A desperate attempt by the Government of French Cameroun to cover up its responsibility for the targeted murder of an American missionary, has backfired miserably with French Cameroun confessing to the commission of other crimes. Charles Trummann Wesco was killed by a French Cameroun military sniper hit-man in the Bamenda neighbourhood of Bambili, on Tuesday, 30 October 2018.

Cameroon Concord News Group recalls that French Cameroun as a state party to the Geneva Conventions 1948 had a mandatory obligation under the treaty, in declaring the war against the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, to respect its treaty obligations and the laws and customs of war. There is unimpeachable evidence that French Cameroun has targeted civilians and civilian targets for attacks in the prosecution of the war and genocide against Ambazonia and persons found within the territory of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.  The targeted murder of Charles Trummann Wesco is one among a well coordinated campaign targeting America and American interests in French Cameroun, the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and the entire Gulf of Guinea.

Cameroon Concord News Group further recalls that when the Ambassador of the United States of America delivered his government’s position expressing concerns for the indiscriminate targeted of civilians and civilian targets by the soldiers of French Cameroun deployed to prosecute the genocide and exterminate the civilian population of Ambazonia, the government of French Cameroun organized and carried out an official campaign of incitement against Americans and US interests. This criminal campaign which was ongoing when this crime was committed was led by the Minister of External Relations of French Cameroun, Lejeunne Mbella Mbella,  the Minister Delegate in charge of Defense in the Presidency of the Republic of French Cameroun, Joseph Beti Assomo, the Minister of Communication Issa Tchiroma Bakary ( Josef Goebbels of French Cameroun genocidal campaign), Atanga Nji, the Al Capone criminal executioner of French Cameroun official slaughter of armless civilians, Gregoire Owona, the CRTV, Television ( Mille Colline) 4 and other satellite genocidal and hate crimes news outlets and networks,  the CPDM crime syndicate  and a plethora of genocide apologists on the pay of Paul Biya and French Cameroun. It comes as no surprise to Cameroon Concord News Group and keen observers, that the assassination of the American citizen, Charles Trummann Wesco occurred within the framework of the official policy of the government of French Cameroun defined and executed by soldiers deployed to prosecute a genocide of Ambazonia.

Pursuant to French Cameroun anti-American campaign, several American citizens were profiled, abducted and detained in French Cameroun’s military and paramilitary dungeons without complying with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (1963 article 36). Some US citizens or legal residents are feared to still being held in French Cameroun’s detention camps in furtherance of this official policy of French Cameroun. That an American cleric is targeted and killed by a French Cameroun sniper in the territory of Ambazonia where French Cameroun military have defined the enemy as civilians residing or found in the territory of Ambazonia comes as no surprise.  It is this policy of targeting civilians and civilian targets by French Cameroun terrorists which the American government through its ambassador publicly decried drawing retaliatory threats and incitement targeting US interests and citizens. Isa Tchiroma Bakary went as far as accusing the United States of supporting the self-defense forces of Ambazonia and that the United States caution against the targeting of civilian and civilian targets was a veiled attempt to procure the oil deposits and extensive natural resources within the territory of Ambazonia and the Gulf of Guinea. Cameroon Concord News Group is of the considered opinion that hateful rhetoric is not different from that espoused by Boko Haram and confederacy of crime profiteers operating from within the Centre of power in French Cameroun and Nigeria.  Issa Tchiroma is a key liaison operative within that expansive criminal network.

Cameroon Concord News Group invites the United States of America to take the opportunity of the sniper murder of its citizen and the official campaign of incitement against its citizens and interests in the Gulf of Guinea by French Cameroun to lead an international effort to intervene and conduct an independent investigation into all the crimes perpetrated by French Cameroun in Ambazonia.   Cameroon Concord News Group is concerned that French Cameroun has embarked on a criminal strategy to eradicate evidence pointing to its responsibility for the murder of Charles Trummann Wesco through the cold-blooded execution of the alleged Ambazonian militants it alleged committed the crimes.  The confessed extrajudicial execution of the alleged militants French Cameroun alleges committed the murder without allowing for thorough investigations and a fair judicial process unmistakably portray French Cameroun as a guilty criminal gang in a hurry to eradicate evidence of its criminal responsibility for the crimes, before the US officially decides to conduct its own independent investigation of the crime.  Cameroon Concord News Group recalls that the US through its State Department periodic country human rights reports and through its diplomatic mission in French Cameroon has decried extrajudicial executions in French Cameroon and called for the respect of French Cameroun’s international human rights treaty obligations.

The confessed execution of four individuals alleged to have committed the murder of Charles Trummann Wesco is a cover up through the commission of further murders, by execution. The confessed execution of these individuals without due process is an aggravation of the crime requiring urgent American and international attention.

Cameroon Concord News Group calls on the United States of America and the International Community, including the International Criminal Court to urgently open investigations into the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by French Cameroun and conjointly with Nigeria through the abductions and disappearances of hundreds and thousands of Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia civilians in the territory of Nigeria among whom are the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia His Excellency Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and members of the interim government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman and Editor-in-Chief

Now that you are here

The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

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The Board looks forward to hearing from the readers.

Signed by the Group Chairman on behalf of the Board of Directors

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Email: soteragbawebai@gmail.com

Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, also known as the monarch, returned to the nation’s capital on Sunday, October 28, 2018, after a short visit to his native Mvomeka’a where he was relaxing after a long bruising presidential election campaign that made his age and departure the central themes of the campaign.

Upon arrival in Yaounde, Mr. Biya immediately called the Speaker of the National Assembly, Cavaye Yegue Djril, to whom he gave firm instructions on the holding of a parliamentary session on Friday, November 2, in preparation for his swearing-in slated for November 7.

Over the last 20 years, the monarch has become very dictatorial and he has successfully deleted any lines that existed between the executive, judiciary and legislative branches of the government. It should be recalled that Mr. Biya appoints all magistrates and judges in the country and has a huge influence on members of parliament and senators, 30% of whom are directly appointed by him, while 70% are elected in a counterfeit election whose results are usually known many months ahead of time. And this same influence could be seen during the just-ended presidential elections.

Right from the beginning, it was clear that beating the incumbent through the ballot box will be a Herculean task. The electoral code is beautifully written to ensure that the incumbent is maintained in power. Even the election organizing body, ELECAM, is replete with members of the ruling party and this makes it hard for real impartial elections to be held in a country like Cameroon that lacks basic, transparent and fair election rules.

From every indication, ELECAM is just another wing of the ruling CPDM (Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement), a party considered by many Cameroonians are a crime syndicate due to the type of people who are its members. This party’s membership comprises ex-convicts, hardened criminals, murderers, business-people evading taxes and embezzlers. It has been banned in Southern Cameroons by the Ambazonian Interim Government and designated as a terrorist organization.

ELECAM, by its very nature, cannot organize free and fair elections in Cameroon and this explains why there were many irregularities in this year’s presidential polls, a fact recognized by the American government which clearly indicated in its congratulatory message to the contested winner of the rigged poll.

It should be recalled that Cameroon has just held a presidential election whose results were known by almost everybody, as members of the election-organizing body are appointed by Mr. Biya and most of them are members of his ruling party. Similarly, members of the Constitutional Council were also appointed by Mr. Biya in January and all of them had been compromised. All of them are members of the ruling party, and many of their spouses hold positions in government.

The president of the Constitutional Council, Clement Atangana, a retired Supreme Court judge, who was struggling with life while on retirement, had clearly indicated that he was there to serve the president’s interest. His appointment was indeed a resuscitation for him as this could be seen in a video in which he was rejoicing after hearing the “good news”. Of course he knew from the beginning that one good turn deserved another and this was obvious during the Constitutional Council’s deliberations. A villa is currently being constructed for him.

Other members of the Constitutional Council who did not inspire hope were Florence Arrey, a long-time girlfriend of the country’s justice minister, Laurent Esso; Foumane Akame, a one-time minster under Mr. Biya whose wife is also a ruling party parliamentarian; Joseph-Marie Bipoum Woum who was also a minster under the current president; Paul Nchoji Nkwi also a former minister and Jean-Baptiste Baskouda who has also served under the same president.

The Constitutional Council, whose decision is final and irreducible, had been set up to ensure the incumbent stayed in power. Despite attempts by the opposition during post-electoral fraud hearings in Yaounde to have the Constitutional Council members to recuse themselves because of several conflicts of interest, their appeals clearly fell on deaf ears. Members of this body are eternally indebted to the country’s president who is mockingly known by the public as the “monarch” for his haughty attitude and incompetence.

Not only was that application thrown out by the Constitutional Council for lack of any law to support the opposition’s claim of conflict of interest, all other applications by the opposition were also thrown out after a five-day deliberation. The presidential poll results that had been making the rounds on social media two weeks prior to the proclamation of the results by the Constitutional Council were simply confirmed and Mr. Biya who has been in power for 36 years, will be in power again for seven more years; a time many Cameroonians believe will bring more death and destruction to a country that is not only at war, but gradually heading to the bottom of the abyss.

Cameroon is replete with many problems and many of them are off-shoots of the mismanagement, tribalism and corruption that have become the country’s hallmark. Corruption has robbed the country of the financial resources it needs to undertake major development work. The country lacks good medical infrastructure. Most of its hospitals have become consultation clinics. The road infrastructure also leaves much to be desired. The roads are today death traps that are consuming the population at a rate never seen before.

The country’s economy too has taken a nosedive. Over the last 20 years, Cameroon’s economy has been caught in a tailspin. Unemployment has continued to rise, with university graduates not being able to find jobs. Many corporations have gone under, leaving many of their workers unemployed.

But the most difficult challenge is the Southern Cameroons crisis that is very likely to tear the country apart. For more than two years, Southern Cameroonians have engaged the government in a tough battle that has resulted in the killing of some 4,000 Cameroonians, including over 1,300 soldiers.

Following a demonstration by teachers and lawyers in 2016, the two English-speaking regions have become ungovernable. The government’s military actions have caused some 200,000 Southern Cameroonians to flee to Nigeria while millions are hiding in the bushes to avoid the government’s indiscriminate killings.

Many children are today seeking refuge in those bushes and many babies have been delivered in the process. The numbers of teenage mothers have increased and this spells another serious problem in the future. The government has not taken any efforts to convince the people for them to return to their homes.

On the contrary, soldiers have been torching many homes and killing any young Southern Cameroonians found in the territory in the hope that they could eliminate any threat Southern Cameroonians pose to the government.

Schools have been closed now for two years in the region and many of the students have simply been co-opted into the armed groups that have emerged. As the government turns down any appeals for inclusive dialogue, so too does the situation deteriorate. Even after solutions to the conflict would have been sought, security issues will linger for a long time. Many young men, who have lost hope in life, will continue to use their weapons as a means of eking out a living.

While Southern Cameroonians are struggling to break away from the Yaounde government, Boko Haram is bombing many northerners out of existence. The government’s repressive approach has only caused the people to run to Boko Haram whose methods are more appreciated by the population. The government is yet to understand that its repressive approach is not yielding the right results and this is exactly what caused the Southern Cameroons crisis to escalate.

Mr. Biya might have been handed victory by his Constitutional Council, but with that victory comes a crown of thorns that might keep him uncomfortable for seven years. The people of Cameroon have lost confidence in him. After 36 years in power, Cameroon has been put in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. It will take a miracle for most of the problems currently facing the country to be addressed by the same man who is responsible for these issues.

The world is watching Cameroon and many people will be keeping an eye on the monarch. Many want to see how comfortable he will be in his new crown of thorns. The country is out of cash. It has very few friends around the world and its finances are fast dwindling. With oil prices diminishing on a daily basis and separatists threatening to disrupt oil production in the Southwest region, it is clear that before long the government will be taking its begging bowl to other parts of the world for assistance.

Many of its corporations are bleeding money and those in the English-speaking regions of the country that used to haul in millions of dollars are unfortunately out of business due to the armed conflict that is unfolding in the region. The English-speaking regions are in a stand-still and this implies businesses are dying and the government is losing lots of revenue.

Mr. Biya might wear the crown, but it is clear that the hidden thorns in it will keep him permanently ill at ease. Most of country’s allies have called on the government to find sustainable solutions to the Southern Cameroons crisis and America has simply ended its military partnership with the country due to serious human abuses in the northern part of the country.  Mr. Biya will have to burn the mid-night candle on both ends if he has to post any results. His dwindling financial resources imply that he has a crisis on his hands and with the country awash with weapons, it is clear that the government’s military actions in the region will not deliver the military solutions it has been hankering after for two years.

Cameroon is in for a long dangerous walk in the desert. With its partners jumping ship, it is clear that the country will hit so many bumps on its path. As Prof. Kamto and his supporters continue to contest Mr. Biya’s victory, it is clear that the country has a lot on its plate. The future is bleak for a nation that many had once touted as an oasis of peace in a desert of chaos.  Many people have lost hope in Cameroon, but it is up to Mr. Biya to change tactics if he wants the world to see him as the man who left Cameroon a better place than he met it.  Long live the monarch in his new crown of thorns.

By Kingsley Betek and Soter Agbaw-Ebai

Now that you are here

The Cameroon Concord News Group Board wishes to inform its faithful readers that for more than a decade, it has been providing world-class reports of the situation in Southern Cameroons.  The Board has been priding itself on its reports which have helped the world to gain a greater understanding of the crisis playing out in Southern Cameroons. It hails its reporters who have also helped the readers to have a broader perspective of the political situation in Cameroon.

The Board wishes to thank its readers who have continued to trust Southern Cameroon’s leading news platform. It is therefore using this opportunity to state that its reporters are willing to provide more quality information to the readers.    However, due to the changing global financial context, the Board is urging its readers to play a significant role in the financing of the news organization.  It is therefore calling on its faithful readers to make whatever financial contribution they can to ensure they get the latest developments in their native Southern Cameroons, in particular, and Cameroon in general.

Bank transaction: Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Banking IBAN: GB51 BARC 2049 1103 9130 15

Swift BIC BARC GB22XX

SORT CODE 20-49-11, ACCOUNT NUMBER – 03913015 Barclay PLC, UK

The Board looks forward to hearing from the readers.

Signed by the Group Chairman on behalf of the Board of Directors

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Email: soteragbawebai@gmail.com

Simon Ngwa is a gentle and polite man, and he apologised to me first for what he was about to say. ‘I’m sorry if this upsets you, but we in Cameroon are very bitter towards Britain,’ he said. ‘As a child, I was taught to look up to the British Crown as a symbol of fair play and the Queen as a guarantor of moral values. But Britain is doing nothing to stop this genocide.’

Mr Ngwa and I had our conversation in a shabby refugee centre in the Nigerian town of Calabar, on Cameroon’s western frontier. Despite his impeccable manners, Mr Ngwa is a wanted man back home in Cameroon. His crime? To have been a member of the Southern Cameroons National Council, a group campaigning for independence for Cameroon’s English-speaking minority.

Compared with Boko Haram, the Niger Delta Avengers and some of the other outlaw crazies rampaging round this corner of West Africa, the council doesn’t sound like a very scary bunch. But right now, standing up for the rights of English-speakers in Francophone Cameroon can get you killed.

Did you even know there were English speakers in Cameroon? Most people don’t. They think of it as a French-speaking place that sends us the odd good football player. I suspect that most Britons are unaware that we even left a colonial footprint there, let alone a forgotten tribe of Anglophiles like Mr Ngwa. All that may be about to change. After half a century as one of Africa’s most stable states, Cameroon is sliding into a vicious, though largely unreported, civil war.

The majority English-speaking South West province capital Buea (Photo: Getty)

On one side are the five million Anglophones. Their region, they say, is under-developed, with all the best jobs in government hogged by French speakers. On the other side, meanwhile, is Cameroon’s strongman, President Paul Biya, who has clung to power since 1982, and who absolutely refuses to countenance any Anglophone demands for a fairer deal. The fissures in ‘La République’ first opened up in 2016, when Anglophones protested against plans to impose French-speaking judges on them. The government responded with a violent crackdown on protestors and the troubles began.

Some of the horrors are carried out by Mr Biya’s feared Battalion d’Intervention Rapide, a US-trained military force known by Anglophones as ‘The Beer’. Others are the work of Anglophone ‘self-defence’ groups, which have sprung up by the dozen in the past year. They’re not armed with much more than machetes, clubs and Dane guns — homemade muskets first brought in by Nordic colonial traders. So usually all they can manage is to kidnap, kill and occasionally behead the odd Beer member. They also organised a widespread Anglophone boycott of the recent presidential elections which did nothing to stop Biya winning again.

So where does Britain come into all this? Speak to any Anglophone activist, and you’ll soon find out. It all goes back to the end of the first world war, when what was then German-run Kamerun was divvied up into a big French chunk and a smaller British chunk, known as British Cameroons.

The latter was brought to life in the writings of Gerald Durrell, who spent much of his time downing gin there with the Fon of Bafut, a bibulous Anglophone chief who helped him collect green-leaf vipers and flying mice.

The British Cameroons ceased to exist in 1961, when there was a referendum and Anglophones had to decide whether to become part of Nigeria or join up with their French brethren. Many wanted self-rule instead, including the Fon, who famously described the referendum as a choice between ‘the Fire and the Deep Sea’. But independence was ruled out by Foreign Office mandarins, who traditionally frowned on plucky little statelets wanting to go it alone.

Times, though, have changed. With Brexit Britain now seen around the world as the champion of the go-it-alone cause, Cameroon’s separatists think they deserve our support. They dream of a breakaway state called Ambazonia, which, they point out, would have the same population as Scotland and even bigger oil reserves. ‘If Scotland can have independence, why can’t we?’ asked Mr Ngwa.

In practice, all Britain is likely to do is join forces with America and France to prod Mr Biya into giving some devolved powers, though he has not shown much interest so far, which is why ‘Ambazonians’ think their only option is to carve out a homeland by force. This plan doesn’t look very promising either, if their military field-craft is anything to go by.

‘Robert’, a fighter with an Anglophone group called the Red Dragons, told me that his unit had relied mainly on magic charms when fighting Mr Biya’s troops. By abstaining from sex and wearing no metal zips or studs in their clothes, they could make themselves bullet-proof, he told me. Then he added: ‘In my first battle, seven of my comrades died. Nearly every time we fight them, they win.’

Still, rather like the impasse in Catalonia, the heavy-handedness of the government response has all but ruled out a return to the status quo. And judging by the way Anglophones now spit out the word ‘La République’, there’s every chance the war will worsen.

True, it’s not yet at the stage of Rwandan-style communal violence. Day to day, Anglophones and Francophones still get on. But it’s hard to see a way back. A younger, internet-mobilised generation wants a better hand than history has dealt it, but Mr Biya, a throwback autocrat, sees compromise as weakness.

And this is one colonial legacy that Britain might feel a prick of conscience about. British student radicals might prefer to concentrate on lobbying Cambridge to return its Benin Bronzes but in Cameroon people are dying because they were lumped half a century ago into a state that didn’t fit them. Where’s the #BiyaMustFall campaign on the campuses? When Mr Ngwa told me how sad he was to be abandoned by the Crown, I couldn’t think of much to say in our defence.

Culled from The Spectator

When the Southern Cameroonian problem started, the general thinking in East Cameroon was that Anglophones could not change the form of the state without following the proper procedure which implied that the country’s so-called republican institutions must be used.

The Southern Cameroons problem was born out of frustration. The government, in its arrogance, had forgotten that the English-speaking minority had its own culture which needed to be respected. The government’s failure to get it right for half a century resulted in strikes by teachers and lawyers which, unfortunately, snowballed to become a civil war that has consumed more than 3,000 lives.

For long, the Yaounde government stayed mute about the gruesome film that was playing out in the two English-speaking regions. In the president’s mind, those who had protested and finally taken up arms were terrorists who had to be neutralized and dealt with according to the “law”. The Yaounde government has always believed that all issues must be dealt with militarily. It holds that killing a few citizens will intimidate the population into silence.

Unfortunately, it had not had the full extent of the frustration of the English-speaking minority. A lot had transpired over the last three decades that the Yaounde government had not noticed. The Southern Cameroons Diaspora had grown in number and many of its members had become wealthy and could help those on the ground to give the government a run for its money.

At its height, the Southern Cameroons crisis had become a millstone around the necks of the country’s politicians. Many questioned the government’s ominous silence. Their concerns had grown exponentially as many young Cameroonians were being mowed down by their own government. They felt that the conflict was unnecessary and could have been averted through inclusive dialogue, as urged by the international community.

It was on this ground that parliamentarians of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), the country’s leading opposition party, felt that it would be immoral and unethical for them to continue looking the other way while other Cameroonians were being slaughtered by a government whose conflict resolution tool of choice is the gun. They therefore decided to take the matter to the parliament where they thought the problem could be laid to rest once and for all.

But ruling party parliamentarians and their allies made sure the crisis was never discussed at the parliament. Despite efforts by SDF parliamentarians to force their way, they were unfortunately pushed to the wall by a government whose objective has never been to address the crisis using the country’s so-called republican institutions.

While the lower house had proven that it was not independent enough and could not address an issue that was putting the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, the upper house, the Senate, for its part, also refused to address this issue that has made its way to the global political arena as Southern Cameroonians across the globe worked very hard to influence global public opinion.

The Southern Cameroons crisis has not only proven that the government is ineffective and its objective is not to improve upon the people’s well-being, it has also proven that the country’s so-called republican institutions are toothless bulldogs that are being used and misused by the executive branch of the government for its personal purpose.

Of course, many French-speaking Cameroonians felt at the time Southern Cameroonians could still take their issues to the parliament even when the parliament was refusing to act. The parliament is supposed to be the place wherein the people’s problems should addressed, but in Cameroon, this august institution is simply there to do one person’s bidding.

French-speaking Cameroonians will, however, come to realize that their faith in their institutions was totally misplaced. They had lambasted Southern Cameroonians for choosing the war path without seeking to know why. They simply failed to understand that nobody in his right mind will prefer war to peace. They had refused to look into the mirror of history to understand that most human disasters are usually manufactured by politicians and the arrogance and power of these politician are usually to blame for the collapse of law and order in any country.

If the killings in Southern Cameroons could not change the minds of French-speaking Cameroonians, something else would. It was just a matter of time for them to realize that their country’s institutions were designed to meet the needs of their leader.  Southern Cameroonians have taken the heat for two years and they have proven to the world that when a people is determined to liberate itself from the yoke of dictatorship, it will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. With their hunting rifles, the fighters have given the government a true run for its money.

It is estimated that some 1,300 army soldiers have met their death in the jungles of Southern Cameroons and the number is growing by the day. Southern Cameroonian fighters, who are supported by the Diaspora, have clearly sent home a message to whoever wants to hear. The fighting in that part of the country will never be won through the barrel of the gun, but through dialogue; genuine and inclusive dialogue that will create the right atmosphere for peaceful co-existence.

Today, French-speaking Cameroonians know that they have nominal republican institutions. They know that going to those institutions to seek redress is a sheer waste of time. The 2018 presidential election has simply come to underscore that true political change will not come through those hollow paper tigers in the name of institutions that are being run to make a single person more important than the nation.

Right from the beginning, it was clear that beating the incumbent through the ballot box will be a Herculean task. The electoral code is beautifully written to ensure that the incumbent is maintained in power. Even the election organizing body, ELECAM, is replete with members of the ruling party and this makes it hard for real impartial elections to be held in a country like Cameroon that lacks basic infrastructure.

ELECAM is just another wing of the ruling CPDM (Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement), a party considered by many Cameroonians are a crime syndicate due to the type of people who are its members. This party’s membership comprises ex-convicts, hardened criminals, murderers, business-people evading taxes, people who are seeking protection against the population they have exploited and embezzlers.

ELECAM, by its very nature, cannot organize free and fair elections in Cameroon and this explains why there were many irregularities in this year’s presidential election, a fact recognized by the American government which clearly indicated in its congratulatory message to the contested winner of the rigged poll.

But the greatest drama that actually exposed the ineffectiveness of Cameroon’s so-called “republican” institutions played out in the Constitutional Council whose members were all members of the ruling party. The president of the Constitutional Council, Clement Atangana, a retired Supreme Court judge, who was struggling with life while on retirement, had clearly indicated that he was there to serve the president’s interest. His appointment was indeed a resuscitation for him as this could be seen in a video in which he was rejoicing after hearing the “good news”. Of course he knew from the beginning that one good turn deserved another and this was obvious during the Constitutional Council’s deliberations.

Other members of the Constitutional Council who did not inspire hope were Florence Arrey, a long-time girlfriend of the country’s justice minister, Laurent Esso; Foumane Akame, a one-time minster under Mr. Biya whose wife is also a ruling party parliamentarian; Joseph-Marie Bipoum  woum who was also a minster under the current president; Paul Nchoji Nkwi also  a former minister and Jean-Baptiste Baskouda who has also served under the same president.

The Constitutional Council, whose decision is final and irreducible, had been set up to ensure the incumbent stayed in power. Despite attempts by the opposition during post-electoral fraud hearings in Yaounde to have the Constitutional Council members to recuse themselves because of several conflicts of interest, their appeals clearly fell on deaf ears. Members of this body are eternally indebted to the country’s president who is mockingly known by the public as the “monarch” for his haughty attitude and incompetence.   

Not only was that application thrown out by the Constitutional Council for lack of any law to support the opposition’s claim of conflict of interest, all other applications by the opposition were also thrown out after a five-day deliberation. The presidential poll results that had been making the rounds on social media two weeks prior to the proclamation of the results by the Constitutional Council were simply confirmed and Mr. Biya who has been in power for 36 years, will be in power again for seven more years; a time many Cameroonians believe will bring more death and destruction to a country that is not only at war, but gradually heading to the bottom of the abyss.

With the Constitutional Council having delivered its verdict, French-speaking Cameroonians have now come to terms with the fact that they do not have reliable institutions. They now understand that Southern Cameroonians were not wrong when they showed clear contempt for those institutions.

French-speaking Cameroonians have been given a dose of their own medicine and many of them are incapable of swallowing it. They have been grumbling, but that is all they can do as they are not made of the stuff that makes brave people. The presidential election was not only a test of their institutions, it was also a trial of the oral bravery and intellectualism that they have been professing over the last two years.  

Prof. Kamto might have won the election on paper, but Mr. Biya will be at the Unity Palace for seven more years as French-speaking Cameroonians lick their wounds and accept their tag of cowards. Cameroon’s “republican institutions” are, at best, talking workshops. They have been designed to keep the monarch in power and anybody who holds that issues in Cameroon will be addressed by those institutions is simply living in the past. The truth is out and Cameroonians must start looking for new ways to address their issues. Their institutions are not for the people. They belong to the ‘monarch’.

By Joachim Arrey, Ph.D

Toronto, Canada

Dear Francophones,

I am indeed very pleased that you guys did not take to the streets today after the contested election results were released by a controversial Constitutional Council.

I was indeed scared that in the event of any violence, many of you who are all barks, and no bites, would simply pack up your stuff and head to the southwest as many of your Bassa, Bamileke, Ewondo and Batanga people did when Ahidjo and the French unleashed a reign of terror on you guys in the 1950s and 1960s when a few of your people thought they could fight for independence.

We, in Southern Cameroons, never had our independence through any bloodshed. We had a culture of parliamentary democracy wherein freedom of speech was key and elections were just an exercise in which the people sincerely chose who had to lead them.

We never used any brutality to address differences and we ensured that people were punished for the crimes they committed and not for the opinions they held. We were a safe sanctuary for many people who were unsafe in their country.

That is why there are many of your folks in the Southwest, a territory whose sub-soil is very rich, and some of them were foolish enough to betray Southern Cameroonians when we made up our minds to challenge the corrupt Yaounde government that had marginalized us for decades.

These folks whom I consider as Southern Cameroonians will continue to live with us, but I must be prompt to add that those who do not share our pain and aspiration should learn to be neutral. They must understand that the people’s pain is real and it could lead to violent reactions.

I would like to clearly point out that some of the most engaging of our supporters have been descendants of those refugees who fled to our land and I truly appreciate their contribution to our effort to make our problem known across the globe.

When we felt we had been pushed to the wall, we decided that it was time for the world to be aware of our pain and suffering. Our battle was also a fight against corruption, injustice and disrespect.

You simply did not understand us, and you were adamant despite our attempts to explain why we were reacting they way we reacted. Your all knowing attitude never allows you to humble yourselves. True wisdom, you should know, comes with humility.

Instead of joining us to help get things on the right path, many of you opted to side with the government. You called us names. You told the world we were arrogant and that we had little or no respect for your Republican institutions. While we were angry, we knew your time would come. It was just a matter of time.

Some of us understand that the noise you make is simply designed to hide your cowardice and ignorance. You are a people who can easily be intimidated and you are corruptible. It is therefore no surprise to us that your leaders always use bread and sardine to corrupt your minds during elections like the one that has just ended or when you are angry.

The past presidential election has simply proven that you lack the right mentality to challenge your tormentors. It has proven that we, Southern Cameroonians are not arrogant, but principled and determined to ensure errors of the past get corrected and this must happen sooner rather than later.

It now seems like there is a lull in the chaos in Southern Cameroons, but there cannot be any respite when there is no justice. Do not be mistaken. We still have unfinished business and we still have a stomach for a fight. As long as your government continues to run the show like a personal estate, we will continue to find creative ways to erode its authority.

While you continue to eat your bread and sardine, we will use all the means available to us to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves.

The blood of those who have been slaughtered by your troops will not go in vain. We believe in the philosophy of one for all and all for one, and we will continue to work as a team to get the government to the negotiating table where we will find the ultimate solutions to our issues.

Your cowardice did not start today. Your government knows your weaknesses. You are all noise and no action. We, the minority, gave you freedom of expression. Today, you speak as if you were born with it.

In the process, we lost many of our brothers and sisters. We also gave you multiparty politics. In the process thousands were slaughtered in our part of the world while you spent your time drowning yourselves in alcohol. The physical scars are still there in cities like Bamenda and Kumba.

All you know is to gossip and seek to break down courageous men and women who really want to engineer genuine change within the country. You use your fake intellectualism to distort debates and bamboozle your own people. Your unreliable ways make it hard to work with you.

The mere sight of a police officer sends you into fear even when you have not committed any crime. Your leaders understand this and they are using it to their advantage. That is why prior to the proclamation of today’s election results, all your major cities were on lockdown.

I would not like to make this letter long, but will promptly advise that you are the architects of your own hardship and disappointment. You do not know how to work together. Every single one of you is more intelligent than the other.

You have to throw away your coat of self-importance if you must jettison the invisible shackles of slavery that have been put on you by your own people. Learn from us and you will deliver happiness to future generations.

Do not be scared of death, after all the Bible you read clearly points out that for you to go to Heaven, you must die. We, Southern Cameroonians, are prepared to lay down our lives to ensure our children do not experience the marginalization we have gone through.

You must muster courage if you must defend your victory. Prof. Kamto is your president. He won the election. Running away from soldiers stationed by the government will not take Prof. Kamto to the Unity Palace. If you need change, you must do the right thing. It never comes on a platter of gold.

Sincerely,

Joachim Arrey
Toronto, Canada

This presidential election has given the opportunity to Anglophones to send a very strong message to Yaounde and they have done so 500%. Anglophones don’t seem to realize how powerful a message they sent to the whole world by boycotting the election 100%.

A boycott is a very important tool that has been used successfully during the civil rights movement in the 60s by Dr Martin Luther King and black people in the United States. It was used by Mahatma Ghandi and his people in India during their resistance to British rule. In South Africa black people used it successfully against apartheid.

Let nobody fool you Anglophones. You have achieved a great goal in your struggle for freedom and justice. The world was watching, the UN saw it all and took special note. Yaoundé is panicking but won’t let you see it. The message was powerful and resounding. You have gained great respect even in the eyes of Francophones who laughed and mocked you as ” Anglofools” or as “les fauteurs de trouble” when you started this struggle and go rolled in mud, shot and maimed and tour businesses burnt or looted.

Now, I want to say this. Let no single one of you go out after the election results are announced, Biya or Kamto being the winner. If you get arrested in Yaounde or Douala and found to be an Anglophone then you are a terrorist that has crossed to the francophone zone to incite trouble and you know what will be done to you. Let Francophones feel the pangs of injustice and let’s see the look on their faces. I will also advise that everyone saves some emergency money to use for a quick exit if necessary.

Source: Anonymous

The judges at the Constitutional Council will go down in the nation’s hall of infamy and shame; the 10 senile-looking men and one socially-retired woman who validated the massive fraud that was perpetrated against the Cameroonian people by ELECAM.

As an uncircumcised appendage of the ruling CPDM party, ELECAM shamelessly falsified the results and gave victory to their paymaster, Biya. And despite the mountain of evidence presented by lawyers for the opposition candidates, the CC merely validated the ELECAM fraud.

This is how you win elections in Cameroon. Despite the huge material and financial resources at their disposal, CPDM elite showed little interest in Biya’s re-election and ran a lackluster “bread-and-sardines” campaign, so glaringly bereft of ideas and vision and generally lacking in depth of thinking as to answer the basic question whether Cameroonians were better-off now, than they were in 2011.

Biya lost at the polls but won at ELECAM! It is just a power grab by the vampire elite that has captured and taken the country hostage. Cameroonians must rise up in resistance and take back their country.

The hearings at the Constitutional Council continued on Wednesday with Prof. Kamto’s team producing more evidence to convince the Biya appointed Constitutional Council to understand that a decision other than the one that confirms the people’s choice might plunge the country into a spiral of violence and destruction.

The Kamto team, consisting of the country’s finest lawyers, proved that the country’s laws had been designed to favor a particular presidential candidate, as all their complaints before and during the presidential election had been clearly ignored by ELECAM, the country’s election-organizing body.

But the icing on the cake came when Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla spoke to the Constitutional Council, urging its members to listen to the people’s wishes and aspirations, as there could be consequences that might come with lots of regrets.

He called on the Constitutional Council to understand that when the people do not get listened to, there will always be adverse consequences. He recalled that since the government failed to listen to Southern Cameroonians lawyers and teachers in October 2016, the country has been going through a tough time and that the fear of a separation was real.

He underscored the point that no law or ordinance could be mightier than the will of the people. He recognized the capabilities of the members of the constitutional Council, urging them to prove that the country was bigger than any individual.

He pointed out that many leaders would come and go, but Cameroon will always be around and it will be prudent and wise for the Constitutional Council to take a decision that would give members of that august body an enviable place in the country’s history.

Another brilliant barrister who distinguished himself as a legal force to reckon was Barrister Ikome Mbella of the Southwest region who drew the Constitutional Council’s attention to the tragedy unfolding in the two English-speaking regions.  He advised Constitutional Council members to do justice to the people of Cameroon to prevent the country from being caught in the throes of chaos that might destroy and interrupt lives.

Other lawyers weighed in on the matter, urging the Constitutional Council member to do the right thing. Some advised them to understand that though they had been appointed by the country’s President, Paul Biya, they still had the right and obligation to exercise their right to apply the law as expected by the people of Cameroon.

It should be recalled that the Constitutional Council had been created by Mr. Biya and all its members are supporters of the ruling CPDM. The wife of the president of the Constitutional Council, Clement Atangana, is a CPDM parliamentarian, the wife of Mr. Fouman Akame is also a CPDM parliamentarian, and Professor Joseph Marie Bipoum Woum was a minister under President Paul Biya and chairman of the board of directors of several state-owned corporations.

For her part, Justice Florence Arrey, another member of the Constitutional Council, is the recognized long-term girlfriend of the country’s current justice minister, Laurent Esso, and the two have a couple of children from a relationship that has lasted decades. Laurent Esso, it should be underscored is President Paul Biya’s closest collaborator and he played a significant role in the establishment of the Constitutional Council and the appointment of its members.

This therefore compels many Cameroonians to think that the hearing at the Constitutional Council is indeed an exercise in futility as all members of the Constitutional Council are related to the ruling part and have all been compromised.

Meanwhile, after throwing out Prof. Kamto’s application for members of the Constitutional Council to recuse themselves yesterday in the morning because of the numerous conflicts of interest outlined in the applicant’s application, the Kamto legal team on Tuesday put up an impressive show on the irregularities that actually marred the October 7, 2018 poll.

The team’s lead legal expert, Barrister Ndoki, put the team’s collective effort and determination to expose the ruling party’s sloppy rigging strategy on display. The team outlined cases of massive fraud, with numbers for many polling stations not adding up and some results report signed without being properly verified if they had been signed by the right persons. The reported cases of fraud concerned, in particular, the Far North, the South, and the Northwest and Southwest regions.

In the two English-speaking regions, it was reported that since the population had been chased away by government forces that had resorted to shooting young men, army soldiers voted as many times as they could, oblivious of the fact that everybody was aware that the population had moved into East Cameroon and on voting day, there was no security for those who wanted to venture out to vote.

Some of the results reports did not even have the signatures of the returning officers and where there were signatures, the number of signatures on the first pages did not match the number of signatures on the following pages. Some results reports were produced based on the recommendations of the authorities who, in many cases, were ruling party supporters.

In the Far North region which has been given to Mr. Paul Biya, the number of votes cast was higher than the number of registered voters. The CPDM rigging machine in that region had actually worked overtime and it failed to take into consideration the number of registered voters.

But it was in the South region, which is the president’s region which the ruling party felt that it had a free hand to do whatever it wanted. Its sloppiness resulted in many mistakes, with even dead people voting.  The Constitutional Council session was put off to Wednesday after Council members were totally overwhelmed by the evidence Prof. Kamto’s team provided and this great legal team has continued on Wednesday to prove that the election had been marred by irregularities just to give Mr. Biya an advantage that might extend his stay in power.

Cameroon is at the crossroads. The country’s history is being rewritten and the Constitutional Council has a place in this effort to bring peace, stability and justice to a troubled country. Members of the Constitutional Council might have been compromised, but they still have an obligation towards the people of this country that has been in the spotlight for decades for all the wrong reasons.

By Kingsley Betek and Sama Ernest in Yaounde