Politics

5, September 2020

French Cameroun: Of Biya the holidaymaker and Swiss repatriation ⁰

The French Cameroun dictator who was given marching orders to leave Swiss territory in June 2019 after a massive protest by French Camerounians at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva has ever since been shuttling between Yaoundé and his native Mvomeka’a for the past 14 months.

To be sure, it is exactly 14 months since the French Cameroun chief executive left Europe and has never again embarked on his so-called “short private stay”.

On June 23, 2019, Paul Biya and his wife, Chantal Biya after spending nine months in the nation’s capital reportedly left the country to rest at the luxurious Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. But on July 5, only ten days later, the National Chairman of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate and Mrs. Chantal Biya were forced to return to Yaoundé.

French Cameroonian activists in the diaspora, grouped under the Anti-Sardinard Brigade (BAS), disrupted the presidential couple’s stay in Geneva with several demonstrations, including the most important on 29th June that witnessed attacks on Paul Biya’s close guards with a spilled over effect on a Swiss journalist who accused the Biya guards of having molested him. The guards were convicted and expelled from Swiss territory. Since then, Mr. Biya has not been on holiday on European soil.

He however, made two trips in France on the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron. The first was in Lyon in October 2019 for the 6th Replenishment Conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the second was to attend the Paris Peace Summit in November.

Paul Biya now spends most of his time between the Etoudi Palace in Yaoundé and Mvomeka’a, his home village in the South of the country. This is a surprising attitude for a President who has always been presented as a “holidaymaker”.

A report by Organize Crime and Corruption Reporting (OCCRP), as part of the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, indicated in 2018 that the Cameroonian President, in 35 years of reign, had spent the equivalent of 90 billion CFA francs for “short private stays” outside Cameroon, mainly in Geneva.

The same survey indicated that the Cameroonian treasury was releasing, on a daily basis for the same reasons, about CFAF 20 million only in hotel expenses of the Head of State and his delegation, excluding meals and other extras.

By Besong Esther Agbor in Halmstad

3, September 2020

US: President Trump tells supporters to try to vote twice ⁰

US President Donald Trump on Thursday renewed his call for supporters to try to vote twice on November 3, a potentially illegal act that he claimed is the only way to be sure that a ballot is counted.

Trump said Americans should first try to vote by mail, if that option is offered in their state, then also go to the polling station on election day to check that their ballot has been counted — and, if not, vote again.

“YOU ARE NOW ASSURED THAT YOUR PRECIOUS VOTE HAS BEEN COUNTED,” he said in a Twitter thread.

Intentionally voting twice is illegal.

Facebook and Twitter, which are under growing pressure not to allow misinformation ahead of the election, put warning labels on the president’s posts about the matter.

“We placed a public interest notice on two Tweets in this thread for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice,” Twitter said.

However, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Trump had been taken out of context and just wanted voters to verify that their first vote had been registered.

He “does not condone unlawful voting,” she said.

Whatever Trump meant, the tweets were his latest assault on the credibility of mail-in voting, which is being rapidly expanded across the country in response to fears of Covid-19 contagion in crowded polling stations.

Despite Trump’s relentless challenges, the mail-in practice is already widespread and largely trouble-free in the United States.

He himself uses the absentee mail-in option to vote in Florida while living in the White House.

While Trump says that increased mail-in voting will allow mass ballot tampering and rigging of the result, elections experts say there is no evidence of significant danger.

However, polls show Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, leading Trump’s opponents to fear that he is trying to suppress Biden’s vote — or set the stage for disputing the results.

– Election day worries –

Trump first aired the idea of casting a precautionary second vote on Wednesday during a trip to North Carolina.

“If you get the unsolicited ballots, send it in, and then go — make sure it counted. And if it doesn’t tabulate, you vote,” he said. “So, send it in early, and then go and vote.”

The recommendation prompted the election board in the state, which Democrat Joe Biden hopes to snatch from Trump, to issue a statement pointing out: “It is illegal to vote twice in an election.”

“Soliciting someone to do so also is a violation of North Carolina law,” the board’s director, Karen Brinson Bell, added.

Polls currently show Biden on course to defeat Trump.

But experts warn that the country faces a confusing and potentially tense aftermath of the voting on November 3, due to the unusual circumstances.

Given the larger than ordinary number of mailed-in ballots, few expect there will be a clear-cut result that evening, with mailed ballots possibly taking days if not weeks to finish counting.

Under one scenario, Trump could be shown to have won on the basis of ballots cast during the day, but mail-in ballots, once counted days later, would then put Biden over the top.

Trump has repeatedly refused to declare he will accept the results of the election.

Source: AFP

3, September 2020

All Southern Cameroons Groups must act against French Cameroun occupation ⁰

A leading Southern Cameroons elite in the Federal Republic of Germany has urged all Ambazonian groups all over the world to do all in their power to resist the French Cameroun’s shameful occupation of Southern Cameroons homeland saying all groups must join forces with Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Interim Government to foil a systematic political assassination of the people of Ambazonia.

In a telephone conversation with Cameroon Concord News on Wednesday, Dr Emmanuel Ngassa said the actions of some Ambazonian figures is undermining efforts being made by Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Ambazonia Interim Government towards upholding the inalienable rights of the oppressed people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dr Emmanuel Ngassa said those wasting time in the politics of the struggle are instead encouraging the Biya French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé to carry out more atrocious activities and denying the people of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia their rights, and destabilizing peace and security in the Ambazonia homeland.

Dr Ngassa also praised the fighters in Ground Zero for sticking to the British Southern Cameroons resistance culture and history, making sacrifices for the Ambazonian cause, and rejecting any compromise with French Cameroun surrogates such as Ministers Paul Atanga Nji, Paul Tasong, Paul Elung and Dion Ngute over the past four years of the French Cameroun imposed war.

The creation of many splinter groups, Dr Ngassa added, is a costly mistake on the part of some Southern Cameroonians as well as a divisive move that encourages the continuation of the crimes committed by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime.

Dr Emmanuel Ngassa noted that every Southern Cameroons group is expected to employ all its resources financial and human to put an end to this shameful treatment of the people of Southern Cameroons by the French Cameroun political system and its political elites.

By Isong Asu

2, September 2020

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Soldiers are missing the point! ⁰

This unfortunate and unpalatable drama in Cameroon has been going on for too long and the government’s response to acts of violence by restoration forces is predictable. Once a uniformed officer gets killed by armed fighters, Cameroonian soldiers go on a rampage, killing innocent civilians, burning homes and damaging businesses in the area. This is the government’s strategy to counter attacks by Southern Cameroonian fighters whose tactics and strategies have morphed over the years.

Southern Cameroonian fighters started with hunting rifles, sometimes using machetes to decapitate soldiers and civilians they suspect of betraying the course. Today, they have acquired assault rifles and bombs that have made them real weapons of mass destruction for the country’s military. The country’s army soldiers dread encountering these fighters, especially in the dense equatorial forest in the country’s Southwest region where professionally trained Southern Cameroon fighters have resorted to hit and run tactics.

The last few months have shown the world the atrocities the fighters and soldiers are capable of committing. In August, Southern Cameroonian fighters literally slaughtered Ms. Comfort Tumassang, a government a spy, in broad daylight in Muyuka, a small town some five miles from the Southwest regional headquarters of Buea. Her killing and that of the young man she worked with sent three of her friends packing from Muyuka, as Southern Cameroonian fighters had made them targets and they were willing to make good on their promise.

As a response to the her killing, the government dispatched troops to Muyuka on the same day and a few minutes after their arrival in the town, they arrested three young men whom they have been brandishing on national TV as the criminals who committed murder in broad day light. But the population knows that the government and its troops are in the business of lying and that anybody who takes their word seriously will end up with the wrong information. The government is noted for lying through its teeth and its word should never be taken seriously.

More than three weeks after arresting those young men, the same troops are still looking for Ms. Tumassang’s killers. They have been burning homes in Muyuka, Ikata and Muyenge, sometimes robbing the population and ruining small businesses. Today, Ikata and Muyuka have been reduced to rubble and the population has simply moved to other places considered as safe havens.

Yesterday, it was the turn of Bamenda. Some Southern Cameroonian fighters ambushed a police car, killing two police officers at the city’s commercial avenue. This sent the country’s military into a rampage. One civilian was killed, and many businesses were destroyed. A pattern that has become normal and predictable by the population.

The government’s demonic and ineffective strategy to roll back the fighters is only turning out to be counterproductive. The strategy has been in effect since 2017 and the government cannot display any meaningful positive results. On the contrary, the international community has been criticizing its heavy-handed approach to solving the Southern Cameroons crisis which has resulted in the deaths of more than 5,000 Cameroonians. As of today, more than two hundred Southern Cameroonian villages and towns have been destroyed by government troops, creating hordes of refugees, with more than half a million Southern Cameroonians escaping to Nigeria and a similar number moving to East Cameroon where they are living rough and constantly being referred to as Internally Displaced Persons.

For many, the hardship is unbearable and the hope of returning to their villages and towns is gradually fading away, especially as the government and the fighters are nowhere close to agreeing on even the slightest thing – talking. Both factions seem to be frozen in their positions. The fighters are determined to achieve their independence while the government, constituted of old and sick people, is still stuck in its old ways. It still holds that the tricks of the past will work again, but it is oblivious of the fact that times have changed, and the country’s English-speaking minority has significant support that may result in its toppling.

More than three million Southern Cameroonians live abroad, especially in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Nigeria and Australia and most of them are in support of an independent Southern Cameroons and are making significant financial contributions to the purchase and shipping of sophisticated weapons to the fighters, some of whom are mercenaries from neighboring Nigeria.

Though the leaders of the insurgency are currently in jail in Yaounde, the fighting has not slowed down. Southern Cameroonian fighters have simply changed their modus operandi, and this is causing the arrogant Yaounde government to lose sleep and huge amounts of money. Resources that could have been used for development purposes are today being diverted to persecute a war that could have been avoided if the Yaounde government had opted to talk and negotiate.

Its arrogance and love of brutality and violence which are its tools of choice of conflict resolution and management have today left the country in a difficult and complicated quandary. The country’s economy has taken a destabilizing blow to the liver with most state-owned corporations in the two English-speaking regions going under. PAMOL and CDC – the country’s second highest employer – have gone under and experts have already indicated that if those two corporations will ever be operational again, then the government must pour millions of dollars into their resurrection. Workers of those two corporations are today unemployed and the stress of losing a job and their inability to finance their children’s education are gradually sending many of them to an early grave.

Many in the international community consider the government’s response to the calls for Southern Cameroons independence an act of stupidity. Many analysts argue that the government did not know that the times had changed and that new communication technologies had made it possible for Southern Cameroonians living out of the country to raise money and coordinate their actions with relative ease. Besides, with America, Canada and the United Kingdom standing firmly behind Southern Cameroonians, it will be impossible for the Yaounde government to win peace in the battlefield.

If the military continues to kill civilians and destroy businesses in the two English-speaking regions of the country each time a soldier is killed by Southern Cameroonian fighters, it is clear that it has missed the point. The soldiers have not understood that each time they mount an incursion against the population, they are simply pushing the young men and women whose parents and relatives have been killed into the waiting arms of the fighters who are always ready to welcome them.

If the government’s objective is to bring about peace in its two English-speaking regions, then it must know that it has missed its target. After four years since the conflict erupted, it must know that its strategy is totally wrong and counterproductive. More Cameroonians have been sent to an early grave and peace is still illusory. The country is in the grip of a civil war that will not be ending anytime soon. After four long years, the government should know that the battlefield will never deliver the results it wants. It must start thinking of new ways to deal with this ugly situation that has given the country a bad name and left the country’s economy on its knees. Talking will surely help. It is a pill that will be more effective than any “silver bullet” the government may buy.

Though many lives have been lost, thousands displaced, and many businesses ruined, it is still possible to engineer a new political dispensation in Cameroon. War has never solved any problem. It is always wise to talk. Talking with Southern Cameroonians is not difficult. Southern Cameroonian leaders are in jail and it will be a lot easier to bring them together for a peaceful resolution of the crisis that has left the government with a bloodshot eye. This will, however, require honesty, determination and sincerity on the part of a government that has thriven on tricks and dishonesty for more than three decades. The ball is in its court. It is up to it to choose the right conflict resolution tool. Violence, trickery and brutality will surely not deliver the right results. After four years, it is clear that a new approach is necessary. The world is watching!

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Dusseldorf, Germany

1, September 2020

Tense election forecast for Ivory Coast as former president, ex-rebel leader file candidacies ⁰

Supporters of former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo and former rebel leader Guillaume Soro on Monday filed their candidacies for a tense presidential election in October.

The candidacies of the exiled leaders add to those of incumbent President Alassane Ouattara and former president Henri Konan Bedie — while the top Catholic leader warned the country was approaching a dangerous point.

Both Gbagbo and Soro had been barred by the electoral commission from running due to convictions in the country’s courts.

“We have just submitted the candidacy file of our political leader, president Laurent Gbagbo, the father of democracy in Ivory Coast,” said Georges-Armand Ouegnin, president of the pro-Gbagbo coalition called Together for Democracy and Sovereignty (EDS).

Gbagbo, 75, was sentenced in absentia to a 20-year term last November over the looting of the local branch of the Central Bank of West African States during the post-election crisis.

He could be jailed if he were to set foot in Ivory Coast.

Ouegnin said the decision to block Gbagbo from running was political, calling for the release of all political prisoners and the return of political exiles, including Gbagbo.

But Independent Electoral Commission chief Ibrahime Coulibaly-Kuibiert has said that anyone convicted of a crime cannot contest.

The courts have previously backed the body’s position, and judicial sources said they believed his candidacy was unlikely to be validated.

Soro camp cries foul

The country remains scarred by a conflict that erupted after the 2010 vote when Gbagbo refused to hand over power to the victor, current President Alassane Ouattara. Around 3,000 people lost their lives in several months of violence.

Gbagbo currently lives in the Belgian capital Brussels after being tried by the International Criminal Court. He was freed conditionally by the ICC after he was cleared in 2019 of crimes against humanity, a ruling prosecutors are appealing.

He has not made any public statement about whether he wishes to run again.

Meanwhile, relatives and supporters of Soro, a rebel leader who became prime minister, called for his candidacy to be validated.

Soro’s spokeswoman Aminata Kone-Zie accused the government of subterfuge “to make our president (Soro) ineligible under an alleged criminal conviction”.

Soro, 48, has been forced into exile in France in the face of a long list of legal problems at home.

He was sentenced in April to 20 years in prison for “concealment of embezzlement of public funds”.

A former ally of Ouattara, Soro was a leader in a 2002 revolt against Gbagbo that sliced the former French colony into the rebel-held north and the government-controlled south and triggered years of unrest.

‘Radicalisation of positions’

President Ouattara, 75, and former president Bedie, 86, submitted their candidacy papers last week.

Violence erupted after Ouattara’s announcement he was seeking a third term, claiming the lives of at least eight people in August.

Although the constitution limits presidents to two terms, Ouattara and his supporters argue that a 2016 constitutional tweak reset the clock.

On Monday, the head of the country’s Catholic Church, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Kutwa, warned the country is approaching a “dangerous turn.”

He said Ouattara’s candidacy “is not necesssary”, adding his duty as guarantor of the constitution is “to take the time to organise elections in an environment pacified by reconciliation.”

“As the presidential elections approach, we are witnessing a radicalisation of positions from one side or the other,” he warned.

“These have become even more pronounced since the declaration of the president’s candidacy.”

The cardinal called on all sides to move towards dialogue.

The October 31 election in the world’s top cocoa grower comes after years of political turbulence and civil war.

Source: AFP

30, August 2020

Mali in crisis: Divisions emerge between junta, opposition leaders ⁰

Tensions mounted on Saturday between Mali’s military junta and the country’s longtime political opposition after the coup leaders failed to invite prominent opposition figures to a planned forum on the country’s political future.

The meeting ultimately was cancelled and the junta leadership instead met with imam Mahmoud Dicko, an opposition leader who on Friday urged the junta to speed up the transition to civilian rule so the West African country could avoid further crushing financial sanctions.

“I ask them to be part of the solution and not another problem,” he said.

Only a week earlier, the opposition coalition known as M5-RFP that includes Dicko had publicly backed the coup, with thousands of their supporters taking to the streets after the junta’s overthrow of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. M5-RFP had led several months of demonstrations calling for his resignation three years before his final term was due to end.

In a statement late Friday, one M5-RFP leader said the alliance regretted not being invited to take part in Saturday’s planned discussions between the junta and various political actors.

“The M5-RFP is and remains a major player in this desired change and must be at the forefront in determining the structure of the transition,” Choguel Maiga said.

The path back to democracy has been a stumbling point with West African heads of state, who on Friday urged the junta to restore civilian rule within a year. But the junta has proposed a three-year timeline. That has led to the unraveling of talks and more threats of sanctions.

The regional bloc known as ECOWAS already has cut financial flows to Mali, and neighboring countries have closed their borders in a bid to step up pressure on the coup leaders.

The international community has expressed alarm over the coup, fearing that the political vacuum could allow Islamic extremists to expand their reach. A similar coup in 2012 led to the militants overtaking major towns in the north where they implemented their strict interpretation of Islamic law, amputating the hands of those charged with theft.

A French-led military operation in 2013 ousted the extremists from power but the Malian military and its partners have faced an insurgency ever since.

There are concerns that the new political upheaval could erode what gains have been made in the fight to stabilize Mali.

Source: AP

28, August 2020

US: Trump closes Republican convention with defiant White House campaign speech ⁰

Facing a national moment fraught with racial turmoil and a deadly pandemic, President Donald Trump accepted his party’s renomination on a massive White House South Lawn stage Thursday night, boasting of helping African Americans and defying his own administration’s pandemic guidelines to address a tightly packed, largely maskless crowd.

As troubles churned outside the gates, Trump painted an optimistic vision of America’s future, including an eventual triumph over the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 175,000 people, left millions unemployed and rewritten the rules of society. But that brighter horizon can only be secured, Trump asserted, if he defeats Democrat Joe Biden.

“We have spent the last four years reversing the damage Joe Biden inflicted over the last 47 years,” Trump said.

Presenting himself as the last barrier protecting an American way of life under siege from radical forces, Trump declared that “Joe Biden and his party repeatedly assailed America as a land of racial, economic, and social injustice.””

“So tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?” Trump said. “In the left’s backward view, they do not see America as the most free, just, and exceptional nation on earth. Instead, they see a wicked nation that must be punished for its sins.”

As his speech brought the scaled-back Republican National Convention to a close, Trump’s incendiary rhetoric risked inflaming a divided nation reeling from a series of calamities, including the pandemic, a major hurricane that slammed into the Gulf Coast and nights of racial unrest and violence after Jacob Blake, a Black man, was shot by a White Wisconsin police officer.

He was introduced by his daughter Ivanka, an influential White House adviser, who portrayed the famously bombastic Trump as someone who has shaken up Washington with little record for norms or niceties.

“Dad, people attack you for being unconventional, but I love you for being real. And I respect you for being effective,” she said.

The president spoke from a setting that was both familiar and controversial. Despite tradition and regulation to not use the White House for purely political events, a huge stage was set up outside the executive mansion, dwarfing the trappings for some of the most important moments of past presidencies. The speaker’s stand was flanked by dozens of American flags and two big video screens.

Trying to run as an insurgent as well as incumbent, Trump rarely includes calls for unity, even in a time of national uncertainty. He has repeatedly, if not always effectively, tried to portray Biden — who is considered a moderate Democrat — as a tool of the radical left, fringe forces he has claimed don’t love their country.

The Republicans claim that the violence that has erupted in Kenosha and some other American cities is to be blamed on Democratic governors and mayors. Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday said that Americans wouldn’t be safe in “Joe Biden’s America.”

That drew a stern rebuke from his predecessor in the post.

“The problem we have right now is that we are in Donald Trump’s America,” said Biden on MSNBC. “He views this as a political benefit to him, he is rooting for more violence not less. He is pouring gasoline on the fire.”

Both parties are watching with uncertainty the developments in Wisconsin and cities across the nation with Republicans leaning hard on support for law and order — with no words offered for Black victims of police violence — while falsely claiming that Biden has not condemned the lawlessness. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney and New York City’s former mayor, declared that Democrats’ “silence was so deafening that it reveals an acceptance of this violence because they will accept anything they hope will defeat President Donald Trump.”

Though some of the speakers, unlike on previous nights, offered notes of sympathy to the families of Black men killed by police, Giuliani also took aim at the Black Lives Matter movement, suggesting that it, along with ANTIFA, was part of the extremist voices pushing Biden to “execute their pro-criminal, anti-police policies” and had “hijacked the protests into vicious, brutal riots.”

Along with Biden, running mate Kamala Harris offered counter-programming for Trump’s prime-time speech. She delivered a speech a half mile from the White House, declaring, “Donald Trump has failed at the most basic and important job of a president of the United States: He failed to protect the American people, plain and simple.”

Some demonstrations took to Washington’s streets Thursday night, ahead of a march planned for the next day. New fencing set up along the White House perimeter was to keep the protesters at bay, but some of their shouts and car horns were clearly audible on the South Lawn where more than 1,500 people gathered. Soon after Trump began talking, the horns and sirens — which came through occasionally to the millions watching at home — caused some people in the last row to turn around and look for the source of the disturbance.

Those chants, coming from masked faces, intruded on another illusion that the Republicans have spent a week trying to create: that the pandemic is largely a thing of the past. The rows of chairs on the lawn were tightly packed, inches apart. Protective masks were not required, and Covid-19 tests were not to be administered to everyone.

But Trump, who has defended his handling of the pandemic, touted an expansion of rapid coronavirus testing. The White House announced Thursday that it had struck a $750 million deal to acquire 150 million tests from Abbott Laboratories to be deployed in nursing homes, schools and other areas with populations at high risk.

Most of the convention has been aimed at former Trump supporters or nonvoters, and has tried to drive up negative impressions of Biden so that some of his possible backers stay home. Many of the messages were aimed squarely at seniors and suburban women.

Among the more emotional moments: testimony from Alice Marie Johnson, who was granted clemency from her life sentence on nonviolent drug charges, and from Carl and Marsha Mueller, whose daughter Kayla was killed while being held in Syria by Islamic State militants during the Obama administration.

“Kayla should be here,” said Carl Mueller. “If Donald Trump was president when Kayla was captured, she would be here today.”

Four years ago, Trump declared in his acceptance speech that “I alone can fix” the nation’s woes, but he has found himself asking voters for another term at the nadir of his presidency, amid a devastating pandemic, crushing unemployment and real uncertainties about schools and businesses reopening.

Another one million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, in numbers released Thursday. And the US economy shrank at an alarming annual rate of 31.7% during the April-June quarter as it struggled under the weight of the viral pandemic. It was sharpest quarterly drop on record.

(AP)

28, August 2020

ECOWAS demands civilian transition in Mali, elections within a year ⁰

West African countries on Friday demanded an immediate civilian transition in Mali and elections within 12 months as they considered sanctions after rebel troops toppled the country’s president and seized power.

The demands were spelt out after the new junta released ousted president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, seized in the August 18 coup, but also apparently granted their new chief the powers of head of state.

The coup shocked Mali’s West African neighbours and ally France, heightening worries over instability in a country already struggling with an Islamist insurgency, ethnic violence and economic stagnation.

After a video summit, the 15-nation Economic Community of West Africa State called on the junta “to initiate a civil transition immediately” and the “rapid establishment of a government to (…) prepare the legislative and presidential elections within 12 months.”

In a closing statement, Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou, who also chairs ECOWAS, said sanctions would be “gradually lifted depending on the implementation” of the bloc’s requests.

“Staging coups is a serious sickness for a country,” he said in earlier remarks. “To cure them, there’s only one prescription: sanctions.”

ECOWAS slapped sanctions on Mali after the August coup, including a closure of borders and ban on trade and financial flows.

It demanded the release of Keita and other detained leaders and insisted on a swift return to civilian rule.

Keita, 75, was elected in 2013 as a unifying figure in a fractured country and was returned in 2018 for a second five-year term.

But his popularity crashed as he failed to counter the country’s raging jihadist insurgency and brake Mali’s downward economic spiral.

After an escalating series of mass protests, young army officers mutinied on August 18, seizing Keita and other leaders and declaring they now governed the country.

They have called the junta the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP), led by a 37-year-old colonel, Assimi Goita.

Friday’s video summit came after a three-day ECOWAS visit foundered over a timetable for civilian transition, and the junta’s announcement on the eve of the conference that Keita had been freed.

Issoufou said Keita had told the ECOWAS envoys “that he resigned quite freely, convinced that this decision was necessary for peace and stability in Mali.”

Handover issue

Within hours of taking control, the junta promised to enact a political transition and stage elections within a “reasonable time.”

According to the chief ECOWAS envoy, former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan, the coup leaders wanted a three-year handover period.

This was rejected by the ECOWAS team, which called for an interim government, “headed by a civilian or retired military officer, to last for six or nine months, and maximum of 12 calendar months,” Jonathan said on Wednesday.

ECOWAS on Friday said that the person overseeing the handover should be “an individual, civilian, recognised… for their intellectual and moral standing” and that there should be a “civilian prime minister.”

“No military structure should be above the transition president,” it said.

But a new document posted on Mali’s Official Journal, a gazette which publishes new laws and regulations, invests the head of the CNSP with the powers of the head of state.

Named “Basic Act N°001/CNSP,” the document was posted online on Thursday.

The CNSP “designates a president who assures the duty of the head of state… embodying national unity… and guaranteeing national independence, territorial integrity… (and) respect for international agreements,” it says.

This individual appoints senior civil servants and military and “accredits” foreign ambassadors, according to the document. AFP has asked the junta’s spokesman to confirm its authenticity.

Jihadist warning

In other remarks, Issoufou lashed the Malian military for launching the coup when the country was in the throes of an eight-year-old jihadist insurgency.

Thousands of lives have been lost, hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes and swathes of the country have been abandoned to armed Islamists by the state.

The junta “is refusing to return to the barracks at a time when, more than ever, the army is required to focus on its traditional mission,” Issoufou said.

He warned that the jihadists sought to “exploit the current institutional void” — a scenario that happened after Mali’s last coup in 2008.

(AFP)

28, August 2020

Biya regime is not learning the governance lessons offered by Covid-19 ⁰

One might suppose the coronavirus pandemic has given African leaders an opportunity to rethink their approach to governance. This particularly holds true for Cameroon, which appears to have suffered the brunt of the virus in Central Africa, registering close to half of all 1 025 fatalities in Central Africa as of Monday. By this same date, the country had 18 762 confirmed cases, surpassing its neighbours Chad, Congo, the Central African Republic and Gabon combined.

But with the coronavirus, the more things seem to have changed, the more they seem to have remained the same. Despite the free lessons offered by the pandemic, Cameroonian officials appear not to have learned to build on public trust to better prepare for future crises like the climate crisis, which is slowly grinding, but devastating in its effects.

For any response to a crisis of the magnitude and complexity of the coronavirus to succeed, it will largely depend on the contribution and collaboration of the masses. President Paul Biya, 87, presumably understands this, which is why, when he managed to address his compatriots on the coronavirus for the first time on May 19, he called on them to remain united, supportive and disciplined.

“I, therefore, call on Cameroonians to have trust in public authorities,” Biya said. But Biya himself has not earned the trust he is requiring of citizens; because of that, the country’s citizens have not made “a lot of effort” to fight Covid-19, as he implored them to.

As part of measures to contain the coronavirus in Cameroon, the government made the wearing of face masks in public mandatory; limited gatherings to 50 people; and closed all land, air and sea borders. But the president has, on several occasions, appeared in public without a mask. Other public authorities, such as MPs, have flouted the restriction on gatherings, and the country’s airspace was opened to Air France to run commercial passenger flights from France — a high-risk country at the time.

Such behaviour by public authorities during a pandemic nips public trust in the bud. It means people are less likely to trust the same public officials asking them to make sacrifices by giving up certain rights and privileges for the sake of the nation.

It is, therefore, not surprising to see Cameroonians ignoring the preventive measures put in place by public authorities. Many citizens have become carefree. They no longer put on face masks in public, nor observe the hygiene and physical distancing measures set out by the government. The outcome is that the contagion keeps rising and there are no indications when the curve will flatten. Manaouda Malachie, the minister of public health, recently warned of a second wave of the coronavirus in the country if strong action is not taken.

In future, this lack of public trust is going to frustrate responses to potential crises, should the tide not be reversed. People who mistrust their leaders in ordinary times can’t trust them one bit in extraordinary times.

In addition, the government has not been proactive in shining a light on the management of resources contributed by the public to help fight the coronavirus, putting its transparency in handling the pandemic in question.

In July, some citizens took to social media to question the whereabouts of about 4 000 bags of rice that had been donated in March by Orca, a home goods retail store. It was only then that the minister of public health communicated information about the donation. Yet the minister only shifted the burden of clarification from himself to the 10 regional governors: he said the bags of rice had been dispatched to the regions for further distribution. How or whether the bags of rice got to the intended beneficiaries is still unclear.

The health minister also offered an explanation of how about 21-billion CFA francs ($38-million) of funds designated for the Covid-19 response had been spent only a few days after an opposition MP raised an alarm over suspicions of corruption. Jean-Michel Nintcheu of the Social Democratic Front had expressed concerns that the money — contributed by the public through a national solidarity fund — had been subject to corruption, citing overbilling and conflicts of interests within the public health ministry and among its officials.

Cameroon has a longstanding problem of corruption. It has emerged as the world’s most-corrupt country on two occasions, according to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. Systematic corruption continues to be a problem. It would have, therefore, been surprising if the coronavirus didn’t come up against the all-pervasive corruption in the country.

The public health minister created a commission to investigate corruption in relation to the Covid-19 response, even though several anti-graft structures already exist in the country. But this doesn’t translate to a serious intent to fight corruption when a lack of transparency in the management of public funds leaves a perception of corruption in the minds of the people.

Giving room to citizens to perceive corruption in the response to a pandemic is exactly how not to handle a crisis. It will certainly affect future handling of crises. It is apparent that there is no one to compel these public officials to be transparent at all stages in their management of the current crisis — and their own consciences don’t appear to be sufficient.

Culled from mg.co.za

27, August 2020

Mali junta says it has released ousted president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita ⁰

Mali’s new military rulers said Thursday that former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who was detained during the country’s coup on August 18, had been freed.

The announcement came on the eve of a summit by Mali’s neighbours, who are to decide whether to ratchet up pressure on the fledgling junta.

Keita’s ousting by rebel troops sent shockwaves through the region and in France, which sees Mali as a linchpin in its campaign against jihadism in the Sahel, where more than 5,000 French troops are based.

“President IBK is free in his movements, he’s at home,” a spokesman for the junta, Djibrila Maiga, told AFP, referring to Keita by his initials, as many Malians do.

The junta, calling itself the National Committee for the Salvation of the People (CNSP), said on Facebook it was “informing public and international opinion that former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita has been released and is currently in his residence”.

A Keita relative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the 75-year-old former leader had returned overnight to his house in the Sebenikoro district of the capital Bamako.

The source did not say whether he was still subject to any restrictions.

Keita, prime minister Boubou Cisse and other senior officials were seized by young officers who mutinied at a base near Bamako.

In the early hours of August 19, Keita appeared on national TV to announce his resignation, saying he had had no other choice, and wanted to avoid “bloodshed”.

His release — and other leaders — is a key demand of Mali’s neighbours, its ally France and international organisations, including the African Union and European Union.

Former Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan, heading a team from the regional bloc ECOWAS, was given access to Keita last Saturday, and said he seemed “very fine.”

The announcement Thursday came on the eve of a virtual summit by the 15-nation ECOWAS — the Economic Community of West African States — which has imposed sanctions against Mali for the coup.

Those measures include a closure of borders and a ban on trade that threaten to worsen Mali’s already severe social and economic troubles.

Jonathan’s three-day mission to Bamako foundered on the question of the transition to civilian rule.

The junta have promised to enact a political transition and stage elections within a “reasonable time” but not spelt out details.

Discussing progress with Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari, Jonathan said the coup leaders wanted to stay in power for a three-year transition period, an offer rejected by the mediators, according to a statement from the presidency.

“We also told them that what would be acceptable to ECOWAS was an Interim Government, headed by a civilian or retired military officer, to last for six or nine months, and maximum of 12 calendar months,” Jonathan was quoted as saying in the presidency statement late Wednesday.

Jihadist worries

Keita was elected in 2013 as a unifying figure in a fractured country and was returned in 2018 for a second five-year term.

But his popularity plummeted as he failed to counter a bloody jihadist campaign that has claimed thousands of lives and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes, and to reverse the country’s downward economic spiral.

In a visit to the Estonian capital of Tallinn on Thursday, the head of the French armed forces, Francois Lecointre, said, “Our wish is to maintain the Malian army’s commitment in the fight against armed terrorist groups.”

He pointed to a campaign launched earlier this year to regain control over the strategic “three-border” zone, where the frontiers of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso come together.

“We are going to see if the Malian armed forces are able to maintain the momentum… we have told them that this appears essential to us,” said Lecointre.

“The corps commanders are still there, the area commanders are still there, these aren’t people who took part in the coup, and so we are continuing to cooperate with them,” he said.

(AFP)