recording of the talks was posted online late Friday on Russian social media, with the participants discussing the possible use of German-made Taurus missiles and their potential impact.

The discussions also covered the use of long-range missiles provided to Kyiv by France and Britain.

“It is about using this recording to destabilise and unsettle us,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, adding that he “hoped that Putin will not succeed”.

“It is part of an information war that Putin is carrying out,” he added.

Pistorius said he was not aware of any further leaks at the army.

He added that he would await the result of a military probe into the case to decide what consequences to draw.

Germany’s Scholz vows probe into ‘very serious’ leak of army talks on Ukraine war

Kyiv has long been clamouring for Germany to provide it with Taurus missiles, which can reach targets up to 500 kilometres (about 300 miles) away.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has so far refused to send the missiles, fearing that it would lead to an escalation of the conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia.

The acquisition of German Taurus missiles would provide a massive boost for Ukraine as Kyiv struggles to fend off Russia’s invasion.

France and Britain have supplied Kyiv with SCALP or Storm Shadow missiles, both of which have a range of about 250 kilometres.

But Scholz has said that Germany could not justify matching British and French moves in sending long-range missiles to Ukraine and supporting the weapon system’s deployment.

“This is a very long-range weapon, and what the British and French are doing in terms of targeting and supporting targeting cannot be done in Germany,” Scholz said, without specifying exactly what he meant.

Britain denied that it had any direct involvement in operating the missiles.

“Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow and its targeting processes are the business of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” a Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson said in a statement to AFP.

Source: AFP

29, February 2024

Chad opposition leader killed in army attack on party headquarters ⁰

A leading opponent of Chad’s ruling junta Yaya Dillo Djerou has been killed in an army assault on his party headquarters, a government spokesman told AFP Thursday.

Dillo died on Wednesday “where he had retreated, at the headquarters of his party. He didn’t want to surrender and fired on law enforcement,” Abderaman Koulamallah, who is also communications minister, said.

The prosecutor general earlier spoke of “dead including Yaya Dillo” without detailing the circumstances.

Dillo, who led the opposition Socialist Party Without Borders (PSF), was accused of having led an attack against the offices of the internal security agency overnight on Tuesday to Wednesday.

It came after the arrest of a PSF member accused of an “assassination attempt against the president of the supreme court”.

Speaking to AFP on Wednesday, Dillo denied any involvement in the incident, denouncing the claim as a “lie” and politically motivated.

“I wasn’t present,” he said.

Dillo also condemned an attempted attack against the supreme court president as “staged”.

On Tuesday, Chad announced it would hold a presidential election on May 6, which both transitional president Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno and Dillo — who were cousins — planned to contest.

Source: AFP

28, February 2024

Yaoundé: opposition hopes for a renaissance ⁰

The opposition in Cameroon has had a worrying trajectory since it was legalised in 1990.

Things looked positive at first. Vibrant parties emerged, such as the Social Democratic Front (SDF), led by the charismatic Ni John Fru Ndi. It won more than half of the seats in the National Assembly.

While President Paul Biya secured re-election, he beat Ndi by only 4%, and everything changed. Understanding how close he was to defeat, Biya clamped down. Repression became more intense, and restrictive measures such as bans on meetings and demonstrations were introduced.

Worse, Biya’s efforts to divide and rule the opposition by sponsoring some groups and co-opting others has led to damaging fragmentation. Today there are more than 300 opposition parties; none can compete with Biya’s Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.

But Biya is not the only problem. A lack of common vision, underpinned by ethnic divisions, has prevented the emergence of a more coherent challenge to the ruling party’s hegemony. The SDF has also struggled to replace Ndi, and has suffered from the conflict in the English-speaking regions of the country, which has made it difficult to campaign in its stronghold.

Taken together, these challenges explain why the opposition holds only 28 out of 180 seats in the National Assembly and has no senators at all. Even the decision of Maurice Kamto to form the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) in 2012 failed to deliver political change.

Despite considerable fanfare, Kamto was controversially given only 14% of the vote in the 2018 presidential election.

Even in the darkest moments, however, there is hope. Having boycotted legislative and municipal elections in 2020, the MRC will take part in the 2025 polls.

Opposition parties have also started to draw together to promote a mass voter registration drive and form a coalition around the Alliance for Change. Biya remains in control, but opposition supporters can now dream of a renaissance.

Culled from the Mail & Guardian

27, February 2024

Nato allies reject Emmanuel Macron idea of troops to Ukraine ⁰

Several Nato countries, including Germany and the UK, have ruled out deploying ground troops to Ukraine, after French President Emmanuel Macron said “nothing should be excluded”.

Mr Macron said there was “no consensus” on sending Western soldiers to Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has warned of direct conflict if Nato troops deploy there.

Russian forces have recently made gains in Ukraine and Kyiv has urgently appealed for more weapons.

Mr Macron told a news conference on Monday evening: “We should not exclude that there might be a need for security that then justifies some elements of deployment.

“But I’ve told you very clearly what France maintains as its position, which is a strategic ambiguity that I stand by.”

The French leader was speaking in Paris, which is hosting a crisis meeting in support of Ukraine attended by heads of European states, as well as the US and Canada.

His comments prompted a response from other European and Nato member countries.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said there had been no change to the agreed position that no European country or Nato member state would send troops to Ukraine.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokesman said the country had no plans for a large-scale military deployment to Ukraine, beyond the small number of personnel already training Ukrainian forces.

The office of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Italy’s “support does not include the presence of troops from European or Nato states on Ukrainian territory”.

Mr Peskov, on behalf of the Kremlin, called Mr Macron’s suggestion “a very important new element” adding it was absolutely not in the interests of Nato members.

“In that case, we would need to talk not about the probability, but about the inevitability [of direct conflict],” he said.

Earlier, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg denied considering whether troops would be sent to Ukraine, although he insisted the alliance would continue to support Ukraine, which is not a Nato member.

That position has been echoed by a number of Nato member states including Spain, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Nato is a military alliance whose 31 members agree that, if a member state is attacked, they will help it defend itself. Sweden is set to become its latest member after receiving Hungary’s approval this week.

Kyiv is critically dependent on modern weapons supplies from its Western allies, particularly the US, to continue fighting Russia – a far bigger military force with an abundance of artillery ammunition.

But the approval of a much needed $95bn (£75bn) US aid package – including $61bn for Ukraine – faces an uphill battle in the US House of Representatives.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who took part in Monday’s meeting in Paris by video link, said that “everything we do together to defend against Russian aggression adds real security to our nations for decades to come”.

Source: BBC

26, February 2024

ECOWAS Lifts sanctions on Niger and calls for unity within the economic bloc ⁰

After months of wrangling following coups d’etat in Mali Guinea, Burkina Faso and Niger, the West African regional bloc has lifted most sanctions imposed on Niger over last year’s coup, in a new push for dialogue following a series of political crises that have rocked the region in recent months.

A no-fly zone and border closures were among the sanctions being lifted “with immediate effect”, the president of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, Omar Alieu Touray, said on Saturday.

The lifting of the sanctions is “on purely humanitarian grounds” to ease the suffering caused as a result, Touray told reporters after the bloc’s summit in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

The summit aimed to address existential threats facing the region as well as implore three military-led nations that have quit the bloc – Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso – to rescind their decision.

The three were suspended from ECOWAS following recent coups.

Since then, they have declared their intention to permanently withdraw from the bloc, but ECOWAS has called for the three states to return.

Speaking in his opening remarks at the start of the summit, ECOWAS chairman and Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said the bloc “must re-examine our current approach to the quest for constitutional order in four of our Member States”, referring to the three suspended countries, as well as Guinea, which is also military-led.

Tinubu urged Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso to “reconsider the decision” and said they should “not perceive our organisation as the enemy”.

ECOWAS also said it had lifted certain sanctions on Malian individuals and some on junta-led Guinea, which has not said it wants to leave the bloc but has also not committed to a timeline to return to democratic rule.

Touray said some targeted sanctions and political sanctions remained place for Niger, without giving details.

However, ECOWAS placed “some conditions” on the lifting of the sanctions, he added. “They want the immediate release of President Mohamed Bazoum and members of his family.”

Niger’s President Bazoum was deposed in a military coup last July, prompting ECOWAS to suspend trade and impose sanctions on the country. He is still imprisoned in the presidential palace in Niamey. On the eve of the summit, his lawyers urged ECOWAS to demand his release.

Earlier this week, ECOWAS co-founder and former Nigerian military leader General Yakubu Gowon also called for the bloc to lift “all sanctions that have been imposed on Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger”.

“Even before today’s summit, there has been a change in tone, in language and also the approach of ECOWAS entirely to the sanctions and embargoes imposed on these three West African countries,” Idris said.

Easing sanctions is seen as a gesture of appeasement as ECOWAS tries to persuade the three states to remain in the nearly 50-year-old alliance and rethink a withdrawal. Their planned exit would undermine regional integration efforts and bring a messy disentanglement from the bloc’s trade and services flows, worth nearly $150bn a year.

ECOWAS on Saturday gave the three military-led countries “an opportunity to be members of the organisation once again”, Idris said, adding that they asked them to be part of “technical discussions of the ECOWAS bloc” without restoring them as full participating heads of state at summits or major conferences.

After Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger announced that they would permanently withdraw from the alliance and formed a grouping called the Alliance of Sahel States, “the ECOWAS institution itself was shaken”, Idris said.

“[ECOWAS] is an organisation that is gradually losing its steam, and there is the danger of it being fragmented … There is also the concern that unless ECOWAS brings these people back into the fold, there is the danger of coups spreading in West Africa,” he added.

Compiled by Alain A. Ebot

Source: Al Jazeera