Politics

14, November 2022

US urges Ukraine to consider peace talks with Russia ⁰

Senior US officials have reportedly begun prodding Kiev to consider peace talks with Moscow, fearing winter may stall its momentum after scoring a key victory in retaking Kherson in the persisting Ukraine war.

Despite continued pledges of support for Ukraine from the US and its allies, “top officials in Washington are beginning to wonder aloud how much more territory can be won by either side and at what cost,” major US daily The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday, noting that some European officials remain “more bullish” on Ukraine’s chances.

Pointing to the looming winter season as well as fears of inflation – impelled by surging energy and food costs, billions of dollars of weaponry already pumped into Ukraine, and the tens of thousands of casualties on both sides – the daily emphasized that top US officials are now talking about “a potential inflection point in the war.”

“There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory, in the true sense of the word, maybe not achievable through military means, therefore you need to turn to other means,” said the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Army Gen. Mark Milley in an address before the Economic Club of New York on Wednesday as quoted in the report. “There’s also an opportunity here, a window of opportunity, for negotiation.”

The US and some of its allies are concerned that their stockpiles of weaponry, including some ammunition, are being depleted at an unsustainable rate, it added, pointing out that US military aid for Ukraine stands at nearly $19 billion so far this year, far outstripping European assistance.

“We are seeing real, practical problems of making military progress, we are seeing shortages of munitions,” said another Western official as quoted in the report.

The prospect that Ukraine won’t make major battlefield gains in the weeks ahead has led the US and some European officials to wonder when public pressure would emerge to demand a settlement, according to the daily.

“We are saying to the Ukrainians that it is up to them to decide when to do it,” said a Western European official, referring to the potential for talks. “But it might be a good idea to do it sooner.”

Source: Presstv

11, November 2022

Trumpty Dumpty: Rupert Murdoch’s powerful conservative media dumps Donald Trump ⁰

The powerful media empire of conservative billionaire Rupert Murdoch appeared to turn its back Thursday on Donald Trump, labeling the former US president a “loser” who shows “increasingly poor judgement” after the midterm elections.

Just days before he is expected to announce his 2024 White House candidacy, the Wall Street Journal, the flagship of Murdoch’s News Corp, declared in an editorial that “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser,” pointing to the party’s disappointing performance in Tuesday’s midterms.

Trump later Friday hit back at Murdoch, appearing to relish a scuffle, accusing News Corp media of falling in line to back a potential Republican rival of Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination, a choice he said News Corp would rue.

The cover of News Corp’s tabloid New York Post depicted Trump on a precarious wall as “Trumpty Dumpty” who “had a great fall” in the vote, blaming him for the failure of Republicans to sweep past Democratic rivals in the battle for control of Congress and governors’ mansions.

And at the hugely influential Fox News television network, praise was thick for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, seen as Trump’s top rival for the party’s 2024 nomination.

“The biggest winner of the midterm elections was without a doubt Governor Ron DeSantis, whose landslide victory in the state of Florida was breathtaking,” wrote Fox columnist Liz Peek.

“The biggest loser? Donald Trump,” she said.

After supporting him through his 2017-2021 presidency, Fox, a Murdoch arm separate from News Corp, did not completely abandon Trump, still the most powerful figure in the Republican Party.

But even the network’s biggest star, talk-show host Tucker Carlson, assailed the Republican establishment for Tuesday’s ballot box failures and at least partly blamed the ex-president.

“Many others are saying that Donald Trump is the reason Republicans didn’t do as well as they thought they would. That’s a more complicated question,” he said late Wednesday.

“The truth is, Trump has always been a mixed blessing politically.”

The Murdoch outlets are some of the most influential sources of information for US conservatives, unabashedly backing Republicans and attacking Democrats.

So blaming Trump for election disappointments while lavishing praise on DeSantis could shape public views ahead of 2024.

Trump is expected to announce his candidacy next week, whereas DeSantis, who first had to win reelection to the Florida governorship, has only hinted that he might battle for the White House.

In fact Republicans scored significant gains Tuesday in the House of Representatives and are expected to wrest control of the chamber from Democrats when the outstanding races are settled.

But the party had expected to more powerfully trounce President Joe Biden’s Democrats and easily seize both the House and the Senate — still undecided — as well as some key governorships.

Instead, a number of candidates closely aligned with and endorsed by Trump failed to win in key races.

“Trumpy Republican candidates failed at the ballot box in states that were clearly winnable,” the Wall Street Journal wrote.

DeSantis meanwhile did not tap Trump for support in his race Tuesday, and he swept to a massive reelection victory.

On the cover of its first edition after the election, the New York Post celebrated DeSantis as “DeFUTURE.”

Meanwhile it told Trump: “The fate of your candidates Tuesday looks terrible for your increasingly poor judgment, which grows parallel to your desperation.”

Trump appeared to confirm the divorce from the Murdoch empire Thursday.

“Despite having picked so many winners, I have to put up with the Fake News. For me, Fox News was always gone,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

He issued a rambling four-paragraph statement later decrying DeSantis – whom he ridiculed as DeSanctimonious – for “playing games” about whether he will run for president in 2024.

In 2016, “Fox News fought me to the end,” Trump said, until he won, “then they couldn’t have been nicer.”

The Wall Street Journal “loved Low Energy Jeb Bush, and a succession of other people” but Trump said he “easily knocked them out, one by one,” and the Murdoch properties fell into line.

“We’re in exactly the same position now,” Trump asserted.

Source: AFP

6, November 2022

Biya’s 40th Anniversary: Meeting in Bamenda to celebrate incompetence and corruption ⁰

CPDM stalwarts were in Bamenda today to celebrate Biya’s 40 years of incompetence, corruption and arrogance.

Led by the CPDM Secretary-general, Jean Kuete, speakers at the event highlighted what they thought were Mr. Biya’s achievements – indeed his appalling failure – over the last four decades.

But Cameroonians cannot be fooled. The results are there for all to see. The country has been caught up in a downward spiral with corruption becoming the regime’s hallmark.

Since coming to power in 1982, Mr. Biya has legalized corruption. He and his followers hold that nothing can be achieved without corruption. They use money to buy loyalty, corrupt those who criticize the government and imprison those who refuse their bribes.

Cameroon’s jails are full of Mr. Biya’s former collaborators who have embezzled state funds and he and his wife have been involved in many financial scandals which have helped to erode the people’s confidence in the moribund government.

Regarding the economy, Mr. Biya’s government has disappointed millions of Cameroonians. Many had seen him as a savior when he came to power in 1982, but his incompetence has taken the country down the wrong path.

The country’s economy has been in a free fall in decades, spreading pain and death among desperate and hungry Cameroonians.

Millions of Cameroonian youth are without jobs and even those employed are simply eking a living. The country’s civil service is bloated with civil servants finding it hard to make ends meet.

This financial challenge has transformed many civil service workers into con artists whose main objective of joining the civil service is to line their pockets.

The regime’s failure to create jobs for millions of young Cameroonians has transformed the country into a net exporter of human capital as young Cameroonians look outwards for greener pastures.

Regarding infrastructure development, Cameroon lags behind most African countries in this regard. For forty years, instead of investing in infrastructure which could drive development and create jobs, Mr. Biya and his collaborators have transformed the country’s treasury into their personal ATM.

The country is bereft of roads, hospitals and educational facilities. Mr. Biya has created many primary and secondary schools, but these institutions only exist on paper as there is no modern infrastructure.

For tertiary institutions, there are many of them in Cameroon today, but the quality of training leaves much to be desired.

The country’s state universities have been transformed into brothels where lecturers with very high libido satisfy their sex needs. Young girls are being dehumanized and robbed of their self-esteem by unscrupulous lecturers just because there are no checks in government-run universities.

Some lecturers even demand bribes from their students, especially those seeking to defend their thesis. This unfortunate situation in the country’s state universities truly reflects what is happening in a nation where young girls are asked to have sex with company heads before they can be given jobs.

Today, even young men are required to sleep with unscrupulous employers for them to get hired. Mr. Biya and his bunch of godless, hell-bound and depraved collaborators have made of Cameroon a fertile ground for homosexuality.

Morals have simply taken French leave of the country and there are no signs that they will return even after Biya and his gangsters leave power.

Today’s meeting in Bamenda, the place where the demon-possessed CPDM was created, is indeed a celebration of evil in human form.

Incompetence, corruption and demonic powers have been firmly rooted in the country under Biya and there is no doubt that the CPDM is very pleased with its leader’s abysmal and appalling failure.

By Rita Akana and Fon Lawrence in Bamenda

5, November 2022

40 years in power: What is Mr. Biya’s legacy? ⁰

Cameroon’s eternal president, Paul Biya, has been in power for 40 years and his supporters will be celebrating a milestone they claim is important in the lives of many Cameroonians. The Cameroon Concord News Group has been monitoring things and has decided to focus on the failings and achievements of a man who many hold has not brought much to Cameroon, though he has been a major beneficiary of what Cameroon has to offer.

Education

Cameroon is noted for the quality of its education. Cameroonians are all over the world and they have proven their academic worth wherever they have been. Since coming to office forty years ago, Mr. Biya has created many primary and secondary schools albeit on paper and this has given many young Cameroonians access to education. Under him, many universities have also been created and this has endowed the country with a large pool of educated people.

Mr. Biya can take credit for this although many of the graduates are either unemployed or have left the country, enabling the country to have a huge Diaspora whose remittances are helping to change things in the country.

Politics

Politically, Mr. Biya’s supporters claim that he has reformed the country politically and thanks to him, multiparty politics is a reality in Cameroon. Mr. Biya inherited a single party state from his predecessor and due to intense political pressure in the early 1990s, he had to bow to the will of the people by opening up the political scene to other political parties. But before opening up the political arena, Mr. Biya had to kill thousands of Cameroonians and send many to jail for demonstrating against his brutal dictatorship.

Multiparty politics was finally granted in 1992 only when Mr. Biya and his dishonest politicians had found a way of rigging elections to perpetuate their stay in power and they have, indeed, been in power for forty years by rigging and stealing every single election in Cameroon.

Every constitutional amendment only comes to consolidate Mr. Biya’s grip on the nation. He appoints every single official in Cameroon, including night-watch men to ensure that everybody in Cameroon is loyal. The military is his toy, and his ministers are just a bunch of slaves he uses to achieve his personal goals and if any of them nurses any high political ambitions which he does not like, he simply sends him to the Yaounde Maximum Security Prison which is holding many of his former ministers who have either robbed the country or displayed the forbidden ambition of succeeding him.

For the political opposition, Mr. Biya and his ruling CPDM have worked hard to destroy all efforts which might threaten Mr. Biya’s power. Political opponents are permanently being jailed, especially after every election because the results which always favor Mr. Biya usually get manufactured even before the real election.

Mr. Fru Ndi, the leader of the Social Democratic Front was held in his home for three months in 1992 in a presidential election in which Mr. Biya lost woefully but ended up being proclaimed the winner.

The entire Northwest region was under a state of emergency in 1992 because Mr. Biya had stolen an election and the population was determined to stop him from taking what was not his. But the crooked CPDM did not yield, and Mr. Biya has been in power ever since.

In 2018, it was the turn of Professor Maurice Kamto, the winner of the 2018 presidential election, to taste Mr. Biya’s wrath. He was locked up for eight months when he refused to acknowledge that Mr. Biya had won the election.

Mr. Kamto had clearly beaten Mr. Biya, but the old and ailing Biya is not someone who throws in the towel. He has never won an election and he was not ready to accept that someone else would be the country’s president while he was alive.

That is the multiparty democracy Mr. Biya has brought to Cameroon and that will be one reason why his supporters will be celebrating on November 6. They have institutionalized and legalized electoral fraud in Cameroon, a great achievement which needs to be celebrated by his supporters.

Economy

For forty years, Cameroon’s economy has been struggling despite support from multilateral development banks and other global financial institutions. Corruption has become the country’s hallmark and all government institutions have been struggling as Mr. Biya’s one-man rule has destroyed the very foundation of those institutions. Parastatals are all suffering, as corruption has reduced them to empty shells. Recently, SONARA and SNH have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

The Glencore scandal has demonstrated how the Biya regime is corrupt and how officials of government-owned institutions use their power to enrich themselves. In a British court, trading giant Glencore admitted recently that it transported money via a private jet to bribe senior officials in Cameroon, using a Nigerian agent.

The Nigerian agent transported money by private jet to Cameroon where a Glencore trader used it to bribe officials of the state oil and gas company and the state refinery. Cameroonians are now waiting to see what will happen in the days ahead. However, many informed Cameroonians know that not much will happen as corruption is the CPDM’s life blood. This is how the CPDM government operates, and 40 years of corruption is something very important to be celebrated.

Unemployment

Youth unemployment has become a massive issue in recent times. The government’s job-creation policies have failed the country’s youths, leaving many university graduates unemployed. The civil service has become a place where people never retire, especially if they are loyal to the ruling party.

The deep-rooted corruption, nepotism and tribalism are bleeding the civil service. People of Ewondo, Bulu and Eton descent have become the lords of the Biya kingdom, and their languages have become national and official languages in Cameroon and those who do not speak the languages get excluded from many opportunities.

The Betis – Mr. Biya’s ethnic group – who account for less than 7% of the country’s population, account for 80% of senior positions in the civil service and they are doing a good job of embezzling state funds. A look at those who are currently being held in state prisons for embezzlement will clearly reveal that the Betis are adept at stealing.

Many of them have multiple civil service numbers, thus earning multiple civil service salaries. Some senior government officials have included their family members and girlfriends in the civil service even when they have no business being there.

Despite multiple operations and investigations to rid the civil service of those ghost workers, many Cameroonians, some living abroad, continue to earn salaries they do not deserve. Mr. Biya’s brand of corruption runs very deep and it is hard to be uprooted. This is a massive achievement for Mr. Biya. This is the Cameroon he has engineered and will bequeath to future generations.

Unemployment remains a huge problem and it has caused many young Cameroonians to look outward, causing the country to become a net exporter of human capital. Today’s youths do not suffer fools gladly and they are taking their destinies into their own hands. Many are leaving the country, using whatever means that are available to them.

Thousands of Cameroonians fleeing economic hardship at home have ended up in the Sahara Desert and on the high seas, but this has not caused the corrupt regime to change the way it runs the affairs of the state. Will Mr. Biya’s supporters really celebrate the economic hardship they have brought onto Cameroonians?

Infrastructure Development

In terms of infrastructure, Cameroon is among the least developed countries on the continent. Its roads are death traps and its hospitals have become consultation clinics. In forty years, Mr. Biya has not built a single dual carriage highway in Cameroon.

Thousands of Cameroonians die every day on the death traps which pass off as highways in Cameroon, but the number of deaths has not triggered any transportation policy change in the country. If Mr. Biya had been building a highway every five years, the country would have had about eight major highways. The roads which had been built before he took over are today eyesores.

Regarding railways, those built under the country’s first president, Amadou Ahidjo, have been left to rot due to a lack of resources and a maintenance culture. Today, the country’s towns and cities are like landfills. Lack of planning over the last forty years has reduced the towns and cities to slums. Yaoundé, the nation’s capital, is an Augean Stable begging for a thorough cleansing.

Political Stability

For decades, Cameroon was considered as an oasis of peace in a desert of chaos, but over the last 20 years, much has gone wrong in the country and the peace many people knew the country for has simply evaporated. Mr. Biya’s corrupt and incompetent rulership has transformed the country into a tinder box. Nepotism and overt injustice have resulted in the alienation of people from other regions of the country.

Over the last six years, the country’s English-speaking minority has been threatening to walk away from the lopsided union with French Cameroon which has only brought death, poverty and destruction to many English-speaking Cameroonians, although other French-speaking Cameroonians are also feeling the heat of Mr. Biya’s failed economic and political stewardship.

After fifty years of marginalization, the country’s English-speaking minority in 2016 complained about its unfortunate fate. Instead of listening to the people, the Biya government threatened to kill those who ever thought of complaining. Since the Biya government only believes in military violence, it promptly dispatched its forces to the country’s two English-speaking regions to teach the population a bitter lesson.

Little did the ailing and dying Biya know that his own troops would be caught up in a quagmire as the English-speaking minority would not take the threats lying down. When the troops started massacring the people, the English-speaking Diasporans, most of whom are based in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa and Nigeria, immediately mobilized resources and acquired weapons for those who were on the ground and were willing to fight the ‘army of occupation’ which was spreading death and destruction in the two English-speaking regions of the country.

A war Mr. Biya and his generals thought would end in weeks has gone on for six years and there is no end in sight. More than ten thousand Cameroonians have lost their lives as a result of the war including some four thousand soldiers and many are still struggling with physical and mental scars due to the war.

A conflict, which started with a demonstration by teachers and lawyers, has finally become a war of secession. The Biya government is not willing to negotiate, and the separatists are in no mood to down their weapons despite repeated calls by the government for the separatist fighters to abandon their positions and return to the fold.

Even calls by the international community for a negotiated peace settlement have fallen on deaf ears, as the government is stuck to its position, especially as Mr. Biya also known as the ‘Monarch’ had declared that the form of the state was non-negotiable.

However, it is not only the English-speaking minority that wants to walk away. Northerners are also prepared to walk away if power does not return to the North. They have a bunch of grievances, and they are ready to revenge on the Betis who killed many northerners after the 1984 coup d’état.

Cameroon is today more fragmented than it has ever been. It is indeed a ticking time bomb which if not diffused in time, could destabilize the entire sub-region when it goes off. Tribalism and nepotism have replaced patriotism. Most Cameroonians now hold that Cameroon is not a country worth dying for.

As the country’s ruling party prepares to celebrate Mr. Biya’s achievements, it should be asking itself many questions. One of those questions should be: What are we celebrating? The party has been in power for forty years just like Mr. Biya, but there is nothing to show for the long stay in power. Does the ruling CPDM and its leader, Paul Biya, really think they can convince Cameroonians that they have got a good deal in life?

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

5, November 2022

Etoudi: Succession is taboo as Biya set for 40 years at helm ⁰

Cameroon’s 89-year-old president, Paul Biya, on Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of his rise to power amid splashy ceremonies where the word on everyone’s mind — succession — will almost certainly be absent.

The Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC), which Biya founded in 1985, says it will hold “a big party” up and down the country to mark the anniversary.

The festivities will celebrate “political stability and peace — the biggest successes of these last four decades in Cameroon,” said Herve Emmanuel Nkom, a member of the party’s central committee.

At the RDPC’s headquarters in Messa district, a couple of dozen party members were busy selling caps, scarves, shirts and multi-coloured garments emblazoned with Biya’s face.

“Lots of people come by and look — we get a lot of orders,” said Sylvie Beyala, 42, a party member for 20 years, next to a photo of a beaming Biya and the slogan “Unity, Progress, Democracy.”

The crowning event on Sunday will be a “regional mega-rally” in front of city hall in Yaounde, the capital, but no word has emerged as to whether Biya himself will attend.

The anniversary bash aims to divert attention away from “the crucial question,” said Stephane Akoa, a professor and researcher in political science.

“It’s not whether Cameroon is doing well or could be doing better, but how the president is,” he said.

Biya rose to the top job on November 6 1982 after seven years as prime minister.

He is only the second president in Cameroon’s history since the central African nation gained independence from France. He is also the continent’s longest-serving leader after Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who seized power in 1979.

– Wily leader –

Commentators ascribe Biya’s extraordinary political longevity to a mixture of astuteness and ruthlessness — he has a constellation of loyalists in key positions and crushes or sidelines opponents and rivals.

But his public outings, except for a few choreographed TV appearances, have become rarer and rarer in recent years, stoking speculation about his health.

Any official talk of succession is taboo, and none of the most visible figures around Biya has publicly uttered a word about entertaining any wish to succeed him.

“Ministers have fallen into disgrace just for thinking about a theoretical departure of the president,” said Aimee Raoul Sumo Tayo, a defence and security specialist on Cameroon.

“Mr. Biya has put the saying ‘divide and rule’ into practice… forces which could have challenged him for power have been unable to get organised and, even less so, unify,” said Akoa.

Even so, conversations about a successor are rife.

Those most commonly named are Biya’s son, Franck Biya, and Finance Minister Louis-Paul Motaze. The younger Biya already has a discreet following among supporters called “Franckists.”

Another name in the mix is that of Biya’s right-hand man, the presidency’s chief of staff, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.

Reputed to have the backing of Biya’s influential wife, Chantal Biya, Ngoh Ngoh has been the longest-serving chief of staff in the presidency’s tenure.

He wields extensive de-facto authority through executive powers that have been delegated by Biya and, like his boss, also has his supporters in senior jobs, said Akoa.

– All-eclipsing debate –

“No (potential) candidate enjoys unanimity,” said Akoa, adding that the succession debate “eclipses all other concerns, such as strategies for health, education and infrastructure.”

The jockeying for power has been intensified by Cameroon’s weak mechanisms for handing on presidential power in an emergency, said Sumo Tayo.

If the president becomes unable to continue in office, presidential authority is handed down in the interim to the speaker of the Senate — currently 88-year-old Marcel Nial Njifenji, whose health is at least as much a concern as that of Biya.

The scenario stokes “the probability that certain parts of the army may intervene,” said Sumo Tayo.

Military leaders appointed by Biya may fear their privileges will be at threat once he exits the scene, which increases the risk of turbulence, he suggested.

Culled from AFP

4, November 2022

CPDM Crime Syndicate: Biya Celebrates 40 Years in Power ⁰

Cameroon’s government and its supporters are holding events this week ahead of celebrations Sunday marking President Paul Biya’s 40 years in power. Meanwhile, opposition parties are holding rallies calling for the 89-year-old Biya, the world’s oldest head of state, to change what they say are unfair election laws.

On Thursday in Nanga Eboko on the outskirts of the capital city of Yaoundé, supporters of Biya sang that Cameroon has remained one, undivided and prosperous despite the numerous challenges the central African state has faced since Biya became president in 1982.

The singing and dancing was part of week-long activities marking the 40th anniversary of Biya’s rule.

Biya’s Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, or CPDM, said it dispatched party officials to towns and villages to organize conferences and mobilize more support for the 89-year-old leader who, it said, has achieved a lot for the country.

Elvis Ngolle Ngolle is one of Biya’s close collaborators in the ruling party. He says freedom is top among the things Biya should be credited for and that “every citizen can express themselves in any way they want.”

He says that under Biya’s rule, Cameroon has enhanced women’s rights and vastly improved its education system. “In 1982, we had one state university,” Ngolle Ngolle said. “Today we have more than 11 state universities and hundreds of private university institutes. Incredible in 40 years.”

Ngolle Ngolle says Biya has stayed in power this long because a majority of Cameroonians love and always vote for him.

However, opposition political parties accuse Biya of rigging elections for decades, and wanting to stay in power until he dies.

The Cameroon Renaissance Movement, led by Maurice Kamto, says Kamto won the October 2018 presidential election and that the victory was stolen from him.

Another party, the Social Democratic Front, has joined the CRM in asking civilians not to attend anniversary celebrations to protest Biya’s long stay in power.

Christopher Ndong, the CRM’s secretary-general, said Biya shows no signs of giving up the presidency and that, “Cameroonians are aggrieved because of him.”

“The opposition political parties want him to revise the electoral code, making sure the next president of this country should be democratically elected,” Ndong said. “Cameroonians now want a democratically elected president.”

Ndong said many of Biya’s supporters have resigned from the ruling party and joined the opposition CRM during the anniversary event.

The ruling CPDM acknowledges that it has some internal leadership wrangling but has provided no details.

Loic Kankeu, a lecturer of public law at the University of Yaoundé, said Biya’s absence from conferences aimed at drumming up support indicates the aging ruler is tired. He added that many CPDM supporters want Biya to leave but fear reprisals if they express their views in public.

According to Kankeu, Jean Nkuete, the secretary general of the CPDM party, acknowledged during a meeting with decentralized CPDM party structures this week that leadership squabbles are tearing the party apart. He said malaise within the CPDM is pushing supporters and disgruntled CPDM leaders in many Cameroonian towns and villages to cross over to the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement party of Maurice Kamto.

Biya’s supporters are calling on the octogenarian to run for president again in 2025 while the opposition is asking him to hand over power to a younger leader. On July 30, during a visit to Cameroon by French President Emmanuel Macron, Biya said he still has time to decide if he will run again.

Source: VOA

2, November 2022

Equatorial Guinea shuts land borders ahead of election campaign ⁰

Equatorial Guinea on Monday closed its land borders with Cameroon and Gabon to prevent what it describes as “infiltration” groups intent on “destabilising” the presidential election campaign starting this week.

Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue had said the measure would “prevent the infiltration of groups who may attempt to destabilise the (election) campaign”, which begins on Thursday.

He did not fix a date for the reopening of the borders when he announced last Tuesday that only airports would remain open.

A local official in the northern border town of Ebebiyin told AFP on condition of anonymity that the frontier had been closed since Monday morning.

Initially scheduled for April 2023, the presidential poll was brought forward to November 20 to coincide with legislative, senate and local elections following a decree by long-serving leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The war in Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic were cited as the reasons behind the decision to hold the costly votes simultaneously.

The central African nation has heightened border security since what the authorities described as an aborted coup attempt in late 2017 that aimed to kill President Obiang.

The coup was allegedly orchestrated by Equatorial Guineans and foreign mercenaries crossing from Cameroon.

Equatorial Guinea regularly shuts its borders on security grounds despite a regional agreement on the free movement of people and goods with Cameroon, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, the Central African Republic and Chad.

The country possesses major oil and gas resources, but a majority of its 1.3 million people live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

Source: AFP

30, October 2022

Congo-Kinshasa expels Rwandan ambassador as M23 rebels gain ground ⁰

The authorities in Kinshasa on Saturday announced they were expelling the Rwandan ambassador as M23 rebels they accuse Kigali of supporting made fresh gains in the east of the troubled country.

The announcement, made by government spokesman Patrick Muyaya, came after a government meeting to assess the security situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The latest advance by rebel fighters prompted the UN peacekeeping mission there to increase its “troop alert level” and boost support for the army.

Muyaya said that in recent days, “a massive arrival of elements of the Rwandan element to support the M232 terrorists” against DRCongo’s troops had been observed.

“This criminal and terrorist adventure” had forced thousands of people to flee their homes, he added.

Given Rwanda’s continued support for the rebels, the defence council, presided over by President Felix Tshisekedi, had decided to ask the government to give Rwandan ambassador Vincent Karega 48 hours to leave the country.

Rebel advances

M23 rebel fighters have seized control of Kiwanju and Rutshuru-centre along the strategic RN2 highway in the eastern province of North Kivu, local officials and witnesses told AFP by telephone earlier Saturday.

Rebels had also been seen at Rugari, just 30 kilometres (20 miles) down the RN2 from provincial capital Goma, which it links with the north and Uganda.

Four peacekeepers were wounded by mortar fire and shooting at Kiwanja, the mission announced.

“Kiwanja and Rutshuru-centre are in M23 hands,” said civil society representative Jacques Niyonzima.

“The rebels have held two meetings and told local people to go about their work and those displaced to return to their villages, saying security was now guaranteed,” he said.

At Kiwanja, “in our area we recorded three deaths, a man, a woman and her child, killed by shells that landed on houses”, said local resident Eric Muhindo.

A general hospital official in Rutshuru added: “There were several wounded in Kiwanja after a small amount of resistance”.

“Calm has returned. People are moving about and shops are opening,” the official said, asking not to be named.

Hostile acts

The UN’s MONUSCO mission condemned “the hostile acts of M23”, the rebel group, and called for an immediate halt to the fighting.

The mission said on Twitter it was providing “air support, intelligence and equipment” as well as medical assistance.

The peacekeepers said they were “mobilised in support” of DRC’s army after residents reported at least 10 people dead since Sunday and dozens more injured near RN2.

MONUSCO said it had set up an “operations coordination centre” with the army and was carrying out reconnaissance and surveillance flights, but did not provide further details about the alert level.

M23, a mostly Congolese Tutsi group, resumed fighting in late 2021 after lying dormant for years, accusing the government of having failed to honour an agreement over the demobilisation of its fighters.

It has since captured swathes of territory in North Kivu, including the key town of Bunagana on the Ugandan border in June.

The front line between Congolese troops and M23 rebels had been calm in recent weeks until last week, when clashes erupted again.

Last Sunday, M23 fighters captured the village of Ntamugenga in the Rutshuru area. It lies four kilometres (2.5 miles) from the RN2 where the clashes spread on Thursday.

Tension with Rwanda

The UN humanitarian affairs office in the DRC said this week around 34,500 people had fled the Rutshuru region.

The group’s resurgence has destabilised regional relations in central Africa, with the DRC accusing its smaller neighbour Rwanda of backing the militia.

Rwanda denies the charges and counters that DRC works with a notorious Hutu rebel movement involved in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis, the Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which Kinshasa also denies.

A report by independent UN experts seen by AFP in August found that Kigali had provided direct support to the M23.

And this week a US representative to the United Nations spoke of Rwandan defence forces providing assistance to the M23.

M23 first leapt to prominence in 2012 when it briefly captured Goma before a joint Congolese-UN offensive drove it out.

The militia is one of scores of armed groups that roam eastern DRC, many of them a legacy of two regional wars that flared late last century.

Relations between Kigali and Kinshasa appeared to have improved when Tshisekedi took over as president in DR Congo in 2019 and held several meetings with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

But the revival of M23 put an end to that rapprochement.

Source: AFP

24, October 2022

Rishi Sunak: Young, ultra-rich and UK’s first PM of colour ⁰

Elected for the first time to parliament in 2015, Rishi Sunak became Britain’s youngest prime minister in more than 200 years on Monday, tasked with steering the country through an economic crisis and mounting anger among some voters.

It is a remarkable return for Sunak who lost a leadership bid to Liz Truss less than two months ago when he was accused by some in the Conservative Party of bringing down their hero, Boris Johnson.

One of the wealthiest politicians in Westminster, he enters Downing Street facing a need to make deep public spending cuts to stem a fiscal crisis, as well as tackling a cost-of-living crunch, a winter of strikes and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

His backers say the former finance minister is a safe pair of hands who can restore Britain’s credibility with investors who sold the country’s bonds and sterling after Truss’s mini-budget offered tax cuts with little on how to fund them.

But the former Goldman Sachs analyst and hedge fund partner also faces challenges within the governing Conservative Party, where some lawmakers blame him for his role in ousting Johnson and are concerned he has not got what it takes to win elections.

The opposition Labour Party is likely to paint him as a member of the uber-rich elite, out of touch with the pressures faced by millions as Britain slides towards a recession, dragged down by the surging cost of food and energy.

Some fear he cannot reunite a party that is deeply divided and getting used to quickly dispensing with leaders they do not like.

“He couldn’t beat Liz Truss last month; he’s not turned into an election winner less than two months later,” one senior Conservative lawmaker said on condition of anonymity after supporting Johnson in his failed bid to run again.

Sunak replaces Truss, who said she would resign four days ago but who defeated him on Sept. 5 with 57% of the vote from Conservative members. Then, the former finance minister repeatedly described his predecessor’s ideas as “fairytale” economics that would spook the markets.

He was proved right, but after a fast-track leadership race, some Conservatives say they doubt his commitment to a Margaret Thatcher-style small state vision to spur growth after he put Britain on course for the highest tax burden since the 1950s with emergency pandemic spending on saving jobs and welfare.

When declaring his candidacy, Sunak, 42, said he had a track record that showed he could “fix our economy, unite out party and deliver for our country”.

“There will be integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level of the government I lead and I will work day in and day out to get the job done,” he said in veiled criticism of Johnson, forced out over a scandal-ridden premiership.

First Indian-heritage PM

Born in Southampton in 1980 to Hindu parents of Punjabi Indian descent, Sunak repeatedly during the last leadership campaign spoke of helping his mum, who ran a pharmacy, with the books, doing payroll and accounts.

He had a privileged education – he went to an elite fee-paying school and is the latest prime minister to have studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford University, following David Cameron and his predecessor, Truss.

During the last leadership campaign, he supported the creation of more selective grammar schools after new ones were banned by the opposition Labour Party, but repeatedly said “a world class education” should be a birthright.

He will also be the first person of colour to become Britain’s prime minister. Ravi Kumar, 38, a Conservative Party member working at a finance company in the central English city of Nottingham, described the appointment as a “watershed moment”.

“I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and I could not even imagine a non-white prime minister in my lifetime… So to see a British Indian leader is phenomenal,” he told Reuters.

But Sunak’s marriage to the daughter of an Indian billionaire has raised concerns in the party that he is too far removed from the concerns of everyday voters, some of whom are being forced by spiralling inflation to decide whether to spend their money on food or heating.

It didn’t help that in April Sunak’s wife was forced to confirm reports that her non-domiciled status meant she did not pay tax on all her international earnings, something she agreed to end.

“Rishi never had an overdraft so he is used to having a Treasury (finance ministry) account and a current account,” said one Conservative insider who had backed Johnson.

“Rishi has good PR but an inability to be brave and be the Brexit Chancellor the UK needs,” the insider said on condition of anonymity.

Sunak’s supporters say he is just the man who is needed to steady the ship financially after Truss’s so-called mini-budget roiled financial markets, raising government borrowing and increasing mortgages and fears pensions funds could go bust.

“We need someone who can provide stability and proven economic competence in these challenging times, and Rishi Sunak is that person,” said Grant Shapps, brought in as Britain’s interior minister after Truss sacked his predecessor.

Shapps was just one of several ministers to back Sunak after Johnson pulled out late on Sunday, surprising and even angering his own supporters. Johnson has not made public who he backed.

COVID champion

Sunak rose swiftly up the ranks of the Conservative Party, becoming, in 2020, one of the youngest finance ministers.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Britain, Sunak dropped the Conservatives’ small-state instincts to borrow massively and stave off the risk of an economic depression.

That made him one of the most popular politicians in the country, as he was praised for helping businesses and workers.

In one photograph that captured the sense of unity behind his rescue plans, Sunak posed outside his Downing Street office flanked by the heads of Britain’s biggest trade union group and a leading employers’ group.

But that consensus disappeared as Britain emerged from the crisis saddled with an extra 400 billion pounds of debt and then fell into a cost-of-living crisis that led to even more demands on the public purse.

Polls earlier this year showed his stock had fallen with the public, who were worried about the cost of living crisis and angered that he had raised payroll taxes while his wife had avoided British levies.

Labour leader Keir Starmer is expected to seize on the appointment of a new wealthy prime minister by Conservative lawmakers rather than by the country as a reason why Britain should face a national election before it is due in two years.

“My focus is on the millions of people who are struggling to pay their bills, now have additional anxieties about their mortgage. I know what it feels like,” Starmer said on Sunday.

“They could have a stable Labour government.”

Source: REUTERS

24, October 2022

UK: Rishi Sunak chosen to replace Liz Truss as prime minister ⁰

Rishi Sunak has won the race to be leader of the Conservative Party and will become Britain’s next prime minister — the third this year.

The former Treasury chief will be Britain’s first leader of colour, and faces the task of stabilising the party and country at a time of economic and political turbulence.

His only rival, Penny Mordaunt, conceded and withdrew on Monday.

As leader of the governing party, he will take over as prime minister from Liz Truss, who quit last week after 45 tumultuous days in office.

Source: AP