16, July 2019
The Butcher of Yaounde postpones local elections again 0
Cameroon President Paul Biya said Monday he was delaying local elections to 2020, a declaration read on the radio said Monday, the second time in two years that the poll has been postponed.
“The mandate of municipal councillors elected on September 30, 2013 has been extended until February 29, 2020,” Biya declared, which essentially sets the poll back until that date. No reason was given for the extension.
On July 11, 2018, the elections were postponed a first time using the same method. Biya, who is 86, has been in power for 36 years.
Legislative elections could now be delayed as well because the government wants to hold them at the same time to cut costs, deputies told AFP.
Cameroon is in the midst of a security crisis that has pitted separatist English-speaking regions in the west against the French-speaking population elsewhere. In the north, the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram stages regular armed attacks meanwhile.
The country is also facing political ructions, with the head of the opposition Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon, Maurice Kamto, and about 100 of the party’s supporters still in jail after their arrest in January.
(AFP)
16, July 2019
Rubber, Palm-Oil Output Slashed by Ambazonia Revolution 0
Cameroon top state-owned agribusiness said the Anglophone crisis in the country has had a “disastrous” effect on its operations, cutting output of palm-oil and rubber and leaving most of its banana plantations destroyed. The majority of about 22,000 workers at the Cameroon Development Corp., the country’s biggest employer after the state, are no longer going to the company’s plantations and haven’t been paid for months, Director-General Franklin Ngoni Njie told reporters on Sunday.
Sixteen workers have been killed by separatist fighters since the crisis erupted almost three years ago, and 98 others have been assaulted or maimed, he said. The CDC grows and processes rubber, palm-oil and bananas on about 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres).
Most of its plantations are in the Southwest and Northwest regions, where Cameroon’s minority English-speaking population lives. Economic activities in the two regions have been paralyzed by rebels who want to break away from the larger French-speaking area in the central African nation.
The unrest has left only four out of 11 rubber estates functional, halted operations at two palm-oil mills and slashed output to 2,100 metric tons, from an expected 17,400 tons, the CDC said. Agriculture Minister Gabriel Mbairobe said on July 5 that President Paul Biya would take “urgent measures” to ensure a resumption of activities at the company.
Source: Bloomberg