The United States has particularly important stakes in Cameroon. With investment comes the responsibility and leverage to ease the extent of human suffering.

The central African nation of Cameroon does not often make international headlines. Governments within Africa and beyond have recognized Cameroon’s military efforts against Boko Haram, and the country has also been known for welcoming refugees from neighboring countries and for the peaceful coexistence among its hundreds of linguistic groups. But over the last few years, violence has engulfed the country’s Anglophone regions. The United States has particularly important stakes in Cameroon. Following a decade of military cooperation with Cameroonian forces, Washington is obligated to ensure that assistance is not tantamount to complicity. With investment comes the responsibility and leverage to ease the extent of human suffering. Tensions between Anglophone and Francophone populations in the Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions (NWSW) have been simmering since the 1970s.

In late 2016, however, the government imposed Francophone teachers and lawyers in Anglophone schools and courts, prompting peaceful protests that were met with military action. This fueled existing separatist sentiment among the Anglophone population and led to the formation of several non-state armed groups. Clashes between these armed groups and Cameroonian forces, as well as attacks on civilians, have forced more than half a million people into the NWSW’s dense forests, without proper shelter and little access to food and basic services. Separatist groups have enforced school boycotts since 2017, leaving a generation of children without education for three years. Warring parties have tortured and killed civilians and burnt down hundreds of villages. Basic services have almost completely collapsed, and, coupled with insecurity, left 1.3 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in the NW/SW alone—numbers the government of Cameroon staunchly denies.

Despite the dire need, the governments of the world have been practically silent on the humanitarian situation, leading the Norwegian Refugee Council to dub the conflict in the NWSW the world’s most neglected displacement crisis. Most efforts by interested political powers and typical humanitarian donors, such as Canada, Switzerland and the United States, are focused on finding a political solution to the conflict. But amidst these efforts, the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate and remains largely ignored. The United States’ interests in Cameroon are not trivial. Over the past five years, Cameroon has received more than $216 million in U.S. counter terrorism training and support. And even with some U.S. cuts due to credible reports of human rights abuses, such assistance continues.

In contrast, U.S. humanitarian aid for those Cameroonian civilians impacted by disaster resulting from the violence in NWSW is minuscule. Out of $18.4 million in U.S. humanitarian aid countrywide, only $300,000 has been earmarked for the response in the NWSW. Such meager support signals that the United States is not concerned with civilian suffering in the NWSW. In addition, the United States has done little to encourage international donors to respond to the Anglophone crisis. So far, the emergency has only received nine percent of funds requested in a United Nations international appeal, rendering most humanitarian organizations incapable of effectively addressing the mounting needs.  Congress has only just begun to weigh in.

In late April, Reps. Karen Bass (D-CA) and Chris Smith (R-NJ) introduced a resolution calling on armed groups and the government of Cameroon to seek a political solution to the conflict. Unfortunately, all parties to the conflict have categorically refused calls for dialogue while people continue to suffer. For this reason, Congress should press the State Department and USAID to adequately fund the response, mobilize other donors, and pressure the government of Cameroon to give aid workers access to civilian populations in need. At a time when none of the warring parties seem willing to talk, focusing efforts solely on dialogue is not only ineffective but irresponsible.

The people of the NWSW require more than that. They require sustained engagement by the United States and other international powers to boost humanitarian aid until all parties are prepared to end the conflict, with the ultimate goal of facilitating the safe, voluntary, and dignified return to their homes. Washington has the resources to quickly and effectively respond to such pressing needs.  It is past time for Congress and State Department to step up and play a larger role in addressing the humanitarian consequences of the conflict. The alternative—silence and inaction—means more innocent Cameroonian lives will be lost.

Culled from National Interest.Org

The split within the Cameroonian English-speaking secessionist movement over the choice of Switzerland as the mediator in its dispute with the Yaoundé government threatens to derail the initiative.

The about-face came just as final adjustments for the talks were being made. The Swiss claim the initiative has the support of the international community and denounced these new maneuvers, saying it would be a step back in the dialogue process.

There have been growing doubts, however, about the neutrality of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD Centre), the institution mandated by the Swiss authorities to conduct the talks. The main grievance relates to possible collusion between Geneva and Yaoundé.

Facilitator or mediator?

At the beginning of July, when President Paul Biya was in Geneva on a private visit, the secessionist leader of the Ambazonia Governing Council (AGC) Lucas Ayaba Cho issued a statement denouncing the “too close” relationship that he held existed between Geneva and Yaoundé.

He called on Switzerland to clarify its position. “[It] must clearly tell us if they are just a facilitator or a mediator. We will agree to work with Switzerland if it agrees to discuss with the mediator who will speak on behalf of Ambazonia, while it represents Cameroon,” he said. The AGC is one of the secessionist factions with an armed wing on the ground in Cameroon.

Apparently, during discreet preparatory meetings on 25 and 27 June, there was no direct dialogue between the English-speaking separatists and Cameroonian officials. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) clarified its role as mediator in a communiqué on 27 June, stating that it had been “mandated by a majority of the parties to facilitate an inclusive negotiation process”.

A source within the HD Centre, supported this, claiming that it was the main separatist groups “who approached Switzerland first” in order that it could open up a path of dialogue with the Cameroonian government.

Transparency should be the rule

The source went on to state that: “Our work has consisted in making contact with the multitude of groups that abound in the diaspora, in order to have a fairly representative range of the Ambazonian movement. We invited about ten of them and had two meetings with them. We also made an offer to the Cameroonian authorities through their ambassador, which was endorsed by the President of the Republic.”

The Swiss FDFA said it adhered to “the principle of discretion, in order not to compromise the process”. It further stated: “Discretion was a request from both parties to avoid controversy in the contact phase, to protect the process and to allow everyone to agree on the basis.”

This so-called discretion, however, is at the root of the suspicion of some participants, who believe that “transparency should be the rule”. The Consortium of Anglophone Civil Society Actors (CACSC), the organisation behind the first political demands made 2016, stated in a press release on 8 July, that transparency is a guarantee of trust.

“Trust is essential when engaging in such debates because it is only what can ensure that all parties accept the conclusions,” said the CACSC in its statement.

Call for mediation

There has been silence in Yaoundé about the follow-up to the first steps of the dialogue initiated by Switzerland. Having returned from his private trip to Geneva disrupted by Cameroonian political opponents, President Paul Biya has yet to comment on the subject.

Within the Cameroonian administration, however, the dissent expressed by secessionist groups did not go unnoticed. “These secessionists are making an unhealthy overbid,” said an anonymous official from the Ministry of Territorial Administration. “It is purely bad faith, they were all unanimous when they called for dialogue. They say they are fighting for their people, but in reality they do not care about them at all or they would not make that kind of decision when we are on the way out of the crisis. Mediation is the only way to resolve the conflict and end the violence.”

Swiss approach not inclusive

Geneva has not commented since its last communiqué but has received the support of the international community, including the United Nations and the United States, whose leaders have welcomed the initiative. Swiss officials anonymously condemned “false information that tends to undermine the credibility of the process”. They also indicated that the time is right for the final adjustments, and that talks should begin “within three months at the latest”.

On the ground, however, local observers point out that, despite it being a positive initiative, the approach by the Swiss mediators has its limitations. Joseph Léa Ngoula, a security expert, said the Swiss approach is not sufficiently inclusive to allow all parties to express themselves.

“The Swiss approach, although beneficial, remains insufficient to stop the spiral of violence that is spreading to the different regions of Cameroon,” he said. “It includes only a limited number of actors, leaving aside all the social and political forces that have a very important role to play in stabilising crisis zones in Cameroon.

Source: The Africa Report

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)

It is not hard to find fault with Cameroonian President Paul Biya and his government. The overall stability of the country he has led since 1982, often from the luxury of the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, has crumbled over the past three years. After last year’s deeply flawed election—the norm in Cameroon—Biya has done little to resolve increasingly violent demands for secession from armed groups fighting to carve out a new Anglophone state called Ambazonia from the country’s Northwest and Southwest regions. He has failed to give any indication that his regime will scale back its efforts to crush dissent, and there have been no signs that his family will rein in their lavish spending beyond the country’s borders.

Cameroon deserves better—from its 86-year-old leader, and from every foreign power that enables his enduring misrule. Increasingly, Cameroonians at home and abroad are demanding that outside powers examine their ties to the long-ruling Biya regime. On June 29, hundreds of protesters in Geneva endured tear gas from Swiss authorities to do just that. It is well overdue for the United States to fundamentally recalibrate U.S.-Cameroon relations.

The rise of violent Anglophone secessionist militias in Cameroon’s west and of Boko Haram in the Far North region has left 4.3 million people—roughly one-fifth of the country’s population—in need of humanitarian assistance. In addition, at least 1,800 people have been killed and 500,000 more displaced due to these conflicts, with regular reports emerging of war crimes committed by the government, including torture and the burning of villages.

Cameroon deserves better—from its 86-year-old leader, and from every foreign power that enables his enduring misrule.

Biya has exacerbated Cameroon’s multiple, cascading crises by further cracking down on political dissent and opposition voices. Beyond not taking credible steps toward resolving conflict in the country’s Anglophone regions, the Francophone government of Cameroon is actively constricting opposition to Biya’s policies and efforts to challenge his authoritarian grip on power. On June 1, an estimated 350 supporters of the country’s main opposition party, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, were arrested during demonstrations in which protesters demanded the release of party leader Maurice Kamto.

In October 2018, Kamto declared victory after the country’s presidential election, which resulted in Cameroonian authorities charging him with treason and a host of other major crimes, including “inciting violence” and “disrupting public peace.” Kamto has been in detention since Jan. 26 of this year, and if he is convicted in Cameroon’s notoriously biased courts, he could potentially face the death penalty. Kamto has already been denied access to legal counsel, a violation of both Cameroonian law and international legal norms.

Despite Biya’s recent clampdown on political dissent and his detachment from Cameroon’s multiple conflicts, the response from the United States and other foreign powers has been tepid up to this point.

Much more needs to be done to confront a regime that has routinely and unabashedly violated the rights of its own citizens.

The U.S. government has taken some incremental steps to reset the terms of its relationship with Biya’s government. In February of this year, the Trump administration suspended $17 million of military aid to Cameroon due to ongoing human rights abuses. And last week, Rep. Karen Bass, the top Democrat on a key subcommittee that focuses on Africa and the current chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, led a visiting U.S. congressional delegation to the country to assess the situation and call for peace talks between the government and separatists. However, much more needs to be done to confront a regime that has routinely and unabashedly violated the rights of its own citizens—one that relies on international disinterest and a steady stream of foreign lobbyists to clean up its image.

There are a number of concrete steps that the United States in particular should immediately consider.

Culled from Foreign Policy

Cameroon was used to ruling party ‘godfathers’ mismanaging and fleecing state projects. But now that the country’s leader is 86 years old, a struggle for succession may bring improvement in governance. Or it may make things worse.

There is no road connecting the Obang villages in Manyu in South West Cameroon to any market town – a sad state of affairs, considering that farmers need a road to be able to bring their produce to consumers. It is not that there was never any money to build one, though. An annual budgetary allocation to construct the needed roads was made to a contractor, a Mr Ndifor (1), starting from the early 2000’s. When I encountered the elusive Mr Ndifor at a party in Yaoundé, I asked him about it. Ndifor said he did not know the said villages. Reminded that he was supposed to have built roads through these very villages, the man laughed and said: “Oh, that. Don’t believe everything you read in the state budget.” That meeting took place fourteen years ago, in 2005. Today there are no roads in the Obang area save for the old timber extraction sand roads that were always there. And since the timber companies, after depleting it, have stopped extracting wood from the forest, they are virtually impassable now.

You should not believe everything you read in the state budget

Ordinary citizens of Cameroon have spent the past four decades, all governed over by President Paul Biya, now 86, like this: seeing money pass by like mirages and rarely receiving any benefit of it. During the October 2018 presidential election campaign in Cameroon, in a TV debate, a panelist for an opposition candidate asked a Biya representative to name just one single development project that his government in its thirty-six years in power had completed successfully. Hard-pressed for an answer, the representative started harping on Biya’s long experience as a head of state without answering the question. Even official reports note that state activities very often do not benefit the population. The 2016 report of the Regional Follow-up Commission for Public Investment Projects of the East Region (2) says that in 2015 alone, forty percent of all investment projects earmarked for the region were abandoned. They included road infrastructure projects, health facilities, classrooms, and water bore holes: all executed badly by those charged with managing them and, probably, most often also fleeced.

Reports on losses to corruption in the country differ wildly, from two million US$ in a five year period to one and a half billion US$ over the past decade. Deciding which one you go with depends for a large part on your definition of corruption: where does it start and stop? Outright theft from state contracts -such as roads- may happen in a part of the cases, but what about state salaries paid to nepotist appointments of incompetent individuals, massive perks and bonuses for ministers and high officials, subsidies for development NGOs and catering companies that happen to be run by friends and relatives of ruling party politicians? The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) calculated last year that President Biya spends at least three US$ million every year on visits to Geneva, Switzerland, alone (3). The anti-corruption commission CONAC does good work in unearthing fraudulent state expenditure on big projects. But the political powers-that-be decide if the identified culprits go to jail or whether the report in question is ignored. (More on this below.)

 Ghost farmers

This, then, is Cameroon as we know it: a country that could hardly ever build or maintain a road, hospital, school, bus route, agricultural or employment project without it being used for own gain by those close to power; that is, to Paul Biya. It is the country where in 1982, the year President Biya came to power, a new paper mill burned down two months after its opening after ‘experts’ without much expertise -their feasibility studies were never subjected to verification or peer review- had pocketed the equivalent of sixteen million US$ (4). It is the country where the farmers’ loans bank Fonader went bankrupt in 1989 after having loaned most of the moneys to non-existent ‘ghost’ farmer accounts behind which hid friends and relatives of the managers (5); and where the grains development initiative Sodeblé closed its doors after barely producing only one twentieth of the 120,000 tonnes of corn per year the government had promised. The downfall happened amid much muttering about how the outfit had “financed voyages, baptisms, marriages and various kinds of gifts for senior staff of the company as well as administrative officials of the region.” (6) Sodeblé never reopened; Cameroon still spends around three million US$ of its foreign reserves yearly on the importation of corn alone.

Sodeblé had financed voyages, baptisms, marriages and various kinds of gifts

Immunity

Under the pressure of donor countries an anti-corruption commission was established in the country in 2006. The investigations of the Anti-Corruption Commission of Cameroon, CONAC, have since led to some hard-hitting reports, incidental recovery of moneys and occasionally even to arrests and imprisonment of culprits. Most notably among these was a former Prime Minister, Ephraim Inoni, who was arrested in 2012 after having been implicated in decades of large scale embezzlement that had bankrupted the national airline Camair. (Ironically, Inoni himself had kickstarted the judicial anti-corruption drive – called Operation Sparrowhawk – to add to the work of the anti-corruption commission six years earlier). However, Biya’s inner circle and favourites always seemed immune. A report by CONAC in 2011 (7) that accused then secretary general in the Prime Minister’s office Jules Doret Ndongo of complicity in double-invoicing the state for the construction of a road in the centre of the country – at an extra cost of thirty-one million US$ – was strongly contested by the Ministry of Public Works, which called it “false.” Its implications were ignored and Doret Ndongo is still a minister today. Likewise, nothing at all happened when current Minister of Finance Louis Motaze – in 2011, when he was Minister of Transport – overspent twelve million US$ state money on an inflated invoice for two Chinese airplanes, even after opposition MP Joshua Osih accused Motaze in parliament of diversion of the funds to benefit a ‘mafia.’

Nothing happened when the Minister of Transport overspent US$ 12 million

Media and opposition parties have denounced Cameroon’s corrupt systems and judicial favoritism for years. But, like CONAC, these are often also ignored, which is made easier because of the abundant amounts of fake news and ‘brown envelope’ journalism – the practice whereby hacks in the media accept money from powerful individuals to publish stories that favour these individuals and slander their rivals in the country. As a result, the system always remained the system: to advance in Cameroon, you simply had to maneuver yourself as close as you could get to any Biya government and ruling party official, hope for spoils, and start living the high life when your efforts paid off. As former Minister of National Education, now one of Cameroon’s opposition party leaders, Adamu Ndam Njoya once put it: “We are yet to see the day that, when a Cameroonian is appointed to a high post of responsibility, they bend their heads down and cry due to the heavy responsibilities that go along with the post. On the contrary, people always organise feasts to celebrate appointments and this because the appointees and their families and close ones see in the appointments the opportunities to enrich themselves from the budgets allocated to positions to which they have been appointed. The bigger the budget, the bigger the festivities”.

The bigger the budget, the bigger the festivities

Very unpopular

Even when new enterprises were established with the explicit intention to put them on good management footing, often with outside help, it kept going wrong. In 2012, a new farmers’ loan scheme, Credit Agricole, suffered the same fate as the previous rural bank Fonader, even though it had been assisted by the German Investment and Development Corporation (DEG) and was managed by an equally German manager, Hubert Rauch. When it was liquidated, Credit Agricole was owing its customers the equivalent of US$ 314 million due to bad debts contracted mostly by ministers, general managers of state corporations and other senior government officials. And though a source in the Ministry of Finance at the time roundly admitted that “big government and ruling party officials had borrowed large sums of money knowing they would never pay back” and that “manager Hubert Rauch was induced in error to grant (the) loans to several barons of the ruling party,” the downfall was blamed on one sole individual: the bank’s liquidator Frederick Ekande, a judicial expert and former Member of Parliament. Convicted of embezzling the equivalent of over and a half million US$, Ekande still languishes in jail. The pattern again repeated itself when in 2011 a new airline was started to replace the bankrupt Camair. Even though two managers had already been jailed, and a Prime Minister was about to follow the same fate, for the “mismanagement, embezzlement, and excessive borrowing,” that had destroyed the previous airline enterprise, the practice by “ministers and general managers of state corporations (to) take their wives and girlfriends on jolly rides round the world without buying tickets (8)” simply started again in Camair-Co. Once again, also, there was “excessive recruitment” of workers “without necessary qualifications” who had been “brought in by the usual godfathers in high places (9).” All this happened again, even if there were now two Dutch new managers seconded to the enterprise with an explicit mission to put the airline on the right path. They lasted less than two years. At his departure in 2012 the first Dutch manager, Alex van Elk told local press that his attempts to “streamline the recruitment process according to international norms” had been thwarted by senior government officials who had once again imposed “unskilled staff” on the company. Johannes Boertien, who had been Van Elk’s deputy and took over after the latters’ departure, lasted until September 2013 but then also left, saying that he had not been able to “put into practice his management roadmap.” A Cameroonian publication revealed that Boertien had become “very unpopular for solely appointing a commercial director for the corporation without the concern of the other board directors,” with the directors’ concern, presumably, for the individuals they had wanted to appoint (10). Even a whole series of six public-private partnerships – called CARPA (Conseil d’Appui a la Realisation des Contrats de Partenariat) – that was, under the watchful eye of French development organisations and the World Bank, to create tramways, a hospital, an entire university city and rail transport network from 2013 onwards- delivered little besides, as one Cameroon news site called it in April his year, ‘flops.’ “Most of those charged with seeing to the realisation of the projects are not enthusiastic about them because (…) they don’t see the possibility of personal gains for themselves by way of kickbacks and bribes”, a senior official in the Ministry of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development said when asked to comment.

Palace wars

But as Paul Biya ages, some change finally seems to be on the horizon. What anti-corruption investigations, opposition parties and foreign development partners’ consultancies could not achieve, -an end to the Biya kleptocracy-, might now occur naturally as its founder is about to turn 87 years old. The problem is that no one can foresee what will replace it.

The supreme godfather started leaving the reins of Cameroon in the hands of a new generation in January this year. A new state minister, a confidante of Paul Biya’s wife Chantal called Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, started taking over the day to day work of governing. It set tongues wagging in Yaoundé. Was Ngoh Ngoh going to be a seamless successor, a new Biya? Or was he, as a close friend of Biya’s much younger wife Chantal (48) – the two even came from the same village in Cameroon’s Nanga Eboko community – actually part of a new faction about to take power away from Biya’s predominantly ethnic Bulu elite? And if there was such a new faction, what would that mean in terms of privileged access to state coffers and legal protection?

Chantal was holding Paul Biya’s hands and doing his waving for him

Simultaneous new appointments in the government seemed to confirm that Chantal Pulchérie Biya-Vigouroux – whose flaming red big hairdos have inspired the creation of entire websites – had her own designs on power. Not only was her old friend Ngoh Ngoh, now the most powerful minister in Cameroon, another four new ministers and high level bureaucrats had all previously worked, or still worked, with Chantal’s office, charity foundations, or church. Chantal had for some time been seen as a force ready to take over from her husband, an impression that was reinforced again when she, at a public event in May this year, appeared next to a very old and weak looking Paul, holding his hands and doing his waving for him. The rumours were fueled by the pan-African francophone monthly Jeune Afrique, which, in February this year, wrote about Chantal’s rise. Not to be outdone, the pro-Biya newspaper l’Avocat then even printed a picture of Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh on its front pages headlining “a mafia out to conquer power.” In a tweet Chantal Biya angrily denied having any such designs and insisted that she remained only interested in charity work. But then, yet another former Biya acolyte, veteran minister Laurent Esso – now minister of justice – was said to make a play for the succession. Many a Yaoundé palace watcher interpreted the increased public antics of Esso’s close associate, TV mogul Amougou Belinga, as a sign of the justice ministers’ participation in the race. When Belinga’s TV Channel Vision4 published ethnic hate speech (11) of a kind that could have meant a prison term under the country’s strict defamation laws, not only did Belinga get off scot free, but the head of the Communications Commission, Peter Essoka, was fined the equivalent of US$ 30, 000 after Belinga complained that he had ‘damaged’ him by comparing his TV station to the genocidal Radio Mil Collines in Rwanda. Next, relatively lowly Vision4 reporter Parfait Ayissi was mysteriously released after having been arrested for the rape of a 14-year old. When, after his release, Ayissi repeatedly mocked the girl on TV with impunity, too, Yaoundé’s elites started asking themselves which powerful new godfathers they should now turn to for assistance and protection.

 A weakened hand

It was surely not so much Biya anymore. Because even individuals who had always been close to the president, had recently been rounded up by the police. Last year that fate already befell businessman Mohammadou Dabo, a big sponsor of the ruling party and a close associate of Biya himself. Though the fact that Dabo had pocketed an advance of over one million US$ to renovate Garoua airport in 2011 and had delivered nothing since had not bothered the justice system for seven years, Dabo was suddenly in and out of court for interrogation and could, according to a source at the Special Criminal Tribunal, soon be doing actual jail time for “deceit of associates, crookery, forgery of commercial and bank documents and embezzlement of public funds.” “All indications are that it is almost certain that he will not (remain) a free man for long,” the source, a senior lawyer in the office of the prosecutor at the Special Criminal Tribunal, said.

Suddenly even ‘sons’ of Biya were arrested

Then in January this year, even more shockingly, former Minister of Defence Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o was arrested for a corrupt arms procurement deal with French company MagForce (12). The contracts in question had been signed years ago, in 2010 and 2011, and French justice authorities -who had arrested MagForce counterparts in France- had pressured Cameroon to take action against him since at least 2014, but publications both in France and Cameroon had surmised that Mebe Ngo’o enjoyed so much protection that he would never face the law. The man was always very intimately connected to President Paul Biya after all; Yaoundé pundits and their radio trottoir even commonly refer to him as Biya’s illegitimate “son.” The arrest in January therefore sent a shockwave through Cameroon. The pundits, quoted in many a newspaper and on radio, now said that “the faction” of Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and Chantal Biya were “behind the arrest.” And then it happened to yet another Biya ‘son’, too (13). This time the target was Gilbert Baongla, a politician who leads the opposition Republican Party. Baongla, who has gone around saying he is Biya’s son for years without being contradicted, had also always enjoyed protection. He seemed to have an extraordinary privilege when it came to speaking his mind wherever and whenever he wanted: he even once accused powerful minister Atanga Nji of corruption, conspiracy and ‘betraying the people’ on prime time TV without suffering any consequence. But in early June Gilbert Baongla, too was arrested, after a complaint by none other than Justice Minister Esso’s close friend, TV boss Amougou Belinga, whom he had accused of smuggling and espionage (14).

A good looking road

Whether the succession struggle, with its weakening of the presidents’ iron grip on the state, will result in a better-run country remains doubtful. The judiciary under Esso seem to suffer as much from favouritism as always, and new minister of State Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh -he who is associated with the ‘Chantal faction’ – has already been implicated in disastrous construction contracts around the African Cup of Nations, as a result of which – simply because needed roads, hotels and stadia were never built Cameroon lost the opportunity to host the soccer event this year. There have been signs, though, even if ever so faint, that civil servants – perhaps motivated by uncertainty around their positions and career paths, or, in contrast, perhaps finally enjoying space to focus on their actual jobs – have started to achieve better results than before. The Ayos-Abong Mbang-Bognis road, the focus of the 2010 double billing scandal, is actually looking well-maintained today. A recent set of roads scheduled to be completed last year in the usually neglected south-and north west of Cameroon, has been almost totally completed. Even if in some cases the roads had once again come with a heavier price tag than they should have had, and a few were delayed due to armed action by militants who have taken up arms against the Yaoundé state, our team (15) found that almost all had indeed been built. What seems to have helped is the increasingly rigorous practice by donor organizations of withholding money until actual results are visible. Another new development is the establishment by law enforcement agencies of toll free numbers through which citizens can denounce wrongdoings.

The old elite may spawn new kleptocratic factions

On the other hand, as the interregnum plays out, there is a real danger that the victorious candidate for Paul Biya’s succession may simply re-establish the kleptocracy in his -or her- own image. Another scenario is a prolonged fight between the factions for access to various troughs, which will risk fragmenting the entire state. If that happens, the military may feel justified to take power with the excuse of re-establishing law and order. A first sign of such a possible scenario unfolding was the circulation in the media, early June, of a rather curious unsigned declaration purportedly from senior military officers which criticised the factional fighting between what it called the (ethnic) “Bulu clan” around Paul Biya and Chantal Biya’s “Nanga Eboko” community. In the letter, the anonymous military men threatened to intervene if the situation was not redressed pronto. If that letter is authentic (which it may not be, because you never know in Cameroon), there is a third force building up within the military. And with Cameroon’s military riddled with embezzlement as well as human rights abuse scandals, this would undoubtedly be the worst case scenario. The international community might take note.

Culled from The Museba Project  

Cameroon’s longtime president Paul Biya’s latest “private visit” to his usual retreat at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva has sparked more than its usual mix of political controversy and quiet embarrassment.

Over the last decade, Biya, 86, who has been in power since 1982, has made the top floor suites of the five-star luxury hotel into his home away from home spending months at a time even as his country has slowly descended into conflict from Boko Haram Islamic terrorists in the north of the country and an Anglophone-led insurgency in north- and southwest of the country. The knowledge of his presence there has long infuriated various sections of Cameroonians at home, particularly in the opposition, but also in the Cameroonian diaspora in Europe who have been protesting in larger and larger numbers with each Biya visit.

This past weekend Swiss police fired tear gas and water cannons at Cameroonian protesters who clashed with security at the hotel where dozens of Biya’s personal security agents and federal police have stayed on guard in- and outside.

Violent scenes outside Geneva hotel of Cameroon president

And even while Geneva has long been seen as a personal break for Biya, it has now become the venue for possible peace talks between the Anglophone and Francophone sides and mediated by Switzerland. And the arrival last week of Biya and his wife, Chantal, is now seen as problematic.

“Not helpful” is how one source close to the diplomatic process described the arrival of Biya just days before a second meeting between factions from the predominantly Anglophone regions was to take place in Saint Luc—some 200 kilometers to the east of Geneva. The International Crisis Group reports that some 1,850 people have been killed and more than half a million left homeless, as an armed separatist movement evolved in response to political and social tensions.

Switzerland’s foreign affairs ministry, together with the Geneva-based Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, are leading the mediation process aimed at putting an end to the deadly conflict which evolved after peaceful protests by English-speaking professionals to structural discrimination in October 2016. Groups in the two western regions of the country want the creation of an independent state called Ambazonia. President Biya has branded separatists as terrorists. Ebenezer Alwanga, chairman of the African People’s Liberation Movement, one of the main participants at the peace talks said that Biya’s repeated visits to Geneva “complicate” the peace talks, given he spends so much of his time here “rather than running the state he claims to be president of”.

Nfor Hanson Nchanji, a Geneva-based Cameroonian journalist emphasized that parties to the discussion need to communicate with their communities back home for talks to succeed.“The presence of Paul Biya in Switzerland has caused some Ambazonians to reconsider whether Switzerland may be the perfect mediator. But should they refuse the Swiss mediation…they will have nowhere to go.”

The Swiss mediated talks have been supported by United States, the European Union and the United Nations.

Meanwhile some Francophone opponents to Biya’s government, regretted that Maurice Kanto, a rival to Biya in the October 2018 presidential election, who won 14% of votes according to the Constitutional Council, was not included in the talks. The opposition accused the government of having rigged results. Doris Toyou, a Cameroonian lawyer living in Washington, who supports groups behind Saturday’s protest in Geneva, said Switzerland could not be trusted in talks.

It’s been reported Biya had spent at least 1,645 days abroad on private trips since 1982, with Geneva being his top destination. It estimated it costs Intercontinental Hotel around £40,000 ($50,000) a night for the president and his entourage. “How could Switzerland be trust-worthy in mediating the talks after the way the police treated protesters?” said Toyou.

Meanwhile, Jean Philippe Brandt of Geneva’s police explained that as protesters did not respect the agreed terms for protesting, and left an authorized area accorded for the demonstration, “The use of any accessory or armament was related possibly to the aggression by the protesters and to disobey instructions given by the police.”

The confrontation came just days after a Swiss journalist, Adrien Krause, who was covering Biya’s stay from in front of the Geneva hotel, was attacked. “It is very probable that they were security guards” associated to Biya.

 Since then six members of Biya’s security team have been convicted of assault on the journalist.

Culled from Quartz Africa