5, June 2016

US:Clinton leading Trump with a double-digit gap ⁰

US Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton has managed to widen her lead over presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, opening up a double-digit gap after weeks of declining support, a new poll shows. The Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 46 percent of registered voters support a Clinton presidency, giving here an 11-point edge over Trump who was trailing Clinton by 35 percent. The surprising shift in support comes after Trump virtually tied Clinton in various polls conducted in mid-May, raising expectations for a tight race between the two likely contenders in November’s presidential election.

The rise in Clinton’s support is attributed by analysts to her escalation of attacks against the real estate mogul’s policies. In a fiery foreign policy speech in San Diego, California, on Thursday, the former secretary of state unleashed a blistering criticism of Trump, calling him an unstable person who is too “dangerous” and “unfit” to be president. “Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different — they are dangerously incoherent,” Clinton said. “They’re not even really ideas — just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.”

Presstv

5, June 2016

Sanders showing no signs of surrender ⁰

US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has predicted that the Democratic presidential election process would lead to a contested summer convention against party frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Speaking to reporters on Saturday in Los Angeles, California, Sanders showed few signs of surrender, vowing to fight until the 2016 Democratic National Convention in July in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Nearing the end of the primary season, a defiant Sanders is pushing back against the likelihood that Clinton will soon declare victory as the Democratic presidential nominee.

Sanders told reporters neither candidate would have enough pledged delegates by the end of the primaries on June 14 to declare victory and would be dependent upon superdelegates to win the nomination. “In other words, the Democratic National Convention will be a contested convention,” he said.

He urged news organizations to hold off on declaring Clinton a victor as the presumptive nominee following Tuesday’s primary election in California and five other states.Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state, is poised to unofficially clinch the presidential nomination following the close of the primary election polls on Tuesday.

“It is extremely unlikely that Secretary Clinton will have the requisite number of pledged delegates to claim victory on Tuesday night,” Sanders said.

Presstv

3, June 2016

Donald Trump says Hillary Clinton has to go to jail ⁰

US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump says that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton should be imprisoned for her use of a private email server while she was US secretary of state. “I will say this, Hillary Clinton has got to go to jail,” Trump told supporters Thursday at a rally in San Jose, California, as he slammed Clinton’s foreign policy speech earlier in the day in which Clinton called Trump dangerous and “temperamentally unfit” to be president.

“Folks, honestly, she is guilty as hell,” Trump said. “Hillary Clinton has to go to jail.” Trump’s criticism of Clinton was among his strongest in a growing escalation of words between the two presidential candidates ahead of California’s June 7 state primary election. Earlier Thursday, Clinton unleashed a blistering criticism of Trump on foreign policy and said he was “unfit” to be president. More than 2,000 emails sent and received by Clinton while working as the top US diplomat between 2009 and 2013 include classified information, which the government bans from being handled outside secure, government-controlled channels.

In a report issued last week, the US State Department’s inspector general said Clinton’s use of a private email server at her home in New York violated the department’s record-keeping rules and that it would have been rejected had she asked department officials. Clinton also faces a separate probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Republican lawmakers in Congress appear ready to protest strongly if the FBI closes its investigation without delivering indictments or offering a public explanation.

And although Clinton leads Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in the delegate count, Sanders argues that he still has a path to the Democratic presidential nomination. During her speech on Thursday, Clinton said “Donald Trump’s ideas aren’t just different — they are dangerously incoherent,” Clinton said. “They’re not even really ideas — just a series of bizarre rants, personal feuds, and outright lies.” “He’s not just unprepared — he’s temperamentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability and immense responsibility,” she continued. The speech was intended to undercut Trump’s ability to woo national security-focused independent and Republican voters, the aide said. “This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes,” she declared, claiming Trump could start a war just because somebody “got under his very thin skin.”

Presstv

2, June 2016

The Special Criminal Court: President Biya’s Court ⁰

Depicting the Special Criminal Court established to prosecute alleged corrupt government officials and the several Alibabas responsible for pilfering from the public treasury as the President’s court is no misnomer. We call it the President’s court because it is one instrument of power through which the President is reining in on perceived opponents from within his CPDM power conduit. An attribute of a genuine court is the fairness of the trial proceedings in cases which are brought before the court for trial. It is not the number of convictions entered against accused. A court is legitimate and recognized as such because of its exercise of judicial, executive, legislative and administrative independence. A court that is independent must be accessible to all citizens after all, is equality before the law, not a constitutionally protected value? The Special Criminal Court is lacking in these attributes of impartiality, judicial independence and accessibility. It is perceived more as the President’s Court than a Court of Justice.

Establishing this court was President Biya’s way of saving himself the embarrassment of being humiliated during his perennial trips abroad as the President of the most corrupt countries in the world. This ranking of the country as the most corrupt or one of the most corrupt countries had a potential to hamper President Biya’s personal pecuniary interests far from the borders of Cameroon. There was therefore a personal interest need to establish the court. Another personal interest need was to avail himself of a legal tool under his direct control to consolidate absolute power, blackmail potential rebels and competitors within the system and to stifle any form of institutional opposition. He perceived the court as a tool with which to whitewash his more than thirty years of corrupt governance and the rape of the economy.

With the war against Boko Haram, the fight against corruption using the Special Criminal Court has afforded Paul Biya justification contest in the next institutionally flawed elections in order to eternalize power purportedly to direct the war against terror and the war against corruption. True to the name the President’s Court, the President has exclusive preserve in referring cases to the Special Court and the power to terminate them. He decides who will be arrested, who will be investigated and who will serve time and who will not.

In one instance, he ordered a detained the late Minister Bapes Bapes released from remand custody at Kondengui when a warrant was issued for his arrest without the presidential fiat. Recently Titus Edzoa a former Secretary-General at the Presidency of the Republic benefitted from a purported Presidential pardon whose primary purpose was the release of a French citizen Thiery Atangana from jail.

The fear of a presidential referral to the Special Criminal Court on additional charges of corruption under a practice devolved under the supervision of Paul Biya called “rouleur compresseur” pushed Titus Edzoa to rejoin the CPDM Party without a public resignation or repudiation of his membership of the party on which he intended to contest presidential elections prior to his incarceration. Edzoa was a victim of this system of presidential justice when new charges were brought against him when his first imprisonment was about to end in other to maintain him in prison.

Cameroonians want the rule of law to be the guarding principle on which justice is administered in the name of the people.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai