5, February 2020

Biya among world’s longest ruling leaders? ⁰

Some world leaders serve a set term and others go on to rule for decades.

Here is a list of current world leaders who have held onto power the longest. The list excludes monarchs.

Equatorial Guinea

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 77, has been president of the central African nation for some 40 years after toppling his uncle in a 1979 coup. He tops the list of the world’s current longest-ruling leader.

His government has been besieged by allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

The President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema meets with Prime Minister of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn (not seen) at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on February 21, 2018. (Photo by Minasse Wondimu Hailu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

His son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, is also the country’s vice president. In 2016, his collection of 25 exotic cars were seized during a corruption investigation and sold at a charity in Switzerland for over $27 million.

Cameroon

Paul Biya, 86, took office in 1982 after a seven-year stint as prime minister. His presidency has faced threats from opposition parties and increased violence in the north and west portions of the country, where separatists have fought for a separate independent state.

President of Cameroon Paul Biya with Chinese President Xi Jinping (not pictured) attend a signing ceremony at The Great Hall Of The People on March 22, 2018 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Cameroon also faces threats from Boko Haram militants across the border in Nigeria.

Cambodia

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen began his fifth term in 2018, cementing his status among the world’s longest rulers. The 67-year-old has been in power for 34 years, strong-arming his way through his country’s political system.

He fled to Vietnam during the regime of Pol Pot, when an estimated two million Cambodians were killed. He returned in 1979, eventually becoming prime minister in 1985 in a Vietnamese-backed single-party communist government and led Cambodia through a civil war against the radical communist Khmer Rouge.

Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen adjusts his glasses during the 25th International Conference on The Future of Asia on May 30, 2019 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

He cracked down on critics and opponents after the 2013 general election showed declining support for his ruling party.

Uganda

Longtime President Yoweri Museveni is expected to return as leader for his sixth term after a court endorsed a law removing an age limit for the country’s president.

Prime Minister Theresa May meets President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda during the London Conference on Somalia at Lancaster House on May 11, 2017 in London. (Photo by Hannah McKay – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Museveni, 75, took power by force in 1986 and declared himself president. He’s been re-elected several times since, though international observers have noted issues with the polling process in several elections.

Iran

Iran’s second Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wields exceptional power over the country. Before taking the position in 1989, he served as the president, a largely ceremonial role.

In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting with Iranian officials, participants of the 31st International Islamic Unity Conference and ambassadors from Islamic countries, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2017. Khamenei condemned President Donald Trump’s imminent recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

Khamenei, 80, is considered Iran’s most powerful figure and has control over its branches of government, military and the media. He is the second-longest serving autocrat in the Middle East and the second-longest serving leader in Iran in the last century, after the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

Other mentions:

Deceased North Korean founder Kim Il-sung ruled his rouge state for 46 years before dying in 1994 while in office.

Albania’s Enver Hoxha remained in power for four decades before his 1985 death, and Fidel Castro came to power in the 1959 Cuban revolution. The deceased leader handed the presidency to his brother Raul in 2008.

Source: Fox News

5, February 2020

Ultra-secure phones of Africa’s presidents: Biya can almost never be reached on his mobile phones ⁰

Well aware of the surveillance capabilities of major companies in the sector, Africa’s heads of state try to make their phones as secure as Fort Knox. Every leader is geared up and takes extra precautions to prevent the ever-looming risk of being tapped. We take a look at the phones used by Africa’s presidents and politicians’ practices.

In West Africa, some leaders have been won over by French technologies.

French presidents Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande used a Teorem, an ultra-secure clamshell phone with physical buttons created by Thales. However, using it requires a certain amount of patience, and Sarkozy hated it for that reason.

Recently, the French company acquired Ercom and added another jewel to its collection: CryptoSmart technology, developed in partnership with Samsung, which protects communications and mobile data. Emmanuel Macron uses the system, a fact that Ercom’s marketing department has not let go unnoticed. The France’s President has a Samsung Galaxy S7 with a touch screen, equipped with a tamper-proof encryption key and a data protection chip. Orange Cyberdéfense is behind this black box-like system, whose data can be destroyed remotely if the phone is lost or stolen.

Other political figures prefer to use cheaper alternatives such as Hoox, a phone developed by the French company Bull and later acquired by Atos (priced at around €2,000 [$2,200]), Sectera Edge from US-based General Dynamics (priced at under €3,000), BlackPhone, designed by US-based Silent Circle (priced at around €550) and GranitePhone by Archos (priced at around €800).

From texts to Telegram

BlackBerry products have also been a big hit in Africa, with Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame and Senegal’s President Macky Sall reportedly loyal users of the brand, just like Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé, who was one of the first presidents in French-speaking Africa to communicate via text messaging some 15 years ago.

While Guinea’s Alpha Condé, who never leaves the house without his three or four phones, made the switch from classic text messaging to WhatsApp and eventually to Telegram without a hitch, other heads of state from the pre-independence generation have opted for more “radical” solutions.

Cameroon’s Paul Biya, the Republic of Congo’s Denis Sassou-Nguesso, Mali’s Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta and Djibouti’s Ismaïl Omar Guelleh can almost never be reached on their mobile phones, which they use very selectively.

Côte d’Ivoire’s Alassane Ouattara puts his complete trust in an old Nokia model while also keeping an additional phone by his side. One of his close allies and former counterparts, Sarkozy, did the same during his presidential campaigns. Or maybe it was his alias, Paul Bismuth. . .

Backdoors

Just like these heads of state, most of the continent’s political figures have had to switch from one technology to another to shield themselves against prying ears. Over the past few years, conversations starting with “Hello, can we talk?” and ending with “Yes, of course, but not on this line” have become extremely common in the African political scene.

Opposition members, thinking rightly or wrongly that their local phones are being tapped, have been using WhatsApp for a long time now. “It’s for security reasons,” said one of them.

However, an expert we consulted smiled as he told us that this sense of security is an “illusion. Most governments have acquired technologies that are able to circumvent the app’s security protocols (Facebook bought it in 2014). It’s more complicated than retrieving a traditional text message, but it’s doable. There are backdoor points of entry into the system.”

More cunning than the others, a (very) senior official in Central Africa divulged his secret to us: he has switched to Telegram.

Created by Russian developers and today based out of Berlin, the app built its reputation around strict data encryption. As a result, quite a few political figures prefer it over WhatsApp. “That’s bogus,” said our expert, amused. “Both apps have the notorious backdoors.”

The alternative: Signal

Nevertheless, the most knowledgeable experts, i.e., those familiar with the security sector and spy games of every sort, are increasingly using Signal. Brought into the spotlight by the famous American whistle-blower Edward Snowden, the app was developed by Open Whisper Systems, a company from San Francisco which is entirely funded by donations and supported by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit organisation.

As our expert put it rather vividly: “WhatsApp and Telegram are like locked cars on the side of the road, whereas Signal is like an armoured car inside of a tunnel. Hackers can still get in, but it’s going to cost them a lot.”

Culled from The Africa Report

4, February 2020

HIV drugs touted as weapon in war on coronavirus ⁰

As doctors scramble to contain the fast-spreading coronavirus, a potent brew of anti-retroviral and flu drugs has emerged as a possible defence against the disease that has killed hundreds.

But the science is inconclusive on whether they are actually effective, and experts say a specific treatment could take years to develop.

Here is what we know — and don’t know — about the drugs deployed against the SARS-like virus.

– Why anti-retrovirals? –

Patients diagnosed with the common flu are often prescribed an antiviral drug widely known as Tamiflu.

But seasonal flu is “very different from the Chinese coronavirus”, said Sylvie van der Werf at the Paris-based Pasteur Institute.

So far the new coronavirus has infected tens of thousands worldwide and killed more than 420 people, mostly in mainland China.

Two weeks ago Chinese doctors confirmed they had been giving anti-HIV drugs to coronavirus patients in Beijing, based on a 2004 study published after the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that showed “favourable” responses.

Used together, lopinavir and ritonavir decrease the amount of HIV cells in a patient’s blood, stripping back the virus’s ability to reproduce and attack the immune system.

Doctors have also combined the treatment with another anti-flu drug called oseltamivir, hoping the creative cocktail can sap the new coronavirus of its strength.

In Thailand, where there are now 25 confirmed cases, a 71-year-old Chinese patient returned a negative test within 48 hours of being given the three drugs.

But Thai doctors urged caution, saying the medicine needed to be given under supervision due to possible side effects.

– Does it actually work? –

In short, we don’t know for sure.

The 2004 study showed anti-retrovirals used on patients with SARS had “substantial clinical benefits”, experts in China said.

But random trials on 41 coronavirus patients had “limitations”, according to research published in The Lancet on January 24.

Doctors in Singapore — where there are 24 cases — have followed suit with the anti-retroviral treatment, said the country’s chief health scientist Tan Chorh Chuan, without going into details about the results.

Other studies looked “promising” and a clinical trial has started in Wuhan.

“These agents appear to be effective but we can’t be certain at the moment,” he said Tuesday.

– What’s big pharma doing? –

Biotech firms are working on a suite of treatment options.

California-based Gilead Sciences said they are working with Chinese authorities on clinical trials to determine if remdesivir — a drug used to treat SARS — is effective.

Meanwhile three teams around the world — in China, Australia and the Pasteur Institute in France — have now succeeded in cultivating the coronavirus in the laboratory.

That could lead to pinpointing its “Achilles’ heel” by understanding how it replicates in cells, said Christophe d’Enfert, the institute’s scientific director.

– So what should you do? –

The best approach for the general public is to try and “stay healthy” so your immune system can offer a robust response to the threat of the virus, said Singapore’s health minister Gan Kim Yong.

But for already infected patients, hospitals must provide support to prevent complications.

“Chances are if you already have underlying medical conditions… your defences are weak and your organs may already be impaired, and therefore the risk of death is higher,” he told parliament Monday.

– Home remedies and quackery –

Misinformation has proliferated online about home and traditional remedies.

A liquid made with honeysuckle and flowering plants used in traditional medicine was initially claimed to “inhibit” the virus, sparking frenzied buying in China.

But Chinese state media later sounded a more cautionary note, as researchers warned of potential side effects.

In India, where there are three reported confirmed cases, the government has touted ancient homeopathy and Ayurveda remedies as the answer.

The jury is out on the effectiveness, and doctors still recommended that patients be treated in a hospital.

Online posts erroneously identified saline as a coronavirus killer in Australia, while in Thailand social media suggested antiseptic should be sprayed in a person’s mouth.

The antiseptic company Betadine has refuted the claim.

Source: AFP

4, February 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Election office in Tombel burnt down few days before twin poll ⁰

An office serving the Biya regime’s election commission (ELECAM) has been burned down in Tombel in the Kupe Muanenguba County in Southern Cameroons just some few days before the divided country is due to vote in a twin poll.

The fire in Kupe Muanenguba reportedly destroyed ballot boxes and voting slips transported there by soldiers loyal to the government in Yaoundé.

A spokesperson for the exiled Ambazonia Interim Government called it a victory for the people of Southern Cameroons but he also observed that the Ambazonia action was not a setback for the preparations for the election as the results are already known by the French Cameroun leaders in Yaoundé.

The consortium of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate says the twin poll is due to be held on the 9^th of February.

Last week, French Cameroun opposition parties warned of potential electoral fraud.

By Kingsley Betek in Kumba

4, February 2020

Biya Regime Urges Women to Vote Next Week Despite Threats ⁰

Civic groups, political parties and the government are pleading for the women of Cameroon to vote in next week’s local and parliamentary elections, despite threats by separatist groups who have vowed to disrupt the polls.

Female candidates, and women who campaigned on behalf of others fear their efforts may amount to nothing if women do not come out to vote.

Representatives of NGOs and government ministries are joining political parties at rallies in Cameroon’s capital in what they call a special campaign for women to perform their civic duties next Sunday.

Female candidate Alvine Yinda says she is impressed with the initiative because the absence of women at polling stations on election day would give men an unfair advantage.

She says female candidates of her Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement, CPDM, have decided to encourage all women who registered to make sure they come out en masse to vote on Feb. 9, 2020. She says they are working with all contesting political parties to make sure women take part in the decision-making process.

Mumah Bih Yvonne, national coordinator of the NGO Cameroon Women’s Peace Movement, says their campaign is for women to support lists that have a majority of female candidates. She says these are the only ones they are sure can represent the views of women.

“We need to be there so that we impact the decisions that affect us like women. If we need a health center or women need to attend antenatal in a certain area, a woman is well placed to understand the plight of women. Women have a different way of looking at governance but if we are not there to influence policies, how do we get that level playing ground that we (women) are looking for.”

FILE - A woman searches for her name at a polling station during elections, in Yaounde, Cameroon, Oct. 7, 2018. — FILE – A woman searches for her name at a polling station during elections, in Yaounde, Cameroon, Oct. 7, 2018.

Women historically underrepresented

The elections were called by Cameroonian President Paul Biya last November. Before then, delegations of women led by the NGO More Women in Politics visited towns and villages encouraging females to run for political office

Political parties agreed with the NGO and increased to 42 percent the number of female candidates in the race.

But traditionally, many women do not vote because they are restricted by their husbands and communities, who believe they should carry out only domestic chores or go to the farms. Some women fail to participate due to illiteracy.

This year, it is feared the number of female voters will further decrease because of the separatist conflict that has killed at least 3,000 people in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions. There, armed groups fighting to separate the English-speaking regions from the French-speaking majority country have vowed the elections will not take place.

Most voters in the North- and Southwest have relocated to safer areas where the election commission says it has taken special measures to enable them to vote.

Within the past three days, the SDF and CPDM political parties said the separatists attacked four campaign teams in the towns of Mengwi, Batibo and Bafut and abducted at least 20 people, including 13 women whose whereabouts are still unknown.

Cameroon’s minister of women’s empowerment and the family, Marie Theres Abena Ondoua, says such acts of intimidation should not discourage women.

“It is important for them to go and decide, chose the best candidates and take into consideration the lists that have valuable women, women who can bring a plus to the development of this country,” she said.

Ondoua said the government would protect all voters.

More than 40 percent of Cameroon’s nearly nine million voters are female, and women in the central African country constitute about 52 percent of the population.

But just six percent of Cameroon’s 380 mayors, 31 percent of the 180 lawmakers at the National Assembly and 21 percent of the senators are women.

Source: VOA

4, February 2020

US Politics: Majority of Iowa Democrats simply want to defeat Trump ⁰

As Iowa’s Democrats entered their party’s caucuses on Monday, defeating President Donald Trump in November’s election was at the top of their minds when considering which candidate to support for the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, according to preliminary findings by the National Election Pool (NEP).

The NEP, a consortium of news organizations including Reuters that runs election-day polling through Edison Research, found most caucus-goers were simply looking for a winner instead of someone who agrees with them on the issues.

Here are some highlights from the entrance poll based on interviews with 745 Iowa Democrats as they headed into the caucuses. The results will be updated as more interviews are collected.

Six in 10 caucus-goers said they were looking for a Democratic nominee who they think can beat Trump. About four in 10 said they wanted a nominee who agrees with them on major issues.

Three in 10 said they were attending the Iowa caucuses for the first time, which appears to be below that of 2016. Four years ago, 44% of people attending the Iowa caucuses said they were doing so for the first time. In 2008, 57% said they were new to the Iowa caucuses.

Nearly a third of Democrats said before entering the caucuses that they picked their candidate in the last few days.

That appears to be higher than the number of late deciders in 2016. Four years ago, 16% of caucus-goers said they had made their choice in the last month or earlier.

Healthcare was the issue that mattered most to Iowa caucus-goers. About four in 10 said that was the issue they cared most about when thinking about picking a nominee. Two in 10 said it was the climate, another two in 10 said it was income inequality and one in 10 said it was foreign policy.

The entrance poll also asked Democrats about which candidate they were supporting for the nomination. The selections are not predictive of the outcome, however, given that many Democrats will change their preferences if their chosen candidate does not win enough support in the caucuses.

Edison, a Somerville, New Jersey-based exit polling firm, has been providing election-day poll data to a consortium of news organizations through the National Election Pool since 2004.

(Source: Reuters)

4, February 2020

Southern Cameroons tense as political parties campaign for Feb. 9 vote ⁰

Ahead of Cameroon’s legislative and municipal elections scheduled for February 9, the country’s ruling party held a meeting under a heavy police presence with fear of secessionist attacks.

It was held in Buea, the capital of the English speaking southwest region where separatists recently declared the upcoming elections illegal and announced a six-day “lockdown”.

Parliamentary and local elections have been postponed twice due to the security situation. Derick Ekona, opposition SDF activist told the media of the challenges that exist: “There are always threats, as you know.

We take risks but we take really calculated risks because if all these people stay at home how are they going to feed their families? People have to get out and we have to give people confidence that we’re going to change the system to make people feel safer.

Residents are concerned as the security situation in the Anglophone region continues to deteriorate.

Ebenezer Akonga, a Buea resident is skeptical about the polls taking place: “Everyone’s in the bush, and we don’t know how the election will happen.

“We cleared the land, we did everything we could to get people to come into town, but they are not coming. Now, when we say that there is an election on February 9, we do not know if it will take place,” he added.

In three years, the clashes in the English speaking Northwest and Southwest regions have left at least 3,000 dead and more than 700,000 displaced.

Source: Africa News

4, February 2020

Daniel arap Moi, Who Ruled Kenya for Decades, Dies at 95 ⁰

Daniel arap Moi, the autocratic president of Kenya from 1978 to 2002, who ruled his East African nation in a postcolonial era of political repression, economic stagnation and notorious corruption, but in the end gave up power peacefully, died on Tuesday at Nairobi Hospital in the capital. He was 95.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, who announced the death, declared a period of national mourning and said Mr. Moi would receive a state funeral. His statement did not specify a cause of death.

Fifteen years after Kenya won independence from Britain in 1963, Mr. Moi became president on the death of Jomo Kenyatta, the country’s founding father. Mr. Moi, a former schoolteacher and national legislator, had been a handpicked vice president and served in Mr. Kenyatta’s long shadow.

Unlike the imperial Mr. Kenyatta, who governed behind closed doors, Mr. Moi traveled the country, courting its ethnic and tribal groups and gaining wide popularity. He introduced free milk for children, and pledged to do away with endemic graft and elevate Kenya’s struggling tourism-and-agriculture economy. He won Western support with anticommunist policies during the Cold War.

But after suppressing opposition and consolidating power in a single-party state, he began a 24-year dictatorial reign. Mr. Moi — with his nimbus of silver hair, buttonhole rose and ivory walking stick — dominated life in Kenya. He put his face on bank notes, ordered his portrait hung in offices and shops, enriched his family and tribal cronies and, as investigations showed, stashed billions in overseas banks. For much of his tenure, it was illegal even to speak ill of him.

Kenya remained an island of political stability in East Africa, but a democracy in name only, and a land of stark contrasts: dire poverty and fabulous wealth, natural beauty and decaying infrastructures, luxury safaris for foreigners and vast slums for Kenyans, who faced unemployment, crime, epidemic AIDS and one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates.

Mr. Moi won five successive elections. In 1979, 1983 and 1988, he and his Kenya African National Union ran unopposed. Although some 1,000 people died in clashes over constitutional reforms, multiparty elections were held in 1992 and 1997. But the opposition was divided and disorganized, the balloting was marred by widespread violence, and Mr. Moi was re-elected both times.

As the head of state and government, he exercised absolute power. The post-independence constitution vested legislative authority in a National Assembly and provided for an independent judiciary. But Mr. Moi had the right to dismiss judges and other officials, and he and his party controlled legislation and the courts, overriding decisions and suppressing democratic reforms.

Opposition led by intellectuals arose. But Mr. Moi, who also controlled the news media and the police and military services, and whose pronouncements had the force of law, closed the universities and suppressed his opponents with detentions, torture and killings, according to United Nations investigators and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Africa Watch.

Official corruption, abuse of power and a deteriorating economy exploded in 1982 in an attempted coup by low-ranking air force officers. But army loyalists crushed the uprising and Mr. Moi ordered the arrest of the entire 2,100-member air force. Hundreds were imprisoned or executed, and the service’s ranks were replaced. He also ordered all civil servants to join the ruling political party, of which he was president.

Despite Western military and economic aid and income from tourists drawn to Kenya’s game preserves, the economy lagged for most of Mr. Moi’s tenure, mired in corruption that affected all manner of transactions, from cab rides and the delivery of goods and services to bribery and kickbacks in public and private dealings.

Investigations after Mr. Moi stepped down found that his government had lined the pockets of his family and its allies with as much as $4 billion. The biggest fraud in Kenya’s history, the Goldenberg affair, in which the central bank paid incentives to a company for exporting gold, diamonds and jewelry that did not exist, cost taxpayers billions and sent Kenya’s economy into a tailspin in the early 1990s.

When he was still vice president, Mr. Moi met President Jimmy Carter at the White House in 1978, and after becoming president he met President Ronald Reagan there in 1981 and 1987 (when he also met Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London). But after the Cold War, the West no longer regarded Kenya as a strategic outpost, and Mr. Moi was increasingly seen as a despot.

Constitutionally barred from running in the 2002 elections, he agreed to give up power in a smooth transfer that was then still rare in Africa. He supported a son of Jomo Kenyatta, but Mwai Kibaki, who had lost to Mr. Moi in 1992 and 1997, and who was nearly killed in a traffic accident during the campaign, won the presidency by a 2-to-1 margin. Mr. Moi later supported his old opponent’s re-election.

As Mr. Moi retired, his successors found even more corruption and human rights abuses than had been suspected. A 2003 inquiry exposed torture cells at Nyayo House in Nairobi, a government building where dungeons yielded evidence supporting the accounts of victims.

Mr. Moi was never prosecuted, though corruption inquiries implicated him and his family. Kenya in 2003 found $1 billion in stolen funds in overseas accounts. Others in his administration were pursued, but Mr. Moi was treated as an elder statesman.

“We recognize that former President Daniel arap Moi is an important democratic commodity, not only for us, but for Africa,” Mr. Kibaki’s anticorruption chief, John Githongo, told The New York Times in 2003. “He is treated special. He is different. He’s just not any other guy.”

He was born Toroitich arap (son of) Moi on Sept. 2, 1924, in Kuriengwo, a Rift Valley village in Western Kenya. His father, a herdsman, died when the boy was 4. In a nation dominated by the Kikuyu tribe and its chief rival, the Luo, the Moi family belonged to the Kalenjin minority, one of several dozen tribal groups.

At the African Mission School at Kabartonjo, Mr. Moi became a Christian and adopted the name Daniel. He graduated from Kapsabet Teacher Training College; from 1945 to 1947, he taught classes, and he was later the headmaster of a government school.

He married Helena Bommet in 1950. They had five sons and two daughters, and adopted a daughter. The couple separated in 1974. His wife, known as Lena, died in 2004.

He did not join the Kikuyu-led Mau Mau rebellion against British rule in the 1950s, but sympathized with the movement and once harbored five fugitives at his home. He entered politics in 1955, appointed by the British to the colonial Legislative Council. Two years later, when black Kenyans were allowed to vote, he was elected to the council.

In 1960, he joined a London conference that drew up a Kenyan constitution authorizing African political parties. He was elected assistant treasurer of the new Kenya African National Union (KANU), the political instrument of independence, which later merged with the rival Kenya African Democratic Union he helped found and became the sole political party.

In the new government, Mr. Kenyatta appointed Mr. Moi minister of home affairs in 1964 and vice president in 1967. He handled day-to-day government affairs and represented Kenya at the Organization of African Unity, the first continent-wide association of independent states, and other international forums.

Mr. Moi lacked the Kenyatta magnetism and was little known abroad until he became president, but was moderately popular at home. Many Kenyans regarded Mr. Moi as puritanical because he did not drink alcohol or smoke, denounced hippies and miniskirts, led Kenya’s Boy Scouts and recited aphorisms against materialism and acquisitiveness.

After leaving the presidency, he lived quietly, largely shunned by Kenya’s political establishment, but drew crowds in public. In 2005, he opposed a new constitution, which was defeated in a referendum. In 2007, he was named a special envoy to Sudan.

Source: New York Times

3, February 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Atanga Nji gets a taste of American disappointment ⁰

Cameroon’s territorial administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji, has had a taste of what will happen to him in case things fall apart. The conman and ex-convict who is responsible for the escalation of the Southern Cameroons crisis was denied an American visa late last year when he wanted to visit his family, a source at the U.S.A embassy in Yaoundé has informed the Cameroon Concord News Group.

It is the customary for Cameroonian authorities to have the visas of Western countries in their passports as a precautionary measure in case things fall apart, the source said. The territorial administration boss, who has been telling Americans that they had no lessons for Cameroon, ran into a huge disappointment when the embassy turned down his application for a visa.

The embassy indicated that he had not demonstrated that he would be returning to his country and this rejection was made all the easier because Mr. Atanga Nji owns a huge home in Florida. The U.S. embassy consular officials might have thought the unpopular territorial administration boss was simply looking for a way to skip town, as the government he serves continues its onward march to its end.

It should be recalled that senior government officials, like staff of international organizations, have diplomatic passports that enable them to travel freely when on official assignment, but when they travel for personal visits, they must queue up at the U.S.A embassy for a visa.

Mr. Atanga Nji’s name features prominently on a list established by the American Administration for those responsible for the violence that is playing out in the country’s two English-speaking regions. The source added that the Yaoundé government is in panic mode and each government official is doing what he can to secure a visa just in case things take a turn for the worse.

It should be recalled that the Trump Administration has been mulling sanctions against some Cameroon government officials following the government’s flagrant human rights abuses in the two English-speaking regions and in the country’s Far North where a Boko Haram insurgency has become an excuse for the government to exterminate huge segments of its own population.

Paul Atanga Nji is the second Cameroonian official who has been denied a visa at the U.S.A embassy since the Southern Cameroons crisis started playing out and many government officials are on edge, as the Trump Administration keeps on calling on the government to seek a peaceful way out of the crisis.

Late Patrick Ekema, the notorious mayor of Buea, faced the same situation and, according to our source at the U.S. embassy, the disappointment at the embassy might have precipitated the death of the Buea mayor who had shipped his family to the U.S.A and was seeking to take a girlfriend along.

It should be indicated that Mr. Ekema’s family now resides in Ontario, Canada, where they are seeking asylum. The family of six had run into a huge financial storm when the crooked and dishonest mayor passed away. He was using the Buea city council as his ATM to sustain his family in the United States, but when death struck, the tap was immediately turned off and the family went into a tailspin. The family’s only saving grace has been its asylum claim in Canada which has enabled it to have some government financial assistance.

Mr. Atanga Nji has been very concerned ever since he ran into this storm. Over the last couple of months, his attitude towards the crisis in Southern Cameroons has changed. He has watered down his language though he has dispatched killers to the two English-speaking regions where a government-planned genocide is taking place quietly.

He knows Americans and other Western countries are keeping a close eye on him and in the event of anything, he could face Western sanctions and those sanctions are usually extended to other family members.

Atanga Nji’s daughter is currently schooling in an American institution in France and the family’s objective is to get her to the U.S.A for further studies where she could end up taking residence. It should be mentioned that she is not an American citizen and in the event of any sanctions she might also be affected.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in the United Kingdom

3, February 2020

Kondengui: There are reasons why Barrister Akere Muna met President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe ⁰

Jailed Ambazonia leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe has held a meeting with Barrister Akere Muna on the proposed Southern Cameroons international conference in Kenya, the Paris-based Jeune Afrique reported.

The pan Africa media house noted that Sisiku Ayuk Tabe reiterated his desire to hold talks with the French Cameroun government on a neutral ground to discuss the terms of separation adding that jail is a part of the path toward freedom and has a poetic beauty to it.

Barrister Muna and the president of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia who was sentenced in August 2019 to life imprisonment for acts of secession and terrorism by a French Cameroun military tribunal met on the 28^th of January 2020 at Kondengui prison.

According to Jeune Afrique N°3082 published on February 2 to 8, 2020, the two men discussed the symposium on Cameroon which is due to be held in Kenya next April.

Muna pleaded with the Ambazonia leader to put a stop to the armed conflict and give a chance to the organizing committee of the Kenya talks based in Addis Ababa to help seek a lasting solution to the crisis in Southern Cameroons.

By Rita Akana