Politics
The much trumpeted Social Democratic Front convention to hold in Bamenda is threatened by a very tense sociopolitical climate heightened by threats by disgruntled as well as disenchanted youths. The people have of the entire North West and South West Regions have denounced the manipulative tendencies of John Fru Ndi and his Parliamentarians and senators.
Yes they danced and blew trumpets during the last Parliamentary and Senatorial Sessions and it still didn't bring in any results. The incessant torture, disappearances, killings, illicit incarcerations have continued without any show of restraint. The people of the two Regions that make up the Northern and Southern Zones have said John Fru Ndi can't continue to take them for a ride.
The Social Democratic Front now caught in a storm is struggling to get a secured and private ground where their convention shall hold unnoticed. This pressure mounted on John Fru Ndi is a barometer indicating how John Fru Ndi's popularity has pummeled in the North West Region and in Cameroon as a whole. As of today, the so much noise and false bravado with which he spoke on Monday and Tuesday have has been tremendously reduced.
The Social Democratic Front is in its ebbing days as militants keep distancing themselves from the party that has distanced itself from its original manifesto and ideology.
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Equatorial Guinea has gone to the United Nations’ highest court to challenge a conviction in France against its vice-president for embezzling public money from the oil-rich but impoverished west African country – on the grounds that he has diplomatic immunity.
The extraordinary dispute over the status of Teodorin Obiang, whose fleet of Bugatti and Porsche cars was towed away by police during the French investigation, is being argued over at the international court of justice in The Hague this week.
The court, which usually deals with disputes over international borders, heard submissions from French lawyers on Monday morning that the claim on behalf of Obiang, 48, whose father is president of Equatorial Guinea, should be struck out.
“France has not accepted the jurisdiction of this court under any title whatsoever to entertain those facts on which Equatorial Guinea seeks the court to rule,” the French representative, François Alabrune, told the ICJ.
The dispute erupted six years ago after France, under pressure from anti-corruption campaigners, began to move against Obiang, whose father, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has run Equatorial Guinea since 1979.
The landmark case – spearheaded by two anti-corruption NGOs, Sherpa and Transparency International – marked a turning point in France, which for a long time turned a blind eye to the families of corrupt foreign dictators buying Parisian real estate and going on luxury spending sprees.
Last October, a court in Paris tried Teodorin Obiang in absentia. He was given a three-year suspended prison sentence and a suspended fine of €30m (£26.5m) for embezzlement, money laundering, corruption and abuse of trust.
The court also demanded confiscation of assets including Obiang’s €107m mansion near the Champs-Élysées, which boasts a hammam steam bath, disco, gym, hairdressing studio, gold-plated taps and hundreds of art works.
Obiang was accused of spending more than 1,000 times his official annual salary on the six-storey mansion on Avenue Foch, one of Paris’s most exclusive streets. The house was decorated with more than €40m worth of furniture, including a €1.6m Louis XV desk, a Rodin sculpture and a dozen Fabergé eggs.
Obiang owned two Bugatti Veyrons, the most expensive and fastest street car in the world, costing about €1m each and capable of reaching 250mph. They were part of a luxury fleet that filled the garages around the cobbled courtyard of his mansion.
During the investigation, French police needed trucks to tow away 11 luxury cars worth around €5m, including a Porsche Carrera, an Aston Martin and a Mercedes Maybach. More lorries were used to clear other assets, including bottles of wine worth thousands of euros each.
Obiang’s lifestyle was in contrast with that of ordinary people in Equatorial Guinea, where more than the half the population lives on less than €1.65 a day, despite the country being one of Africa’s top oil producers.
Obiang’s lawyer said he would appeal against the decision in the French courts. In the meantime, Equatorial Guinea lodged a complaint with the ICJ.
Equatorial Guinea maintains that not only was the Vienna convention, which conferred diplomatic immunity on Obiang, breached, but French officials failed to uphold the diplomatic status of a building that the country maintains is its embassy in Paris.
In 2016, the UN judges in The Hague urged France to ensure the protection of the diplomatic mission in Paris, but sidestepped Equatorial Guinea’s request for Obiang’s trial to be halted.
Relations between the two countries have furthered deteriorated after Equatorial Guinea’s foreign minister, Agapito Mba Mokuy, said an attempted coup in December had been hatched on French soil, although he said the French authorities had “nothing to do with” it.
The Gaurdian
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In the highest interest of peace and security of our people whose representatives were denied a right to raise a finger or voice in both Houses of Parliament regarding their plight, our God fearing people should not fall into another dead trap called "Senate Elections" with their eyes wide open.
In today's Cameroon, it has been proven time and again that SENATORS represent the PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC not the people. Let those who are seeking to become Senators therefore, seek APPOINTMENT from the PRESIDENT and not VOTES from our people they have engaged in a systematic SELLOUT and elimination.
It is incumbent on all of us to make sure that Senate elections exclusively organized to keep the rich and wicked minority in power while maintaining the poor and marginalized majority in permanent poverty do not hold.
If allowed to hold, this elections will continue to legalize pain and poverty in Ambaland, while undermining peace and prosperity throughout British Southern Cameroons.
Before you elect to participate in this election, please, first ask yourself, how many more people must they rape, maim, abduct, kidnap or kill before you stop endorsing their selfish agenda over our desperate masses?
Southern Cameroons must be free for all.
David Makongo
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Our course is genuine, our morale is high, God is with us.
After the SDF forthcoming convention, there shall be no representation of The Southern Cameroons in La Republique Du Cameroun.
Ni John Fru Ndi has been a controversial leader from conception and creation of his famous, infamous Social Democratic Front, the SDF. It is said and believed that the conception and creation of the SDF was to fight for the Southern Cameroons course. The gullible Fru Ndi as leader of the party hijacked the central aim of the organization and made it a La Republique du Cameroun thing.The controversial Fru Ndi: chair of the SDF
He ignored the founding fathers, betrayed their course, because of the popularity to which East Cameroun and West cameroon welcomed him, he thought he could win elections in the French majority country. He was mistaken. Some said he won the 1992 median multiparty elections, majority believed he did not win, because at proclamation of results, Paul Biya was declared winner.
Fru Ndi and his social Democratic Front emerged from the 1992 elections as the lead opposition party in the Cameroun Republic. This made him pride himself like a gullible Chanticleer, he closed his eyes while crowing and Paul Biya with his CPDM sycophantic attitude, cajoled him and grasped him and the SDF from the throat. The two best Friends at the detriment of their people.
Fru Ndi would later dined and wined with the CPDM. He even went soya tasting with Paul Biya, went to the unity palace year in year to wish Mr. Paul Biya happy new year. At the demise of his wife, he was given as condolence, bribed for 28 millions Frs CFA for her burial. The social Democratic Front later on blended with the CPDM as he, Fru Ndi was made leader of a regional party. He could not win elections in his own district talk less of the whole North West region. With shame and disgrace he went so low to contest a Senatorial seat, which he lost.
Now that age and shame and disgrace have weight on him, he wants to relinquish power, gives up leadership because of this corrective generation. This generation has done what he could not do in twenty six years, doing it their own way.
Fru Ndi will go down in history books as the traitor, as the man who had the opportunity but because of greed and selfishness, he let his people down.
Fru Ndi’s legacy.
As a man he might be a great family man, but as a politician he leaves behind a broken catalogue of rhetorical achievements, his report card is all in red ink, Ambazonians would mock him, ridicule him, in the new Federal Republic, many will point to his home stead with the left hand. Some will pee on his tombstone. Generations after generations will associate his name to the Muna’s and other traitors blacklisted in the history books of Ambazonia. His time as a politician will be a curse on us for he knowingly allowed us, Southern Cameroonians into servitude. Many will wish his era be flushed into the gutters of oblivion for he never thought or looked beyond his shadow.
Can Fru Ndi still redeem himself?
The SDF chairman has no place in the new Federal Republic, that is why he is stuck to the statue quo. He believes very much in the Cameroun Republic that he did not stopped or withdrew his parliamentarians from the colonizers’ House of Assembly to save the blood of young Ambazonians that flow in our land today. He was silent when KwaKwa, Dadi, Tadu and other localities in the Southern Cameroons were razed, food destroyed and many escape to the bushes or into exile.
Till today he has said little or nothing regarding our kidnapped leaders, like the sellout, who he is, he commended Nigeria for arresting them. He mourned with the enemy when one paramilitary police was killed but did not sympathized with Ambazonians when they were massacred on october 1st. Even the international community knows that he is a greedy leader who thinks only of his stomach. For example, the commonwealth scribe came, and did not visit him, the British minister for African affairs came and did not care to visit him either. They went to Buea, to have talks with Barrister Balla with Fru Ndi watching in the TV.
Fru Ndi gives up leadership.
From the 22nd – 23rd of February, delegates of the Social Democratic Front will converge in Yaoundé or Bamenda to choose a new party leader. This shall be an opportunity for francophones to enjoy this position. Anglophones shall fight to keep it as their own share of the national property. The SDF would emerge from this elective convention broken and in disarray. The francophones in cunning faith would take over, this shall served as the complete political assimilation of the anglophones.
The likely next SDF chairman: Mr. Joshua Osih
The first vice president of the party: Mr. Joshua Osih, shall be the next SDF chairman. He shall nationalize the party, move the headquarters permanently to it Yaounde location. The SDF parliamentary group would change too, as the SDF will win none or nothing in the North West or South West regions. Remembers these regions shall not have elections as war is ongoing and many people there respect and take orders only from the interim government of Ambazonia, the new Federal Republic.
The present parliamentarians and senators of these regions are confused because nobody would vote them. Eventually, the Southern Cameroons will not be represented in Yaounde and the liberation of the Southern Cameroons shall be completed.
The Ambazonian liberation, a certainty.
Our course is genuine, our morale is high, God is with us. The one who wanted dialogue like President Sisiku was kidnapped, today no one knows if he is alive or not. If there shall be dialogue who are going to dialogue with who?
We must fight, fight and fight until our blood pricks the core consciences of the Cameroun Republic. We must fight until we retake the head of this revolution again.
The Ambazonian Revolution is like no other revolution in history. The chronicle shall state that never in the history of revolutions did a people start from zero % to 99% within a year and achieved everything but 1%. The remaining 1% is the arm struggle that many revolutions start with. The Cameroun Republic in their present war against Ambazonia hinges on 1%
Presently, the tides are turning back, we are gradually grasping the control button again. When this is eventually achieved, we shall dialogue not as the underdogs but as the superior, on our terms. And the underlying terms shall be how to separation and be good neighbors.
Korokoto Makambo, the soothsayer has spoken.
TJ Nsoyuni
Opinion Writer.
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Senator Victor Mukete, the oldest senator lampoons Biya and says it's due to his nonchalant and airy nature that the Crisis rocking the nation has gone off rail.
Narrating the journey of the crisis, the Senator laments that if the members of the Consortium weren't arrested and detained, if the moderates weren't arrested and kept incommunicado, the atmosphere that we have today won't have been.
Senator Victor Mukete believes that President Ahmadu Ahidjo was more assessable than Paul Biya today and that issues affecting the livelihood of the state are supposed to be treated with figure and commitment. The senator wonders at the method of using the military or gun boat philosophy in resolving a sociopolitical crisis.
According to him, the military won't resolve any crisis and that the only solution will be a ten state Federation. However it's really challenging even to arrive at such conclusion because a lot of people of the Southern Cameroon's no longer desire any Federation with the Francophones whom they accuse for the death, missing ones, the maimed and the incarcerated.
The fabric of brotherhood and togetherness has been badly damaged, beyond dispute and repair. For centuries to come the bitterness that this crisis has generated, shall forever hunt those who wanted to become the state or play the state. Their excesses shall hunt them and thousands shall face human right charges at The Hague.
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More than 200 people have been convicted in Nigeria on charges related to their involvement with militant Islamist group Boko Haram, the justice ministry said on Monday.
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Biya Article Count: 73
# Paul Biya and his regime
Explore the political landscape of Cameroon under the rule of Paul Biya, the longest-serving president in Africa who has been in power since 1982. Our Paul Biya and his regime section examines the policies, actions, and controversies of his government, as well as the opposition movements, civil society groups, and international actors that challenge or support his leadership. You'll also find profiles, interviews, and opinions on the key figures and events that shape the political dynamics of Cameroon.
Southern Cameroons Article Count: 549
.# Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia
Learn more about the history, culture, and politics of Ambazonia, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon that have been seeking self-determination and independence from the Francophone-dominated central government. Our Southern Cameroons section covers the ongoing conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the human rights violations, and the peace efforts in the region. You'll also find stories that highlight the rich and diverse heritage, traditions, and aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian people.
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