26, January 2019

Southern Cameroons War Crimes Tribunal Issues List of War Crimes Suspects ⁰

The Southern Cameroons Special Tribunal Coordination Committee (SCSTCC) has announced an initial list of war crimes suspects including two Cameroonian government military units implicated in war crimes and torture of civilians. The list is a work in progress and the allegations are not yet proven though in many cases video, eyewitness evidence and the public statements of the suspects strongly implicates some of the accused in conceiving, ordering and carrying out atrocities against Southern Cameroonian civilians and Amabazonian self defense units.

The Special Tribunal Committee has received a mandate from several Ambazonian organizations and their supporters to collect evidence, carry out investigations, and prosecute using any and all means possible including the national courts of third countries and international tribunals. The Special Tribunal Committee will also contact other national war crimes units with their findings and will seek visa bans and sanctions on implicated individuals and organizations.

The initial backers of the Special Tribunal include the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), the Southern Cameroons Defense Force (SOCADEF), the Ambazonia Governing Council (AGC), the African Peoples Liberation Movement (APLM), the Organization of Emerging African States (OEAS) and the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium. Dr. Jonathan Levy, an international lawyer specializing in human rights was appointed Chief Coordinator of the Tribunal and has been joined by two prominent African barristers.

According to Dr. Levy, the Special Tribunal’s immediate mission is to use existing courts and procedures to investigate and prosecute war crimes: “We need to bring legal actions quickly to prevent further atrocities. We also encourage other interested groups to do the same regardless whether they work with us or not. Our immediate goal is deterrence and that will only be effective if war criminals see demonstrable proof they will be held accountable for their crimes.”

The Southern Cameroons Special Tribunal Coordination Committee (SCSTCC) initial list of war crimes suspects are as follows:

President and Commander-in-Chief Paul Biya

Former Prime Minister & Deputy Commander-in-Chief Philemon Yang

Prime Minister & Deputy Commander-in Chief-Joseph Ngute

Minister of Defense Joseph Beti Assomo

Deputy Minister of Defense René Claude Meka

Major-General Nkoa Atenga

Secretary of State in charge of the National Gendarmeris, Galax Yves Landry Etoga

Gov. Adolphe Lele Afrique

Gov. Bernard Okalia Bilai

Senior Divisional Officer for Fako, Engamba Emmanuel Ledoux.

Senior Divisional Officer for Koupé Manengouba: Keyantcho Augustin.

Senior Divisional Officer for Lebialem: Ungitoh Zachry

Senior Divisional Officer for Manyu: Oum II Joseph

Senior Divisional Officer for Boyo: Tegni Fidèle.

Senior Divisional Officer for Bui: Mooh Emile Simon.

Senior Divisional Officer for Donga Mantung: Nkwenti Simon Doh.

Senior Divisional Officer for Menchum: Kamga Charles

Senior Divisional Officer for Ngoketunjia: Emvoutou Mbita Benoît William

Battalion D’intervention Rapide (BIR)

General Directorate of External Research (Direction Générale de la Recherche Extérieure, (DGRE)

General Elokobi Daniel Njock

Brigadier General Agha Robinson

Colonel Didier Badjeck

Minister of Communications, Issa Tchiroma

Minister of Territorial Administration, Atanga Nji Paul

Chief of National Police, Martin Mbarga Nguele

The Mayor of Buea, Patrick Ekema Esunge

25, January 2019

US: Trump’s election adviser Roger Stone arrested by FBI over Russia probe ⁰

US President Donald Trump’s longtime ally and presidential campaign adviser, Roger Stone, has been arrested over charges that he obstructed US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into possible collusion between the Trump election campaign and Russia before the 2016 US presidential election.

Stone was arrested Friday by FBI agents at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after being indicted by a grand jury on Thursday, according to Mueller’s office.

He was also charged with making false statements and witness tampering.

Stone, who has repeatedly said in interviews that he was likely to be indicted, is scheduled to appear at the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale later on Friday, Mueller’s office said.

Stone has faced scrutiny for his support for Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, when he suggested he had access to information obtained by hackers that could damage the campaigns of Democratic Party presidential candidates, including Trump’s rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton.

In the summer of 2016, WikiLeaks began publishing Democratic emails that Mueller has previously alleged were obtained by Russian government hackers in an effort to interfere with the presidential election and embarrass Clinton.

Stone “took steps to obstruct” investigations by intelligence committees in the House of Representatives and Senate into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, prosecutors said.

He also tried to persuade a witness to provide false testimony and withhold information from the congressional investigations, the indictment said.

The indictment goes to the heart of Mueller’s investigation and could pose serious risk to Trump.

In the indictment, Stone is alleged to have had advance notice that WikiLeaks would release personal email stolen from the account of Clinton election campaign chairman John Podesta.

Clinton

Trump has repeatedly denied collusion with Russia and slammed the federal investigation as a “witch hunt.” Russia also has rejected any cooperation with Trump’s campaign.

US intelligence agencies say Moscow interfered in US politics in the 2016 election in an effort to boost Trump’s chances of winning the election.

Source: Presstv

25, January 2019

Kidnapped Southern Cameroons Bishop visits UK ⁰

Bishop Michael Bibi, Auxiliary Bishop of Bamenda, Cameroon, visited Portsmouth and celebrated Mass on Sunday 20 January at St John’s Cathedral in a break during a visit to Rome.

Portsmouth and Bamenda dioceses have been twinned since 1974. Ten Portsmouth priests have served in Cameroon; four priests from Bamenda are currently working in the Portsmouth diocese. Financial help to Bamenda has helped a Pastoral Centre for training cathechists and running spiritual courses; social welfare projects have helped with water supply and provided material enabling people to earn a living; a motorbike was supplied for a rural health worker.

Catholic schools in Portsmouth diocese are encouraged to twin with schools in Cameroon. Bamenda is a major centre in the English speaking region of Cameroon whose schools and legal system have been disadvantaged by the government dominated by French speakers tending to impose the use of French. A majority of the region’s population support a separatist movement which has engaged in acts of violence including recently the deaths of two priests and a seminarian. Some counter terrorist activity by security forces has led to civilian deaths.

There have been kidnappings of school children, not just Catholics but also from a Presbyterian school. Bishop Bibi himself was kidnapped and released on two consecutive days in early December while driving from town to town on church business. The President of Cameroon Paul Biya, aged 85, has been in power since 1982 and shows no sign of standing down.

The country suffers from terrorism by Boko Haram, a group connected with Al Qaeda, the need to back the government’s efforts to combat which seems a priority for help from the UK although some assistance is given to displaced people.

Bishop Michael said the atmosphere in Bamenda alternates between normality and tension. Sometimes there are road blocks. Mondays in the English speaking region are the days for “ghost towns” when many people observe a general strike; more extreme separatists threaten violence against those who do not take part. Some homes have been burnt down.

To help those in need the Bamenda archdiocese has encouraged parishes to set up Ad Hoc Committees. The Bishop of Portsmouth, Philip Egan urges all to help by contributing to the Diocese of Portsmouth Bamenda Commission.

Source: Independent Catholic News

25, January 2019

Biya Regime Struggles to Aid IDPs in Southern Cameroons ⁰

Cameroon is struggling to get humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of people who fled areas of separatist unrest, some of them trapped by the fighting. Meanwhile, authorities’ calls for separatists to disarm and be pardoned are failing as rehabilitation centers remain empty.

A group of twelve kids gather water in the early morning hours in Cameroon’s capital.

Forty-five-year old Gwendoline Ndum took in the children a few weeks ago after they fled her home town of Mbengwi.

Many of the kids had walked for days in the bush to escape fighting between Cameroon security and anglophone separatists.

Ndum says some of the children can’t find their parents, and she couldn’t let them live on the streets, but the burden is becoming too much.

She says she can no longer afford to pay the water and electricity bills or buy chicken, meat or fish. A 50-kilogram bag of rice hardly lasts for two weeks, says Ndum, because they eat only rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

IDPs gather in Yaounde to receive assistance from Voice of the Voiceless, an NGO in Cameroons, Jan. 24, 2019.

Cameroon’s government this week said it was assisting more than 60,000 internally displaced people in the separatist areas – the English-speaking northwest and southwest.

But the United Nations estimates that over 430,000 people have been displaced by the conflict.

Cameroon authorities say they are unable to reach most of the displaced in need because many have fled to remote areas and are trapped by ongoing fighting.

Most independent help is limited to government-controlled areas.

Man receiving assistance from a government official in Mamfe, Cameroon, Dec. 20, 2018.

A woman prays for peace as about a hundred displaced people help the aid group Voice of the Voiceless collect donations of food, clothing, and bedding.

The group’s Christian Chindo Ngong says the displaced are helping each other because they know what it’s like to have nothing. He says Cameroon’s government must also do more to help – it should end the conflict.

Christian Chindo Ngong, official of the NGO Voice of the Voiceless, says Cameroon’s government must also do more to help end the conflict.

“The government should listen to the people, organize a dialogue, I mean an inclusive dialogue, so that we can see the end of this thing. Because no matter what we give the people, it can never make them happy. The only happiness that these people can achieve is to see their homes again.”

Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji says rehabilitation centers set up for separatists who agree to disarm and be pardoned had opened their doors and were waiting.

“We have to respect the instructions from President Paul Biya that when you lay down your weapons, you are taken to the centers, you are provided health facilities, you have psychologists who are there to start educating the population, and we have training facilities in those centers.”

But so far, not a single rebel has taken up the offer. The rehabilitation centers in the English-speaking southwestern town of Buea and in the capital Yaounde are empty.

Cameroonian elite Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR) members patrol in the south west city of Buea, Cameroon, Oct. 5, 2018.

In a WhatsApp interview with VOA, separatist fighter Edward Ngafin – who refused to say where he was – described the rehab centers as a trap.

He says he will not go to a government rehabilitation center and can never advise any separatist fighter to listen to any promise made by the government of Cameroon. Ngafin says he does not understand how a government that he describes as always tormenting English-speakers will suddenly claim that it cares and that it will recruit everyone.

Cameroon’s separatist conflict broke out in 2017 amid protests against Francophone domination in English-speaking regions. Some took up arms and declared they would become an independent nation called Ambazonia.

President Biya sent in the military and vowed to crush all those who refuse to disarm, saying the country’s unity cannot be negotiated.

VOA

25, January 2019

UN says Cameroon today can no longer be a forgotten crisis ⁰

Around 4.3 million Cameroonians, mostly women and children, are now in need of lifesaving assistance, the UN announced on Thursday, presenting it’s 2019 Humanitarian Response Plan for the West African country, in coordination with the Government and aid partners. UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Cameroon, Ms. Allegra Baiocchi, and Cameroon’s Civil Protection Director, Ms. Yap Mariatou, warned at the launch in Geneva, that the was a drastic increase in humanitarian need across the country.

Cameroon today can no longer be a forgotten crisis; it needs to be high on our agenda – UN Humanitarian Coordinator, Allegra Baiocchi

“Hundreds of thousands of people on Cameroon’s territory need urgent assistance and protection,” Ms. Baiocchi said, adding that “attacks against civilians have increased and many conflict-affected people are surviving in harsh conditions without humanitarian assistance due to the dramatic underfunding of the response. Cameroon today can no longer be a forgotten crisis; it needs to be high on our agenda.”

With needs rising by 31 per cent in a year, the UN today estimates that around 4.3 million people in Cameroon – one in six people and mostly women and children – require lifesaving assistance. The joint Humanitarian Response Plan 2019 seeks $299 million to assist 2.3 million vulnerable people, more than half of those in need. Last year, a $320 million response plan for Cameroon was only 40 per cent funded.

The aggravation of the conflict in western regions is the main driver behind the increase, with armed attacks in the far north, and new refugees coming from the Central African Republic also increasing demand for urgent aid. Insecurity and violence in these regions have uprooted 437,000 people from their homes and forced over 32,000 to seek refuge in neighbouring Nigeria. Four million people are affected by the conflict in Cameroon’s west, says the UN. In addition, due to the deteriorating situation in northeast Nigeria, more than 10,000 new refugees arrived in Cameroon in 2018, bringing the number of Nigerian refugees to 100,000.

Needs ‘likely to increase in coming years’

“The Government of Cameroon is responsible for the protection and wellbeing of its people and has been at the forefront of the response with its national and international partners,” added Ms. Yap Mariatou. “We acknowledge the scale of the different crises we face, and we encourage all the actors to work in close partnership to address the needs of Cameroonians and of the people we host.” “Humanitarian needs are likely to increase in coming years,” said Ms. Baiocchi, adding that budgets had failed in increase adequately in recent years. “Underfunding means we cannot do all we can to make a difference in the life of most vulnerable people across Cameroon, whether it is the girl who is missing school due to violence, the displaced mother struggling to feed her children, or the father who has lost his entire family.”

25, January 2019

Catholics save lives in Cameroon as fighting intensifies ⁰

An ambulance dispatched by a Catholic Church-run hospital in Cameroon continued saving lives this month amid fresh outbreaks of violence between the military and armed groups.

Elengu Noella, 27, told voanews.com that the vehicle whisked her and four other women to safety during a firefight between security personnel and separatists but two of her three children were killed in the heavy fighting near the town of Buea.

Cameroon said this week it is mobilizing troops along its northern border with Nigeria as Boko Haram and its splinter group, the Islamic State in West Africa, step up their attacks.

In January alone, the military has recorded five incursions by insurgents near the border and in the Lake Chad basin, with three people killed last week, the media reports.

Meanwhile, Cameroon, which is also fighting separatists in its English-speaking western regions, is believed to have sent thousands of refugees back to Nigeria.

Filippo Grande, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, has repeatedly urged the Cameroon government in the capital Yaounde to “refrain from further forced returns and to ensure protection to those fleeing insecurity and persecution in Nigeria.”

The situation worsened in Nigeria in 2018, capped by a brutal massacre in November when a Boko Haram strike on a military base killed up to 100 soldiers.

Now Cameroon seems bent on sealing off the border as the terrorist group continues to recruit fighters from within its territory.

Defense Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Rene Claude Meka has vowed to fight fire with fire, saying this year will see Cameroon fight for national unity and territorial integrity.

“2019 will not be a bed of roses,” Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo said on Jan. 21.

“We shall continue with various operations in the far north, northwest and southwest regions, and reactivate special operations in the Adamawa region where criminal groups specialized in kidnapping are wreaking havoc.”

Source: La Croix International

25, January 2019

Conflicts and corruption in Cameroon drain the economy ⁰

Cameroon is finding it difficult to meet its financial commitments as the battle against armed separatists and corruption depletes the country’s resources.

A truck with armed with military men patrols an english-speaking area (DW/F. Muvunyi)

In addition to corruption and the battle against separatists fighting to create an English-speaking state, there is also the war against Boko Haram on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria and the spillover of the crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR). All of these combined are draining the state of its resources.

Employees of a company constructing the Paul Biya Stadium in Olembe, on the outskirts of Yaounde, protested against difficult working conditions and non-payment of their salaries. Their spokesperson Dieudonne Nguidjol demanded that they be given a normal contract. “We are supposed to work from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. [and] 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. is supposed to be extra time. Our salaries are not good,” said Nguidjol.

He added that people who come to work as engineers earn a salary of about 80,000 CFA francs (about €120, $138), which is not in line with Cameroon’s labor code. “We have salaries of four, five and six months that have not been paid; this is the immediate cause of this strike,” Nguidjol said. Cameroon’s Minister of Finance Louis-Paul Motaze said the stadium is just one project that has been affected by the conflicts affecting the country. He said the treasury is stretched with requests for funds for development projects and money to fund the conflicts. “The people want roads. They want security. They want energy. They want agricultural products. We have to realize them with revenues. That means that we have to look for internal revenues. Those internal revenues are taxes. But we have to consider the expenses,” Motaze said.

Cameroonian football players training (AFP/Getty Images/R. Kaze)

Cameroon will no longer host the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON)

Financial scandal

The 2019 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) project was one of the largest projects recently rocked by a financial scandal in Cameroon. The country was stripped of its hosting right in favor of Egypt due to massive delays in the preparations. Whistleblowers claim that an estimated 1.8 billion euros of Cameroonian public money has been swallowed in contracts shrouded in controversy. A video of a Cameroonian official allegedly defending why a bag of cement costs 15,000 CFA francs for the AFCON project, instead of the normal 4,500 CFA francs, went viral on social media.

Ako John Ako, a university lecturer and civil society activist in Cameroon, said that the prices of the 2019 AFCON infrastructure were ten times more than is usual for the same kind of infrastructure in other African nations. “Findings indicated that public contracts suffered one of the highest hits,” Ako said. “Within Cameroon, those who implement decisions or grant the order for contracts always have a percentage reserved in their name.”

Corruption kills infrastructure

Government ministers, heads of parapublic and public as well as giant private enterprises are increasingly being brought down as Cameroon’s anti-corruption organ intensifies its efforts. According to the National Anti-Corruption Commission’s (CONAC) most recent report, the country saw 375 billion CFA francs returned to its coffers.

Street scene of Doula in Cameroon (DW/F. Muvunyi)

Doula is Cameroon’s biggest city and its economic capital Despite these efforts, civil society actors like Ako think that CONAC, other anti-corruption agencies and poor governance remain key factors in holding back Cameroon’s development.

“CONAC and many other agencies that have been created by the state simply come to confirm that Cameroon will solve problems with commissions, but then more often than not most of the commissions created are still a problem and center for corruption within Cameroon,” he told DW. Ako went on to say that the Cameroonian government could say that the fight against corruption has been succeeding, because Cameroon does not appear among the first five most corrupt nations in the world. “But corruption still continues to be the venom that is eating and killing the infrastructure and implementation or execution of state activities,” he said.

Threat of famine

The situation in the English-speaking regions, where suspected separatists have been carrying out attacks and kidnappings, is dire. Dominic Asah, one of the supervisors of government development projects, said that up to 20 percent of planned projects could not be implemented due to insecurity and shortage of liquidity. “The socio-political climate in the field is actually what is hampering the execution process in these localities. The northwest region received a total of 490 operations. Only 52 have been executed, 69 are ongoing and 311 are still to take off the ground,” Asah said. At least 10,000 workers have quit their jobs in rubber plantations in the English-speaking town of Buea. According to director general Frankline Njie, they require at least 54 million dollars. “None of our rubber estates is operating normally. Some are shut down completely, the workers are threatened,” Njie lamented.

He said it was difficult for him to understand and accept why all this pain was being inflicted. “The banana sector has been hit. One of our pack houses, where bananas are processed for export was attacked and set ablaze.” President Paul Biya has openly called on all fighters to drop their guns and has created a national disarmament commission to socially reintegrate fighters who surrender.

Source: DW.Com

25, January 2019

Biya owes much of his survival to a longstanding relationship with various French gov’ts ⁰

On 6 November 2018, 85-year-old Paul Biya was sworn in for his seventh term as president of Cameroon, extending his 36-year rule. It is remarkable, more so considering that up to 60 per cent of the population is below the age of 25. It means that the vast majority of Cameroonians have never known a president other than Biya and have never lived through a truly free and fair election, where anyone other than Biya could win.

The question of longevity in office has been a focus for political organizing in many parts of the world since the 1990s, when one-party regimes fell apart – unable to sustain themselves after the Cold War. Many of the long-serving leaders of that era owed their survival to client relationships with the US and the Soviet Union. When the superpowers no longer needed them, there was finally enough space for democracy to take root. Only a handful of countries in Africa and Asia have resisted this transition, and the case of Paul Biya highlights why.

In crude terms, Cameroon was a second-tier state that was more interesting to secondary Western powers – namely France – than it was to either the US or the Soviets. Indeed, Biya owes much of his survival in power to a longstanding relationship with various French administrations. As such, despite the cloud of violence surrounding this latest election, France’s president Emmanuel Macron was one of a handful of leaders who congratulated Biya on his election victory in a letter (which Biya published on his Facebook page) that the Élysée claimed was supposed to remain private.

Nor have other nations made any tangible moves to distance themselves from Biya. Despite the mounting domestic resistance to his regime, particularly in the Anglophone region of the country, Biya travels the world freely. He frequents the InterContinental hotel in Geneva, where Cameroonians allege he spends more time than in Yaoundé. He regularly attends African Union Heads of State meetings and recently turned a three-day Africa-China summit in Beijing into a two-week trip.

When a president has been in power for 36 years in a country where elections should nominally change the leadership, it’s logical to ask, ‘Why aren’t the locals resisting?’ But in Cameroon, regional and international institutions do their best to nullify any local resistance. The army and the police have a nominal monopoly on the use of force and a relatively limitless access to weapons, training and other tools. And because the arms trade remains one of the least regulated industries in the world, after a while the only recourse left for those who resist is armed conflict, if the central state is unwilling to negotiate.

Thus, in 2015, citizens in the Anglophone region of Cameroon began a peaceful campaign to protest poor access to government services. That protest was met by violence from the army and the state, and has since morphed into a full rebellion. A secessionist campaign has been brutally countered by state violence and collective punishment of civilians. But this information is broadly kept out of the mainstream media by restricting access to the restive regions. By controlling how information about Cameroon is created and disseminated, Biya manages to shield the country from scrutiny, leaving Cameroonians to resist his regime by themselves.

Never-ending presidential terms are a hot topic right now in Africa, with the youngest population in the world, and in Cameroon, with a gap between an 85-year-old president and a population with an average age of 18.5, it looks particularly absurd. Biya’s Cameroon highlights that change is not just about sheer demographic numbers but power, violence and political institutions. Longevity is also a chance to ask important questions about the international systems that connect and sustain regimes around the world.

Source: New Internationalist

24, January 2019

Of Biya and the Chinese, CDC, PAMOL and business tycoon Danpullo ⁰

The Chinese government recently announced that it has written off almost $78m (£60m) from Cameroon’s debt as part of measures to ease economic hardship in the country, but it is evidently clear that China is exploiting a desperate regime that is taking the last kicks of a dying horse and playing for greater access to Cameroon resources.

Beijing and Yaounde made public the debt relief announcement on Friday last week shortly after a meeting between the 85 year old President Paul Biya and Yang Jiechi, a special representative of China’s President Xi Jinping.

Chinese media houses also reported that Cameroon’s total debt burden to China stands at almost $5.7bn (£4.4bn), citing figures from the Autonomous Sinking Fund, the public entity that manages Cameroon’s external debt. We also gathered from the Biya-Yang Jiechi press release that the sum of $78m that has been wiped is money that should have been paid in 2018, but which Cameroon failed to pay.

Finally, the Chinese have taken over Cameroon (to be precise) French Cameroun and the roots of Chinese colonization are very deep that not even the French can decolonized. The Chinese gesture without mincing words is NOT an act of charity. We now have evidence that Biya and his ruling CPDM gang have handed over the mines in the East region and the iron ore deposits in the South to the Chinese.

President Biya flew to China for the third Summit of the China-Africa Cooperation in September and pleaded with Chinese authorities to ease Cameroon’s debt burden. The Special Representative of China’s President Xi Jinping has been quoted by our intelligence sources in Yaoundé as saying that Xi Jinping made it very clear to Biya “If you cannot pay, then hand over the mines to us.”

The Chinese are not in Cameroon to play; they are pursuing a well-calculated mission of taking over the country. Russia is already installing a military base in the Central African Republic that will benefit both Beijing and Moscow if the French attempt to disrupt the plan.

A French Cameroun ministerial task team established by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime has reported that CDC and PAMOL are now a thing of the past. We of this publication think, Biya and his crime syndicate should be held responsible for the collapse of these two gigantic agro-industrial plants as the leadership of the CDC and PAMOL are both connected to the crimes committed against Southern Cameroonians.

Governor Okalia Bilai (Board Chair PAMOL) and Itoe Benjamin (Board Chair CDC) including the general managers were among the so-called South West Elites who ordered Nkemgu Martin to read a communiqué addressed to President Biya demanding the deployment of more troops to kill the laborers, their children and the local population working in these plantations. They must now face the far reaching consequences of their actions.

Baba Danpullo’s empire too is collapsing at catastrophic rapidity! The internet shut down in Southern Cameroons greatly affected the man who is a chartered Biya business partner. He wrongfully thought that the crisis in Southern Cameroons was a repeat of the CPDM/SDF political tug-of-war in 1990. Correspondingly, he attempted to put the Muslim population at daggers-drawn positions with the people of Southern Cameroons. That venture failed and today the Vietnamese who originally owned Nexttel are soon to take him to an international court. He is the right man to tell Biya that it is cheaper to talk for 1000 years than to fight for just a day.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde

24, January 2019

Congo-Kinshasa set for historic transfer of power under shadow of disputed election ⁰

Felix Tshisekedi is to be sworn in on Thursday as president of Democratic Republic of Congo, marking the country’s first-ever peaceful handover of power after chaotic and bitterly-disputed elections. At 55, opposition leader Tshisekedi takes over from Joseph Kabila who is stepping aside after 18 years at the helm of sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest country.

The inauguration will take place at the Palace of the Nation, the seat of the presidency, at noon (1100 GMT), aides to Tshisekedi and Kabila said on Wednesday.

One of Tshisekedi’s first tasks will be to appoint a prime minister in a move which will see him sharing power with Kabila’s supporters, who hold an overwhelming majority in parliament.

The ceremony caps more than two years of turmoil sparked by Kabila’s refusal to step down when he reached the constitutional limit on his term in office.

Turbulence

A country the size of continental western Europe, DR Congo has lived through two regional wars in 1996-97 and 1998-2003.

The last two presidential elections, in 2006 and 2011 — both of which were won by Kabila — were marred by bloody clashes.

The ballot, which took place on December 30 after being delayed three times, surprised many by the lack of violence, but a political storm swiftly brewed over the count.

Tshisekedi was declared winner with 38.5 percent of the vote, over his opposition rival Martin Fayulu, who was credited with 34.8 percent.

Fayulu branded the result a fix but lost a challenge to the Constitutional Court and foreign support for his position ebbed as countries took comfort in a peaceful transition.

“The opposition has run out of recourse to challenge the election results and the threat of widespread post-election violence is gradually subsiding,” said Robert Besseling of EXX Africa, a business risk consultancy.

Many challenges

Tshisekedi heads the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), DR Congo’s oldest and largest opposition party, which was founded and led by his father Etienne.

Analysts say he faces a raft of pressing problems after taking the oath of office. He must defuse the anger of Fayulu’s supporters, carry out his campaign pledge of ending the “gangrene” of corruption after the Kabila era, and forge a power-sharing arrangement with the outgoing president’s bloc.

The pro-Kabila Joint Front for Congo (FCC), controls 337 seats in the 500-member National Assembly against 102 for Fayulu’s coalition, Lamuka, and 46 for his own coalition, Heading for Change (Cach).

“Tshisekedi will have little margin for manoeuvre,” said Stephanie Wolters at South Africa’s Institute for Security Studies (ISS) think tank.

According to a “political coalition agreement” seen by AFP which outlines an arrangement for “power-sharing” between the FCC and Cach, the position of prime minister “will be rotated every five years.”

And the defence, foreign affairs and interior portfolios will go to “the president’s political family”.

Kabila himself will become a senator for life, a position reserved for outgoing presidents under the constitution, but he is widely expected to wield influence through his supporters. His family has acquired a wide range of assets during the many years in power.

Kabila congratulated Tshisekedi on the eve of his inauguration, saying he will hand over power to his successor “without regret or remorse”.

In his first speech since the election, Kabila said Tshisekedi can count on him “whenever he wants” and called for a “grand coalition of all the progressive forces”.

“A coalition against the predatory forces that have come together and will always try to join forces to monopolise our natural resources,” he said.

Conflict and poverty

Beyond the politics, Tsishekedi also has to deal with the brutal militias who control parts of the country’s strife-torn east where an Ebola epidemic is also unfolding.

He also has to meet the expectations of his supporters about easing poverty, which afflicts the vast majority of the country’s 80 million citizens.

Despite the poverty, DR Congo boasts a treasure trove of minerals, ranging from gold and diamonds to copper and coltan — a mineral essential for the batteries used in hand-held electronic devices.

Yet, in a country where graft is entrenched, very little of the wealth trickles down to the poor. It ranks a mere 176th on the 189-nation Human Development Index compiled by the United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP).

(AFP)