The Social Democratic Front, the so-called main opposition party in Cameroon has come to the end of its political mission and the party is in a complete shambolic situation. This week only have seen the SDF party and its leader, Ni John Fru Ndi slapped from pillar to post due to the party’s poor handling of the crisis in Southern Cameroons.

The SDF party has been rocked with a series of crises and it is hard to say who really has legitimate authority following too many inconsistent signals from Hon Joshua Osih, Chairman Fru Ndi and sometimes Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam.

However, the latest downward trend is an indication that even Ambazonians from the Northern Zone who over the years gave their all to the SDF have now gotten enough of Fru Ndi’s Machiavellian politics rich in bribes from the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo crime syndicate in Yaoundé.

Fru Ndi’s corrupt list is endless – expelling of sound party leaders; hundreds of millions of FCFA in improper party spending; investiture corruption; SDF Echo fraud; dodgy party appointments; a dodgy political meeting  with Biya in Bamenda; endless number of micron project grants fraud. The list goes on and on.

But what has really screwed the SDF is the Southern Cameroons Crisis that has made Ambazonians to now see themselves as one person. The Ambazonia Interim Government banned elections in Southern Cameroons and the exiled leaders are ready more than ever before to implement that decision come February 2020. This has created an atmosphere of fear and panic with several SDF MPs and Councilors quitting the electoral process convened for early next year.  

The SDF has lost everything all over Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun, because its delivery at local level has been pretty much non-existent and a vast number of Southern Cameroonians who kept faith in the party are sick and tired of being screwed over and are also now for complete independence for the people of Southern Cameroons.

Reacting to the prevailing situation, Hon. Dr Awudu Cyprian let the cat out of the bag – it can no longer be business as usual. The much respected SDF MP stated that “I shall not seek re-election into parliament in the legislative elections slated for the 09^th of February 2020: Given that I have decided to put your safety-the safety of all my constituents first, before or above my personal political ambition of staying in parliament.” he says.

But such is the state of shock in the SDF party that Dr Awudu furthered in paragraph 2 of his letter to the SDF National Executive Committee that “I must not go back to parliament under the current circumstances walking on the blood and in disrespect of all my constituents who have lost their lives in the civil war.”  

And, for the first time ever since its creation in 1990, the SDF will not be able to get anyone among its dirty ranks to rally Ambazonians. Chairman Fru Ndi, Joshua Osih and members of the National Executive Committee of the SDF have nothing in their tanks. The SDF party is now a liability, and because it actually represents nothing in Southern Cameroons, there is no chance of the party influencing any development in the current Southern Cameroons political story.

The SDF may overall just metamorphose into the Ambazonia Interim Government and help the Southern Cameroons make hay.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Delegations of women in Cameroon are visiting towns and villages to encourage women to run for office in the upcoming February local and parliamentary elections.  Although half the population, women make up less than a third of Cameroon’s 180 lawmakers and just six percent of the country’s 380 mayors. 

Members of the activist group More Women in Politics try to convince 62-year old Diedonne Kemche to allow one of his six wives to run as candidate for the local council election.

Kemche, a member of Cameroon’s polygamous Bamikike ethnic group, said he is not sure his wife would perform her household duties if she became an elected official.

He said his wives cannot be wasting time by taking part in political activity.  They are supposed to be busy taking care of their children, said Kemche, working on the farm and at home, cooking for their family and being respectful to their husband.

Kemche’s wife Stephanie Ngono, a primary school teacher, disagreed and said, despite her husband’s resistance, she is committed to run for office.

She said men should stop the attitude of restricting their wives’ liberties and freedoms.  They should understand that women join politics for their own emancipation, said Ngono, and to give to their communities just as they contribute to the progress of their families.

Ngono’s defiance of her husband to participate in politics is rare in patriarchal Cameroon.  Traditional gender roles are still dominant most areas and most women are economically dependent on their husbands.

Coordinator of More Women in Politics Justine Diffo said men usually make the family decisions and do not allow their wives to be seen in public with other men, impairing their participation in politics.

She said they have mobilized support for women not only to take part at the local and parliamentary elections by voting but, most importantly, by being candidates themselves.  They are visiting all the council areas where the February 9, 2020 elections will be conducted, said Diffo, to make sure female candidates will not be rejected for not meeting legal requirements.

Cameroon’s political parties say they are working to increase the number of women to run for elected office.

Secretary General of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement Jean Nkuete says after hearing complaints from women they are making changes.

The party has decided that four out of every ten candidates for the parliamentary elections should be women, he said, and that at least 42 percent of those vying for elective positions in local councils should be women.

But even with the growing participation of female candidates, getting Cameroonians to vote more women into office in patriarchal societies remains a challenge.

Source: VOA

The United States on Tuesday urged Cameroon to devolve power in its troubled anglophone region, saying the government’s military response was only strengthening separatists.

The warning came weeks after the United States ended certain preferential trade benefits for Cameroon, citing human rights violations including arbitrary killings.

Tibor Nagy, the top US diplomat for Africa, said he believed advisors to Cameroon’s veteran resident, Paul Biya, were telling him “you can win this militarily.”

“The truth is, it’s not going to be won militarily,” Nagy told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee.

“Every day more Cameroonians who in the beginning were probably very loyal Cameroonians are starting to think that maybe declaring a separate country is the way we want to go,” he said.

He acknowledged Cameroon has held talks to resolve the crisis but said they have been primarily symbolic, with little concrete.

“There has to be a true dialogue. There has to be also devolution of power to the region,” Nagy said, calling for “something so that the people who are still moderates can gravitate towards that.”

Violence has grown in two English-speaking regions, which have a separate colonial past, where activists have protested what they see as encroachment in the mostly French-speaking nation.

A separate conflict has flared in the impoverished Far North of Cameroon with militants of the Boko Haram extremist group.

Source: AFP

Dear President Emmanuel Macron,

We, the intellectuals, writers, and human rights lawyers undersigned, write to implore France to strengthen its commitment to the resolution of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon, described by some analysts as “Rwanda in slow motion”.

Specifically, we respectfully urge France to use its considerable influence on the government of President Paul Biya to encourage Cameroon to openly join the peace talks led by Switzerland, which would make it possible to stop the murders and atrocities perpetrated in the country. North West and South West regions of the country. A durable solution must come from a mediation process that includes English-speaking armed separatist groups and non-violent civil society leaders.

It’s urgent; the dehumanizing violence in Cameroon must not reach the same scale as that which occurred in Rwanda in 1994. On the one hand, non-state armed groups and bandits use machetes to maim, torture and decapitate, on the other hand. Government forces commit crimes against humanity such as extrajudicial executions and burnt villages. Journalists, opposition politicians and other civilians are wrongly detained. More than half a million Anglophones are displaced while fleeing violence. Hundreds of thousands of children have missed school for more than three years, and according to recent United Nations reports, 1.4 million people are at risk of starvation.

France and the international community may be aware that the recent Grand National Dialogue organized by Cameroon did not adequately address the Anglophone crisis. As a result, violence has persisted in English-speaking areas since the end of the dialogue on October 4.

The Great National Dialogue and the release of political prisoners have been a step in the right direction. However, the dialogue does not address the root causes of the conflict; it excluded any discussion of other forms of governance and did not offer sufficient security guarantees to diaspora and separatist leaders. In other words, it did not put an end to the atrocities or produced an acceptable or viable political solution for the English-speaking regions. The talks led by Switzerland now seem to be the only way to reach an appropriate political solution, through an inclusive negotiating table.

Mr. President, we hope that you personally and your country, France, value your historical relations and your ties with Cameroon, and wish for the return of peace in this country. We believe that France does not want to be complicit in another genocide in Africa after Rwanda and that it take all possible measures now. Please strongly promote the Swiss talks so that villainous violence can cease immediately, that human rights are respected and that normalcy returns to English-speaking and French-speaking Cameroon.

Cameroonians and Cameroonians, brothers, sisters and friends of Cameroon in France as well as the whole world are waiting for you.

• Alphonsus BM Gbanie, Executive Secretary, Human Rights Defenders Network – SL, Sierra Leone
• Awada Ali Yakhoub, National President of AECPEM, Association for Koranic Education and Protection of Mouhadjirine Children, Chad
  Center for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa
• CLEEN Foundation, Nigeria
• Consortium of Ethiopian Human Rights Organizations – CEHRO, Ethiopia
• Cory Williams, Co-Founder, Darfur and Beyond, USA
• Kenya Coalition of Human Rights Defenders, Kenya
• Dr. Al Sutton, Africa Freedom Coalition, USA
• Dr. Charlotte Walker-Said, John Jay College, City University of New York, USA
• Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossman Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Stockton University; Former President, Genocide Watch; Former First Vice President, International Association of Genocide Scholars, USA
• Dr. Gerald Bareebe, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto – Scarborough, Canada
• Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, Founding President, Genocide Watch, USA
• Dr. James Angove, Lecturer in Moral and Political Philosophy, University of Oxford, UK
• Dr. Lynn Cockburn, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, Canada
• Dr. Manjeet Ramgotra, Lecturer in Law, SOAS, University of London, UK
• Dr. Michael Minch, Peace and Justice Studies, Utah Valley University, USA
• Dr. Piet Konings, Honorary Fellow, African Studies Center, University of Leiden, The Netherlands
• Dr. Robert K. Hitchcock, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, USA
• Dr. Roxana Willis, Researcher in Law and Criminology, University of Oxford, UK
• Dr. Samuel Totten, Professor Emeritus, University of Arkansas, USA
• Eric Cohen, Chairperson and Co-Founder, Investors Against Genocide, USA
• Esther Sprague, Director, Sudan Unlimited, USA
• Francis Kpatindé, Associate Professor, Sciences Po Paris, France
• Fred Muvunyi, Editor, Germany’s International Broadcaster DW; Consultant, Freedom House; Op-Ed contributor, The Washington Post, Germany
• Gabriel Stauring, Stop Genocide Now, USA
• George Shirinian, Executive Director, Zoryan Institute, Canada
• Jeffrey Smith, Executive Director, Vanguard Africa, USA
• Jonathan Osei Owusu, Executive Director, POS Foundation; Vice Chairman, Ghana Human Rights NGOs Forum; Convener, West African Human Rights Defenders Network – Ghana chapter and UN UPR, Ghana
• Kim Klett, Educators’ Institute for Human Rights, USA
• Kyle Matthews, Executive Director, Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Canada
• Lauren Fortgang, Director and Co-Founder, Never Again Coalition, USA
• Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada
• Linda Melvern, Author: A Betrayed People – The role of the west in Rwanda’s genocide; Conspiracy to Murder – The Rwandan genocide, UK
• Ms. Mama Koité Doumbia, President of the MUSONET / Mali Network; Africa Representative to Trust Funds for Victims of the International Criminal Court / ICC; Member of FemWise Africa / African Union; President of the Platform of Women Leaders of Mali; Member of the UN Women West and Central Africa Advisory Group; Member of the Francophone Network Equality Women Men / OIF, Mali
• Martha Boshnick, Co-chair, Darfur Interfaith Network, USA
• Ndifuna Mohammed, Executive Director, Justice Access Point – Uganda (JAP), Uganda
• Pearl Eliadis, Human Rights Lawyer and Adjunct Professor of Law, Faculty of Law, McGill University, Canada
• Professor Adam Jones, Political Science, University of British Columbia, Canada
• Professor Amanda Hammar, Director, Center for African Studies, University of Copenhagen; President, Africa-Europe Group for International Studies (AEGIS), Denmark
• Professor Arshin Adib-Moghaddin, SOAS, University of London, UK
• Professor David Livingstone Smith, University of New England, USA
• Professor Elisabeth Weber, University of California – Santa Barbara, USA
• Professor Gareth Austin, Professor of Economic History, University of Cambridge, UK
• Professor Ian Taylor, School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, UK
• Professor Alton of Liverpool, Liverpool Hope University, UK
• Professor William Felstiner, Cardiff University, UK
• Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights, Canada
• Rebecca Tinsley, Founder, Waging Peace, UK
• Sam Weller, Canadians for Peace in Cameroon, Canada
• Terry Nickelson, Executive Director, Our Humanity in the Balance, USA.

Troops of supporters, bedecked in merchandise bearing the smiling face of President Biya, gathered at rallies in different parts of the country, chanting tributes to the 86-year old leader.

Government officials and members of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) had another reason to make merry. The occasion coincided with the first anniversary of President Biya’s re-election for his seventh seven-year term.

The celebrations however, could not mask the challenges of insecurity, economic malaise and international isolation facing the government.

Having taken power as the second president of the Central African country following the resignation of Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1982 under the single-party system, President Biya has endured harsher political pressures, including an attempted coup after just two years in office during a clamour for multiparty democracy.

He reluctantly agreed to hold elections in 1992, winning against Ni John Fru Ndi of the Social Democratic Front with about 40 per cent of the vote; Ndi got 36 per cent. The two would have had a run-off, but an earlier extraordinary session of parliament failed to enact a Bill to that effect.

Perennial winner

President Biya has since then won all elections, with critics saying most of them were conducted unfairly. He has since spent nearly a combined period of five years of his long tenure in ‘’private visits’’ abroad, notably Switzerland, according to research by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project released in February 2018.

Since the report was released however, the president has spent less than 30 days abroad, according to Emmanuel Freudenthal who co-authored the investigation’s report.

The internal and external pressures President Biya is facing have escalated as separatist militants fight in the country’s two English speaking regions.

The three-year armed conflict has claimed over 3,000 lives, with half a million people displaced from their homes and 40,000 more having fled to Nigeria, according to data from the International Crisis Group: the regime says these figures are inflated.

The UN says the conflict has created a humanitarian emergency for nearly two million people with no indication that it will end soon despite the Major National Dialogue held in September, a welcome gesture of reconciliation.

An insurgency by Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram, which continues to carry out attacks against civilian and military targets in Cameroon’s Far North region, and spill-over from the Central African Republic refugee crisis in the East Region, have also stretched the security apparatus.

Weak governance

Besides security, weak governance and endemic corruption—the country was ranked 152 out of 180 countries in the 2018 Transparency International corruption perceptions index—have undermined the effectiveness of state institutions and scared away investors. The country is ranked 166 out of 190 economies in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2019 report.

Signs of increasing isolation started in February, when the US suspended military aid to Cameroon. US President Donald Trump followed it up last month with a note to Congress of his intentions to suspend Cameroon from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), a preferential trade scheme, over human rights abuses.

Eyebrows were also raised last month when President Biya did not turn up for the Russia Africa Summit, despite him being among the first invitees and having confirmed attendance. His representative, Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute, also did not show up in Sochi leaving junior foreign ministry staff at a loss.

All the while, President Biya was in Lyon, France while French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian kept Yaounde’s top ranking diplomatic officials busy as he sought to safeguard a contract for logistics firm Bollore from slipping away.

It is reported that other countries, including Russia, have been discreetly pressurising President Biya to institute a federal system of government as panacea to the Anglophone separatist push.

Critics are not convinced that the international community is doing enough to hold President Biya to account.

“Symbolic half-measures like revoking preferential trade status are not enough to force the repressive regime of Paul Biya to change. Forcing cancellation of IMF loans and the remaining military aid would show that the White House is serious,” said Chris W.J. Roberts, the president of African Access Consulting.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Prof Roberts said Cameroon’s economic meltdown was being shielded by oil revenues and bailouts by international lenders.

“The Agoa blockade will not compel Biya to undertake political and economic reforms, to solve the crisis in the Anglophone region; the related violence driving a humanitarian catastrophe and the deep-rooted governance crisis that includes mass arrests of political opponents and journalists,” the political science don at Calgary University said.

In an open letter on Tuesday, 50 human rights advocates, scholars and writers urged French President Emmanuel Macron to use his country’s “considerable influence” to help bring Cameroon’s ongoing conflict to an end. The call coincided with clips of a frail-looking President Biya being assisted to walk at the Paris Peace Forum.

Fresh start?

President Biya’s Cameroon is also marked different from former US president Franklin Roosevelt’s inspired Renouveau (New Deal), the fresh start that he touted on coming to power.

Unlike Roosevelt’s effort that stimulated the economy after the Great Depression, his mentee’s achievements polarise opinion.

“Statistically the New Deal of President Paul Biya is as significant as it was 37 years ago…Yes, it is worth celebrating,” said Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, the director of the CPDM academy, saying Cameroon and the US still enjoy “other areas of co-operation”.

President Biya, who rarely speaks to the press, once told the French that only those who can, and not those who wish, can maintain a grip on power for long.

In her 2011 book, Au Cameroun de Paul Biya (In Paul Biya’s Cameroon), French journalist Fanny Pigeaud describes the country as being in a “worrying state of disrepair”.

His succession, however, remains a taboo topic within government circles and his ruling CPDM party, as Cameroonians crave for a new deal that would ensure peace, prosperity and a seat at the high table of global diplomacy.

Culled from The East African

Cameroon is poised to hold parliamentary and municipal elections in February but a bloody separatist conflict and political tensions are set to cloud the vote, experts say.

Anglophone separatists are fighting government troops in western Cameroon while the north of the country has come under attack from Boko Haram jihadists.

“These elections will not have optimum credibility,” Cameroonian academic Richard Makon told AFP, contending that in the present climate, “peaceful” polls were impossible.

“The security challenges in the Northwest and Southwest Regions are enormous,” he said, referring to a conflict between English-speaking separatists and security forces that have claimed more than 3,000 lives in two years.

The two regions with an anglophone colonial past are home to around 16 percent of the population of 25.8 million in the mainly francophone country.

In a remote region called the Far North, about a tenth of the population lives in deep poverty and at the mercy of Boko Haram.

Southern Cameroon long avoided such troubles, until men from the west recently launched ethnic attacks, wounding several people and setting businesses ablaze.

Despite the unrest, in a surprise move veteran President Paul Biya recently announced elections on February 9.

Members of parliament and town councils were last elected in 2013. Their five-year mandates ran out in 2018, but Biya has extended them twice.

The 86-year-old Biya has ruled the country for 37 years. He was returned to office in an election last year, which saw a significant drop in votes in the English-speaking regions.

– Plunging back into chaos? –

The 2018 presidential election triggered a major political crisis.

The runner-up, Maurice Kamto, immediately challenged the result and his Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) held protests.

Arrested at one of the demonstrations, Kamto was jailed in January but released in October following foreign pressure.

The 65-year-old opposition leader has since been denied permission to organise rallies.

The MRC has for months insisted that holding elections should depend on a definitive return to peace in the anglophone regions.

Map of Cameroon locating English-speaking regions, AFP

Kamto’s party has not said if it will contest the poll, though individual CRM members have announced they will run for office.

“The risk is that Cameroon will plunge into the chaos of post-electoral confrontation,” Emmanuel Simh, the CRM’s third vice-president, said.

“It will enshrine the partition of the country — on one hand, we will have the francophone regions where the population will be able to vote, and on the other, the anglophone regions where it will be impossible to do so,” he warned.

– Special status –

Last month, Biya’s regime arranged what it called a “major national dialogue” to settle the anglophone crisis but the main separatist movements boycotted the forum.

One of the key recommendations of the talks was more autonomy for the English-speaking regions.

Biya has steered Cameroon for nearly four decadesLudovic MARIN, AFP/File

But the initiative must be adopted by parliament, which has yet to consider the proposal.

The election announcement was a surprise, given that the resolutions of the major national dialogue “have not even begun to be taken into account”, Makon said.

“It’s a little hard to envisage elections being held in the best conditions to produce legitimate winners who are accepted by the population,” he said.

Biya’s Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) is a colossus with 148 seats in the 180-member national assembly.

For all their doubts, opposition parties are caught between a rock and a hard place, Makon said.

“They must take part in the election because if they don’t, they will be shut out of political decisions for five years,” he said.

On the other hand, he argued, the ruling party “will no longer have a crushing majority… because of the ground taken by the MRC and the rise of (other) parties.”

He gave as an example the Cameroon Party for National Reconciliation (PCRN), led by Cabral Libii, a 39-year-old journalist who placed third in the 2018 presidential poll.

Source: Digital Journal