Politics

12, January 2022

President Kabore of Burkina Faso, Macky Sall of Senegal boycott Africa Cup of Nations opener for reasons unrelated to football ⁰

Of the five African heads of state invited by the 88-year old President Paul Biya for the opening ceremony of the Africa Cup of Nations, only Azali Assoumani of the Union of Comoros showed up. Francophone African leaders including President Roch Marc Kabore of Burkina Faso and Macky Sall of Senegal pressured by Paris to make the trip to Yaoundé were conspicuous by their absence from the gathering of world football leaders.

A highly placed Cameroon government official who spoke to our Yaoundé City reporter late on Tuesday on grounds that he should not be identified said everyone at the presidency of the republic regretted that President Kabore of Burkina Faso and Macky Sall of Senegal did not avail themselves of the opportunity to address football issues in Africa. He however added that Biya was indeed the problem “as he never visits other African countries”. Yaoundé has also expressed disappointment at several African governments’ political decision to not attend the Africa Cup of Nations.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that some of the African administrations have called on Etoudi to reconsider its Southern Cameroons war approach and commit in good faith to live up to its political-economic commitments towards the people of British Southern Cameroons.

By Rita Akana

11, January 2022

Who will be France’s next head of state? ⁰

In a presidential campaign dominated by a revanchist and nativistic far right, Christiane Taubira’s presumptive run for the Elysée Palace has more than a soupçon of poetic license, of quiet rage against the dying of the left. It may also be the last chance for her moribund camp to find a voice in an election it appears doomed to lose.

A former justice minister and icon of the French left, Taubira took another step towards a widely whispered-about presidential run on Sunday, saying she would submit to a citizen’s primary vote later this month, which she is tipped to win. The move all but confirms her second presidential run, 20 years after she became the first Black woman to seek France’s highest office.

News of Taubira’s candidacy has sent ripples of excitement among France’s increasingly despondent left-wing voters, of the kind only Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftist firebrand, can rival. However, it also adds one more name to an already cluttered field of candidates fighting over a diminishing pool of votes, prompting many analysts to question the pertinence of her belated Elysée run.

“If she somehow manages to unite the reformist left behind her, then her candidacy could be a game-changer,” said political analyst Thomas Guénolé, though quickly cautioning: “Without unity, however, she will become just one more element in a ‘Balkanised’ (and hopeless) left.”

Talk of the left’s chronic divisions is a sensitive issue for Taubira, a maverick who has long shouldered the blame for the far right’s shocking breakthrough in the first round of the 2002 presidential election. Running as a left-wing radical at the time, Taubira picked up just 2.3% of the vote – a relatively small tally but enough to keep the Socialist favorite, Lionel Jospin, out of the run-off.

“She was made a scapegoat for Jospin’s defeat, unfairly so,” said Guénolé, noting that others on the left had siphoned away more votes from the Socialist candidate.

Twenty years on, the once mighty Socialist Party has shrunk to a minor player in France’s political landscape, leaving the left as a whole rudderless and divided. Between them, the seven left-wing candidates currently in the race for the Elysée Palace account for just over a quarter of the electorate, according to polls. Only one – the far left’s Mélenchon – has touched double digits so far, but even he remains far off the 17% to 20% threshold deemed necessary to reach the crucial second round of voting.

Both Mélenchon and Yannick Jadot, the Green candidate, have repeatedly rejected the idea of a citizen’s primary, leaving only a motley group of struggling candidates – including the Socialist Party’s mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo – among Taubira’s potential challengers. According to her supporters, Taubira, a prolific writer and passionate orator whose words have even been put into song, is the only one with the potential to energise voters.

Rebel at heart

A staunch feminist and a champion of minorities, Taubira, 69, is best known for shepherding a same-sex marriage bill into French law in 2013 when she served as justice minister in François Hollande’s Socialist government. She did so while facing an angry backlash from the conservative and far-right opposition, and with only lukewarm support from her cabinet colleagues.

“Opening marriage and adoption to same-sex couples is an act of liberty, of equality and of fraternity,” she told lawmakers in one of several fiery debates in parliament, echoing France’s Republican motto. She met the opposition’s insults with lyrical flourishes and witty put-downs, remaining calm and composed even when anti-gay-marriage protesters levelled racised slurs at her.

“Taubira is a symbol of anti-racism by virtue of who she is, what she achieved, and the vile, racist abuse she endured,” said Guénolé. “The battle over same-sex marriage also made her an icon of equality.”

Taubira had already made her mark as a champion of progressives more than a decade earlier, authoring landmark legislation in 2001 that recognised slavery as a crime against humanity. It was a personal triumph for the then little-known MP from faraway Guiana, a former French colony in South America, where convicts from metropolitan France were banished up until 1953, a year after her birth.

One of 11 siblings, Taubira was raised in Guiana’s capital Cayenne by her single mother, a nursing assistant who died at age 49. As she quipped in a 2012 memoir, she was born a “[w]oman, Black, poor, what fabulous capital! Every challenge to take up, the promise of a life of exhaustion. But life is more seditious than one thinks.”

A seditious, rebellious streak would run throughout her political career, which began in the ranks of a Guianese pro-independence faction alongside her second husband Robert Delannon, who was jailed in the late 1970s for planning to blow up an oil and gas facility. Taubira soon abandoned the separatist cause and shifted towards more moderate politics, though she never lost her independent spirit.

“Sometimes to resist is to stay, sometimes to resist is to leave,” she tweeted decades later, in January 2016, as she quit the justice ministry in protest at controversial plans to strip French-born dual nationals of their citizenship when convicted of terrorism.

Prior to her departure, Taubira had championed a divisive overhaul of prison sentencing, seeking to institute probation in place of jail terms for petty crimes in an effort to reduce overcrowding in France’s penitentiaries. But her efforts met with resistance from cabinet colleagues and eventually jarred with the mood of a nation deeply shaken by a string of jihadist terrorist attacks.

Battle of ideas

Taubira’s perceived softness as justice minister gave France’s right wing a key line of attack. So did her stances on racism and the legacy of slavery, issues some candidates in the upcoming presidential elections are keen to brush under the rug. While France’s reckoning with its colonial past is still in its infancy, for the likes of far-right pundit and presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, “repentance” has already gone too far.

An advocate of the “Great Replacement” theory, according to which elites are plotting to replace French nationals of white stock with immigrants, Zemmour has dominated the early stages of the campaign in the raucous, aggressive and iconoclastic manner of a Donald Trump – albeit with the veneer of cultured sophistication generally expected of a French presidential candidate.

Some have suggested Taubira’s main aim is to lock horns with Zemmour in a battle of ideas, knowing full well that the Elysée Palace is already out of sight. In the words of Thomas Legrand, France Inter radio’s political editorialist, Taubira’s bid “would offer an alternative narrative, one that is republican, fraternal, racially diverse and universal, as opposed to Eric Zemmour’s bleak and depressing identity politics”.

A diminutive figure, like Zemmour, Taubira is known for her lofty rhetoric and frequent literary citations – particularly from the anticolonial poets of the Négritude movement, such as Aimé Césaire and her fellow Guianan Léon-Gontran Damas. She is equally at ease with talk of Black identity as she is with the French Republic’s core, universal values – a versatility that is anathema to the far right and to others from across the political spectrum.

Having surveyed voters from the immigrant-rich Seine-Saint-Denis area northeast of Paris, mainland France’s poorest department, sociologist Marie Peretti-Ndiaye said Taubira’s candidacy has raised hopes of a less toxic divide on certain issues, such as the place of Islam in France. Among those surveyed, the former justice minister “came across as intelligent, cultured and knowledgeable, far from the cheap shots and petty controversies of the presidential campaign”, she said. “At the same time, the respect and admiration for her combativity was tempered by scepticism about the chances of a woman winning the presidency.”

In recent months, Taubira has consistently topped surveys of left-wing voters’ preferred political leaders. However, she also scores highly in surveys of politicians who are most rejected by the broader electorate.

Should it garner momentum, Taubira’s candidacy “would instantly become a hateful obsession of the far right, whose worst nightmare she embodies”, Guénolé noted. Whether she can alter the narrative of the campaign will depend on her ability to rally the reformist left behind her, he cautioned, stressing the need to flesh out a political and economic platform of which little or nothing is known – and to fulfill at least two conditions.

“The first is to embody something powerful against the far right – and Taubira certainly does. The other is to be a contender for the all-important presidential run-off,” he said. “If she fails to meet the second criteria, all the media will talk about is Taubira’s miserable polling figures. And her candidacy will go the way of others on the left.”

Source: France 24

11, January 2022

Africa Cup of Nations a chance for Biya to unite the two Cameroons ⁰

Cameroon has not hosted the Africa Cup of Nations since the 1972. Optimists hope the goodwill generated by the tournament can be used to foster national unity, with the south west of the country still mired in violence.

After 40 years in power, President Biya is famously not a man fond of public appearances.

But Sunday’s opening ceremony of the 33rd Africa Cup of Nations was taken as an opportunity to be centre-stage – at least briefly. The 88-year-old entered the new stadium that bears his name in a motorcade that lapped the athletics track as he and the first lady, Chantal, waved through the open roof. His speech, when it came, was only a few sentences, a formal declaration of the tournament’s start.

Biya had more to say in his New Year address to the nation 10 days ago, pitching the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon or CAF) as part of a grand plan for infrastructure development, before calling “on our Beloved Indomitable Lions to do their utmost to ensure that they end this festival in grand style on the evening of 6 February 2022”.

Dose of reality

The optimism was, however, to be contrasted with the heart of the speech focusing on national disunity. “Many of our compatriots remain within the ranks of armed groups”, he warned. “They continue to engage in criminal activities, increasing attacks with improvised explosive devices and murders of unarmed civilians. The recent assassination of three students and a teacher of Bilingual High School Ekondo Titi added to their long list of abuses and atrocities.”

That attack in the Southwest region in November 2021 served as an inconvenient reminder that the five-year “Anglophone crisis” continues without resolution. If hasn’t been enough to undermine Cameroon’s hosting status this time round, memories are still fresh from enduring the humiliation of CAF’s decision in 2018 to strip Yaounde of the tournament and hand duties to Egypt for the summer 2019 edition. Delayed preparations and the “Ambazonia” crisis played a central role.

Politics at bay…for now

This year politics has not altered the itinerary – with Group F’s Tunisia, Mali, Mauritania and Gambia still set to train in the restive south-west regional capital Buea and eight matches to be played in coastal Limbé, where there were reports of an explosion as recently as 5 January and the security presence is heavy. The government will be hoping that a tournament without major incident will buttress the official position that the worst has passed.

If Cameroon make the final at the Paul Biya Stadium on the outskirts of Yaoundé, critics of the $300m facility will still be entitled to rail against the total costs of the tournament. Around $700m has been sunk into stadia and roads but home success at Afcons tends to drown out opposition.

There will have been relief that the Lions recovered from 1-0 down to Burkina Faso on Sunday, taking advantage of two rashly conceded penalties to squeeze home 2-1.

There is genuine excitement

After all, Cameroon has not hosted the tournament since 1972 (when it featured just eight teams in two groups) and have a formidable home record in competitive matches. The recent defeat of Cote d’Ivoire in the battle for World Cup qualification raised expectation further.

In 2017, a young, largely unfancied Lions side beat Senegal, Ghana and, finally, Egypt to lift the country’s 5th Afcon title in dramatic fashion. Aboubakar’s late win in Libreville sealed a tournament that entertained without ever quite hitting great heights. It had political resonance too.

In the week after that win, goalkeeper Fabrice Ondoa expressed solidarity on television with the country’s English-speaking minority. “My brothers, I am from Bamenda. For you, for you,” he said, a Francophone star dedicating the victory to the north-western anglophone city at a time of ongoing repression.

On the downside, the team hasn’t progressed significantly since that title win and exited at the last 16 stage in Egypt the last time out. Defending champions Algeria and an exciting Senegal side are a rank above on current form.

Greatest threat…Covid-19

The greatest threat to the tournament may yet come from Covid-19. CAF, having vigorously resisted calls for postponement, now has to cope with public health concerns, a complex testing regime and, inevitably, missing players.

It may be that things settle down once squads have fully entered the country and remain in their bubbles. But already Senegal has been badly affected, with nine players testing positive – including Chelsea’s Edouard Mendy and Napoli’s Kalidou Koulibaly – just days before their opening game against Zimbabwe on Monday. Gabon, Malawi, Ivory Coast and Tunisia also had preparations disrupted by new cases.

With only 2.5% of the population double-vaccinated, the tournament requirement for fans to prove their status to gain entry to stadiums is being watched closely. According to CAF, “supporters may only enter stadiums if they are fully vaccinated and are able to show a negative PCR test result that is no older than 72 hours or a negative antigen test result no older than 24 hours.” Cameroon’s matches are already restricted to 80% capacity to ease social distancing while all other fixtures are capped at 60%.

Biya’s name may be on the stadium but the popular figurehead for this Afcon will undoubtedly be the new President of the Cameroon football federation, Samuel Eto’o.

The four-time African Footballer of the Year and two-time Afcon winner has staked his reputation on a smooth tournament and a new era for the troubled domestic game. He was at the forefront of resistance to calls for delay at the end of last year and issued a warning to voices from Europe seeking to undermine Afcon’s credibility.

“The federation that I represent will strongly defend the competition,” he said. “The Euros were played in the middle of the pandemic with full stadiums. Why shouldn’t we play?” For all the politics and problems, there is once again no compelling riposte to that question.

Source: The Africa Report

10, January 2022

Paul Biya: The falling president! ⁰

His collaborators have always projected him as the strong man, ordained by God to be eternal not only on earth but also on the throne, but the last years have proven that eternity here on earth is simply a mirage and that no man, including Paul Biya, born of a woman, will ever be physically eternal in a world nobody really understands.

For more than five years now, Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, has seen his energy waning. Though he seems to believe his own lies that he is still energetic, many events have continued to remind him that time is running out for him.

Cameroonians have seen him struggle to walk and when he dares to walk, he trembles like a 7-month baby who wants to try his luck at walking.

As his energy levels decline, so too do his muscles fall apart and that makes it hard for his clothes to fit him.

Not long ago, his own trousers sought to take French leave of him during an event where there were thousands of guests at the Unity Palace.

The humiliation was huge. His wife, Chantal Biya, who doubles as a live-in care-giver, is permanently on the watch when she is in public with the aging and ailing Biya.

She knows something bizarre might happen anytime as the tired 88-year-old president is gradually losing his mind and his physique, which once gave him the looks of an adonis, is crumbling under the weight of age.

The Unity Palace event wherein his trousers dropped to the floor left Mrs Biya with a pink face. It was a day she wanted to demonstrate that her husband was still alive and strong, but nature had an unpleasant surprise for her and it came in a way she least expected.

Cameroonians who were glued to their TV sets had the ill-luck of seeing Mr. Biya’s colorful pants and his withering legs. Time has a way of diminishing men who think they are indispensable and Mr. Biya has had more than his fair share of humiliation.

But the humiliation is far from over. Since he has opted to stay in the spotlight, he must accept that time will continue to expose him to ridicule.

If he is not sporting a tootless mouth, then know he will show up with a face that has been invaded by age-related scars and it is fair game for his critics to make fun of him, as he has always projected himself as the defiant dictator who will never quit power.

But the greatest humiliation came on January 9, 2022, when the Yaounde strong man finished reading his opening speech at the AfCON 2021 being held in Cameroon.

Things had gone on smoothly until Mr. Biya forgot that though alive, he was not as strong as those around him.

After reading his very short speech, insteading of calling on his guards and nurses to help him take his seat, he proceeded to do things by himself and, of course, he went down like a pack of old and tired cards.

Before his guards could reach out to save him, the old, sick and tired Biya was on the floor struggling to pick himself up.

Nature cannot be cheated. Such an incident was just a nasty reminder to a man who has simply overstayed his welcome and has outlived his usefulness.

Sources close to the president’s entourage said the fall resulted in him urinating, adding that thanks to his thick diapers, he would have left the stadium with a wet trousers.

Many Cameroonians are asking lots of head-breaking questions about Mr. Biya’s health and fitness as a president.

Many think his constant embarrassment of the country in public could be a justification for him to be relieved of his duty, but will the falling Biya ever leave power?

An observer, who spoke to Cameroon Concord News on condition of anonymity said the dying man might only leave on the day he defecates on his trousers.

“We should not think Biya will relinquish power. Power has gotten into his head like a drug and he clearly thinks that he should die in power,” a source said.

“Things have been made all the more challenging because he has surrounded himself with a bunch of emasculated sycophants who cannot speak truth to power,” the source regretted.

Biya may be putting up a strong man image, but it is clear that he is running out of time. Instead of humiliating himself, his family and country, it will be wise for him to exit through the big door.

However, if he insists on dying in power, he might do so in public during one of those events in which he might want to prove that he is physically strong to rule the country.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

9, January 2022

Russia rules out any concession over Ukraine in talks with US ⁰

Russia ruled out Sunday any concession at talks with the United States on soaring tensions over Ukraine as Moscow seeks a wide-ranging new security arrangement with the West but faces strong pressure to pull back troops.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russian news agencies ahead of his talks in Geneva the Kremlin was also “disappointed” with signals coming from both Washington and Brussels, where NATO and the European Union are based.

The high-level discussions start a week of diplomacy in which Russia will meet with NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), with the US trying to assure European allies they will not be sidelined.

Russia since late last year has amassed tens of thousands of troops at the Ukrainian border and demanded guarantees that NATO will not expand further eastward.

The Kremlin is insisting NATO must never grant membership to ex-Soviet Ukraine, which is pushing to join.

The United States, to be represented by Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, agreed to talks even though it made plain that many of Moscow’s proposals are non-starters.

Originally scheduled to start on Monday, Sherman is now due to have a working dinner with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Sunday evening, said a State Department spokesperson.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, dismissing Moscow’s demands as “gaslighting”, has insisted that talks will yield no progress so long as Russia has a “gun to Ukraine’s head”.

“We’re prepared to respond forcefully to further Russian aggression. But a diplomatic solution is still possible and preferable if Russia chooses it,” Blinken said Friday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met his US counterpart Joe Biden in Geneva in June and agreed on regular “stability” talks between Sherman and Ryabkov, who will again lead the Russian delegation.

‘Massive’ retaliation

In two phone calls to Putin, Biden has warned of severe consequences if Russia invades Ukraine.

Measures under consideration include sanctions on Putin’s inner circle, cancelling Russia’s controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany or, in the most drastic scenario, severing Russia’s links to the world’s banking system.

A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, warned that Washington would also send more troops to eastern NATO members such as Poland and the Baltics if Russia invaded.

Europeans have showed solidarity, with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell visiting the frontline in Ukraine, although some nations are expected to hesitate at the strongest measures.

“Whatever the solution, Europe has to be involved,” EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said.

Russia insists it was deceived after the Cold War and understood that NATO would not expand.

Instead, the US-led alliance accepted most of the former Warsaw Pact nations and the three Baltic nations that were under Soviet rule.

Russia has inflicted intense pressure on neighbouring Ukraine since 2014 after a revolution overthrew a government that had sided with the Kremlin against moving closer to Europe.

Russia seized the Crimean peninsula and backs an insurgency in eastern Ukraine in which more than 13,000 people have died.

At a time that Russia is also intervening to shore up allies facing popular uprisings in Belarus and Kazakhstan, Moscow has insisted it wants concrete progress in talks with Washington.

Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov warned after the call with Biden that the United States would make a “colossal mistake” if it went ahead with sanctions.

‘Gigantic bluff’?

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, meeting foreign ministers of the alliance on Friday, said there remained real risks of a Russian invasion.

But John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, described the Russian troop build-up as a “gigantic bluff” by Putin to seek a negotiated agreement.

“They are trying to see if the Biden administration or Europe will blink,” said Herbst, now at the Atlantic Council think tank.

“As long as the Biden administration remains at least as strong as it is now,” he said, “it probably is enough to keep Putin from striking large into Ukraine, but I don’t rule out something smaller.”

Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, said the Geneva talks were more about preventing the Ukraine crisis from accelerating than reaching a major deal.

“I think this is about pulling the pendulum back, if we can, towards thicker interaction and more effective diplomacy and communication — not permanent and forever resolution of all problems.”

While also downplaying the possibility of a full-scale invasion, Rojansky said the risks of the Russian build-up were real.

“There is the principle of Chekhov — you put a loaded gun on the stage in Act One and it has to be fired by Act Three.”

Source: AFP

8, January 2022

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Biya regime and the IG have a chance for a ceasefire as AFCON kicks-off ⁰

With one billion people around the world expected to watch as the African Cup of Nations (CAN) kicks off in Cameroon on 9 January, a spotlight will shine on the country’s five-year-old conflict between the government and Anglophone separatists.

Matches around the country will include eight games in Limbe and Buea, cities in the English-speaking South West region, and Anglophone militias have announced plans to disrupt the Cup, hoping to showcase their grievances. The government has responded with severe restrictions upon movement and association in the Anglophone regions.

This is a lose-lose strategy: separatist attacks during the month-long tournament may diminish the sympathy that Anglophone Cameroonians enjoy in Africa and elsewhere, and the government’s heavy-handed measures could produce popular backlash and escalate the conflict.

A different approach

Instead, both parties should pursue a dramatically different approach: embrace sports diplomacy and cease hostilities for the Cup’s duration. With outside diplomatic support, such a truce could be the first step in rebuilding trust and moving toward talks after years of bloodshed.

Even without the Anglophone militias’ threats, guaranteeing security for the tournament would pose significant challenges for Cameroon. Nine of the country’s ten regions are mired in humanitarian crisis as a result of violent conflict. Jihadist insurgency and climate change-fuelled inter-communal strife between herders and fishermen have destabilised the north, while rebels from the Central African Republic have crossed into the east.

The country’s political situation is also tense, with five senior officials from Francophone opposition leader Maurice Kamto’s party sentenced to seven-year jail terms for holding demonstrations against the president, Paul Biya, in September 2020.

Anglophone conflict ‘poses most serious security problem’

The conflict in the Anglophone regions poses the most serious security problem though. Disturbances began in October 2016, when lawyers and teachers mounted demonstrations calling for a two-state federation to preserve the Anglophone legal and educational systems.

These degenerated into armed conflict following the government’s violent repression, as Anglophones set up separatist militias. Since then, the fighting has killed more than 6,000 people and displaced about one million, ushering in one of the world’s most neglected humanitarian crises amid a deteriorating human rights situation.

Crisis Group and others have repeatedly advocated for talks that might yield a political solution to the conflict. But thus far the government has been unwilling to negotiate in good faith.

It ignored a Swiss dialogue initiative in 2019 that had assembled a dozen separatist groups calling for talks, instead organising its own putative National Dialogue in October of that year. That effort failed to include separatist participation, virtually ensuring it would flop.

As a conciliatory gesture, the government then unilaterally established a special status for the regions, under which it created two regional assemblies with limited powers. This measure fell short of what Anglophones had been demanding and predictably failed to reduce the conflict’s intensity.

Stalemate on both sides

The Anglophone conflict’s escalation in 2021 has not led to a change in either side’s position. Separatists believe they are gaining momentum despite internal divides. The government, for its part, is preparing for a long war, purchasing new military supplies. With neither side clearly ascendant and both reluctant to engage in talks, the conflict has reached a stalemate.

While it would be inconsistent with the separatists’ modus operandi for them to attack venues where the matches are being played, violence could intrude in other ways.

Since 2018, separatist militias have often sought to disrupt sports events in the Anglophone regions:

In January 2021, during another football tournament, the African Nations Championship, militias detonated an explosive device in Limbe, wounding three policemen.

On 21 December, as President Biya met in the capital Yaoundé with Patrick Motsepe, president of the Confederation of African Football, separatist fighters attacked a police checkpoint in Kumba, in the South West, reportedly killing one officer.

In December, clashes between separatist militias and government forces hit Bamenda, Cameroon’s third-largest city.

Tellingly, when a man dressed as the Africa Cup costumed mascot, Mola the lion, toured the city on 16 December, he wore a bulletproof vest and was surrounded by a heavily armed military escort.

‘Propitious moment to seek a truce’

Despite the challenges, the tournament is a propitious moment to seek a truce, under which the parties would pledge to cease hostilities for at least the duration of the Cup and possibly even create the foundation for a new peacemaking effort.

A major diplomatic push by national and international officials will be crucial in the coming days. International actors will need to urgently press the government to reinvigorate the direct channels it developed in 2020 with influential separatist leaders in jail, perhaps underscoring how much it is in Yaoundé’s interests for the games to come off without a hitch. In parallel, Swiss officials could seek to build support for a truce among separatist leaders living overseas and remobilise UN, U.S., British and Canadian backing for their dialogue initiative.

The benefits of even a brief cessation of hostilities would be significant. It would grant the tournament protection while affording humanitarian agencies a chance to deliver critical aid to the thousands endangered by the fighting. It could also help lay the foundation for much-needed peace negotiations and invite near-term measures by the government that might help bring separatists to the table, like the release of Anglophone prisoners being held for non-violent crimes.

Ideally, the separatists would send positive signals of their own by reiterating their commitment to a political solution and making clear their interest in talks.

Whether any of this progress is achievable right now is unclear. Yet the forthcoming tournament presents a rare and welcome opportunity for bringing some creative sports diplomacy to bear on this often overlooked war.

Culled from The Africa Report

4, January 2022

Paul Biya: A toothless bulldog ⁰

Since the Southern Cameroons crisis hit the global stage, Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, who opted for a military solution, has made fire and brimstone speeches, announcing that the insurgents who have grown in experience and confidence over the last five years, will be rolled back by the country’s military in no time. But each time he delivers his long, meaningless speeches, the situation only gets worse.

To date, some 10,000 Cameroonian civilians have been killed in a war that was clearly avoidable and some 4,000 army soldiers have been sent to an early grave with close to 2,000 soldiers living with long-term physical disabilities due to the war.

As for the economy, it has taken a nosedive, with thousands of Cameroonian graduates hitting the pavement in search of jobs. Things are really looking down for the country, especially as corruption and the struggle for power have become the main challenges that seem to herald the end of a long, corrupt and ineffective era. Mr. Biya, the country’s long-serving president, has nothing to show for his 40 years in power.

He has divided the country, tribalized the army which now operates like his personal militia. Dissenting voices are swiftly taken to the country’s maximum-security prisons and the Diaspora, which is supposed to play a critical part in the country’s development, is instead viewed as the government’s enemy, making it hard for the country’s huge diasporic community to invest in Cameroon.

Here below are some of his empty threats that have instead been counter-productive since the conflict that has pitted the government against the country’s English-speaking minority erupted.

Dec. 2018

“If my appeal to warmongers to lay down their weapons remains unheeded, the Defence and Security Forces will be instructed to neutralize them. I am well aware of the distress these rebels are causing the populations of these regions. This situation cannot be allowed to continue.”

Sep. 2019

“Conversely, those who persist in committing criminal acts and violating the laws of the Republic will have to contend with our Defence and Security Forces and will face the full force of those same laws.”

Dec. 2019

“For those who persist in going down the wrong road and continue to use violence, we will have no other choice than to combat them in order to protect all our fellow citizens. Our Defence and Security Forces will, once again, perform their duty with restraint, but without weakness. I wish to reassure them of my full support and high esteem.”

Dec. 2020

“I hail the patriotic spirit of those of our fellow citizens in the North-West and South-West Regions who are not only increasingly cooperating with the Defence and Security Forces, but are also courageously fighting these armed gangs. They have realized that these gangs are not acting in the interest of the people. I would also like to commend here the bravery of our Defence and Security Forces that have not failed in their duty to protect the integrity of the national territory, the people and property. They deserve the respect and consideration of everyone. I encourage them to keep it up and to remain a republican force that respects human rights.”

Dec. 2021

“I would like, once again, to reiterate Government’s firm determination to restore peace in the regions that are under security threats. It should be clearly understood that wherever the perpetrators and sponsors of such acts are hiding, they will be relentlessly tracked down and will face the full force of the law. In this fierce fight against barbarism, I urge the Cameroonian people to step up collaboration with our defence and security forces in order to neutralize the fanatics of armed violence and to preserve the integrity of our territory.”

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

3, January 2022

Trump endorses to Hungary’s ‘strong’ right-wing leader ⁰

Former US president Donald Trump on Monday enthusiastically backed the reelection of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a hero of the far-right who has been accused of creeping authoritarianism.

In a statement issued along the lines of his frequent blessings to Republican candidates in primary elections at home, Trump wrote that the Hungarian leader has his “Complete support and Endorsement” in elections expected in April.

“He has done a powerful and wonderful job in protecting Hungary, stopping illegal immigration, creating jobs, trade, and should be allowed to continue to do so in the upcoming Election. He is a strong leader and respected by all,” Trump wrote.

Trump welcomed Orban to the White House in 2019, a symbolic acceptance for the prime minister who frequently clashes with the European Union leadership and was snubbed both by President Joe Biden and Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama.

Some Trump administration officials argued at the time that the goal was to keep in the Western fold a leader who had flirted with Russia, and then secretary of state Mike Pompeo made a point of meeting activists who ran afoul of Orban during a visit to Budapest.

But Orban has increasingly been hailed both by Trump’s wing of the Republican Party and European far-right leaders such as France’s Marine Le Pen, especially over his refusal to accept refugees.

Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host close to Trump, broadcast last year from Budapest and was given an interview with Orban as well as a helicopter tour of a border fence.

Orban has also sought to mobilize support on opposition to LGBTQ rights, with a ban on “promotion and display” of homosexuality and a related referendum expected on the same day as the election.

Orban, who has been in charge since 2010, faces a potentially serious challenge from Peter Marki-Zay, who describes himself as a traditional Catholic conservative and has vowed to scrap homophobic laws if elected.

Source: AFP

1, January 2022

France takes over EU presidency as national election looms ⁰

France takes over the rotating presidency of the European Union on Saturday, affording President Emmanuel Macron the chance to pose as the EU’s de facto leader in the run-up to national elections in April.

The 44-year-old has never made any secret of his ambitions to be the motor for further European integration, serving over the last four years as a dynamic sidekick to the more steady German chancellor Angela Merkel in Europe’s power couple.

With Merkel now retired and the timely gift of the rotating presidency of the EU Council from January 1, Macron has announced an ambitious agenda for the 27-member bloc that could also serve his domestic campaign for re-election.

“The year 2022 must be a turning point for Europe,” he said in a New Year’s Eve national address that hailed the EU’s role during the Covid-19 crisis.

Referring to the French presidency, he vowed that “you can count on my complete commitment to ensure that this period, which comes around every 13 years, is a time of progress for you”.

The centrist, who made his Europhile views a key part of his political campaign when winning the presidency in 2017, is hoping it will again serve him in elections scheduled for April 10 and 24.

“The EU presidency gives him a welcome platform to put his European record to the forefront and differentiate himself from his rivals and bring new proposals, new ideas to the table,” said Claire Demesmay, an expert at the Marc-Bloch think-tank in Berlin.

Strutting on the international stage has also long been a popular move for any French president.

“The French like nothing more than the image or impression of France being ‘at the controls’,” said Pierre Sellal, a former French diplomat at the French mission to the European Union.

To mark the start of the six-month presidency, France illuminated historic buildings across the country including the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe in the blue of the EU flag on New Year’s Eve.

Other observers have noted that the French logo for the presidency includes the letters U and E for “Union Europeene” with a grey arrow in the middle that appears to create another letter — a sideways M for Macron.

German support?

Each European country gets a chance at holding the rotating presidency of the Council, which gives the member state an opportunity to set the official agenda for fellow leaders in the bloc — within limits — and organise meetings of ministers.

But although the first French presidency since 2008 offers opportunities for Macron, it is also seen by observers as holding risks.

His agenda to make Europe “powerful” — in defence, technology or its own border security — risks being overshadowed in the short term by the accelerating Covid-19 health crisis.

Sebastien Maillard, director of the Jacques Delors Institute, a pro-EU think-tank based in Paris, says Macron will also face pressure to deliver after having ramped up expectations.

“He can’t get to the first round (of the presidential election) on April 10 without having obtained some results from the European presidency,” Maillard said. “That’s the challenge for him, but it can also be a real opportunity.”

European leaders are set to meet in Paris on March 10-11, which could be a chance for them to agree on a major reform of the bloc’s budget rules.

Much will depend on Germany’s new chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose coalition government is seen as sceptical on budget reforms, but supportive of Macron’s agenda.

France’s presidency is “an important opportunity we want to seize together to strengthen Europe and make it fit to rise up to tomorrow’s challenges,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told AFP on Friday.

Other European leaders such as Hungary’s right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whom Macron labelled a “political opponent” in December, might be in no mood to bolster the French leader’s chances of re-election.

Domestic concerns

As symbolic head of the European Council, Macron will have to walk a fine line as he also launches his campaign for re-election, which is expected to be announced formally in February at the latest.

Sellal, the former French diplomat, said France’s partners would take a dim view of “attempts to instrumentalise the presidency for electoral reasons”.

Domestically, opponents have already accused Macron of electioneering and say he should have delayed France’s turn at the helm until after the elections.

“It’s a mistake. He’s doing it for his own interests, not those of France,” his rightwing rival Valerie Pecresse from the Republicans party said last month.

Eurosceptic opponents such as far-right figures Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour will also waste no opportunity to portray the whole exercise as meaningless.

“It’s been four-and-a-half years that he’s been in power and he’s obtained nothing and done nothing in the European domain, apart from achieving a sort of submission to Germany in the name of the Franco-German couple,” Le Pen told RMC radio in mid-December.

Source: AFP

1, January 2022

N. Korea’s Kim Jong Un talks food, five-year-plan in speech feting 10 years as leader ⁰

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un capped off his 10th year in power with a speech that made more mention of tractor factories and school uniforms than nuclear weapons or the United States, according to summaries by state media on Saturday.

North Korea’s main goals for 2022 will be jump starting economic development and improving people’s lives as it faces a “great life-and-death struggle,” Kim said in a speech on Friday at the end of the 4th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), which began on Monday.

The meetings coincided with the 10-year anniversary of Kim effectively assuming leadership of the country after the death of his father in 2011.

Kim has used previous speeches around the New Year to make major policy announcements, including launching significant diplomatic engagements with South Korea and the United States.

But summaries of his speech published in North Korean state media made no specific mention of the United States, with only a passing reference to unspecified discussions of inter-Korean relations and “external affairs.”

The domestic focus of the speech underscored the economic problems Kim faces at home, where self-imposed anti-pandemic border lockdowns have left North Korea more isolated than ever before, with international aid organisations warning of possible food shortages and a humanitarian crisis.

“The main task facing our Party and people next year is to provide a sure guarantee for the implementation of the five-year plan and bring about a remarkable change in the state development and the people’s standard of living,” Kim was quoted as saying.

Kim spent the majority of his speech detailing domestic issues from an ambitious plan for rural development to people’s diets, school uniforms and the need to crack down on “non-socialist practices.”

The big focus on rural development is likely a populist strategy, said Chad O’Carroll, founder of NK News, a Seoul-based website that tracks North Korea.

“Overall, Kim might be aware that revealing sophisticated military development plans while people are suffering food shortages and harsh conditions outside of Pyongyang might not be such a good idea this year,” he wrote on Twitter.

Saturday’s state media report cited the development of “one ultra-modern weapon system after another” as a major achievement of the past year and said Kim called for bolstering the national defence to face an unstable international situation.

A tractor factory he discussed in the speech was likely used to build launch vehicles for missiles, foreign analysts have said, and North Korea is believed to have expanded its arsenal despite the lockdowns.

The reports of Kim’s speech did not mention the United States’ call for denuclearisation talks, or South Korea’s push for a declaration to formally end the 1950-1953 Korean War as a way to restart those negotiations.

North Korea has previously said it is open to diplomacy, but that the American overtures appear hollow while “hostile acts” such as military drills and sanctions continue.

Source: REUTERS