Day: November 6, 2021

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Supporters of Africa’s second-longest serving leader, Cameroon’s 88-year-old President Paul Biya, are celebrating his 39 years in office November 6. Biya, who has been Cameroon’s president since 1982, is rarely seen in public these days. Meanwhile Biya’s opponents are saying renewed calls for the octogenarian to run for president in 2025 cannot be taken seriously.

Supporters of Cameroon’s ruling party, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, sang that Biya can still rule the central African state for another seven-year term, starting in 2025.

Biya was declared the winner of the country’s 2018 election garnering over 80% of the votes.

The song was sung in towns and villages across Cameroon during celebrations of Biya’s 39 years in office.

One event was held in Monatele, capital of Lekie, a department near Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. Henri Eyebe Ayissi, Cameroon’s state property, survey and land tenure minister, and Biya’s close ally led the CPDM party delegation to Lekie and delivered what he called a special message for Biya supporters.

Ayissi said the CPDM is appealing for a national consensus for Biya to seek a new term in 2025. He said the Lekie Division is making an appeal to Biya to accept the call to run for president in 2025 and continue the good works he is doing for Cameroon.

Ayissi said Biya has maintained unity despite Boko Haram terrorism on Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria and the separatist crisis that has killed at least 3,000 people in the English-speaking western regions.

Ayissi said several million Cameroonian children have access to education because Biya has built schools and universities in many towns and villages of the central African state.

The call for Biya to run for president again when his current seven-year term ends in 2025 was echoed in several towns and villages, sparking criticism from Biya’s opponents.

Christopher Ndong, secretary general of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement — a party that claims its candidate, Maurice Kamto, won the 2018 election and that Biya stole his victory — Ndong says an invitation for Biya to be a candidate in 2025 means the CPDM wants the octogenarian to die in office.

“It is a slap in the face of Cameroonians and democracy in this country. Given his age, what will he do with power? Right now, he is not active. Honestly, this is a provocation of the first order. Look at the chaos all over the place. The country is in debts. In fact, it shows you that there is nobody at the head. That 2025 call should not be taken seriously because we know the state and health of the head of state cannot permit him to rule this country in 2025,” Ndong said.

Ngole Ngole Elvis, head of the CPDM party academy and Biya’s close aide, says calls for Biya to run are democratic. He says instead of complaining that Biya has been in power for long, the opposition should prepare to democratically vote for who they think should be their president in 2025.

“Wait for the next election and make sure that you prepare for it in such a way that with your freedom, you should have put in place the right campaign strategies, the right campaign messages, the right manifestos, the right candidates,” Elvis said.

Biya served as prime minister for seven years before becoming president. In 2008, he removed term limits from the constitution, allowing him to serve indefinitely.

He is now the second-longest serving leader in sub-Saharan Africa after his neighbor, Thedoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, who has been in power since 1979.

Source: Voice of America

PARIS — The coup in Sudan puts into doubt the process that would have seen France cancel some $5 billion debt it was owed by the African country, France’s foreign ministry said on Friday, the latest power to pressure military leaders who seized power.

France, Sudan’s second-largest creditor, has been a main actor in backing the interim authorities after former President Omar al-Bashir was ousted in 2019, but the civilian transition was derailed in October when the military took control.

Speaking to reporters in a daily briefing on Friday, Foreign ministry spokeswoman Anne-Claire Legendre said Paris had been an “unwavering” partner for Sudan and that the general debt cancellation program as part of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was agreed at a conference in Paris in May.

“A Paris Club agreement was reached on July 15, each creditor now having to sign a bilateral agreement with Sudan,” Legendre told reporters, responding to a question on whether Paris was reviewing its debt cancellation promise.

“It is clear that the military coup of October 25 calls into question this process.”

Sudan owes nearly $60 billion, 40% of which — or $23.5 billion — is held by the Paris Club.

Under the July agreement, the Paris Club decided to cancel $14.1 billion of that debt and reschedule the rest.

At that conference President Emmanuel Macron had vowed to cancel about $5 billion France is owed by Khartoum, provided a loan to clear Sudan’s arrears to the International Monetary Fund and organized a side event promoting investment into the country.

In a sign the junta is tightening its control, the military dissolved the boards of all state companies and national agricultural projects, state TV said on Friday.

Source: Voice of America

The U.N. Security Council has called for an end to escalating fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region as rebel Tigrayan forces announce the formation of an alliance to end the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

In only the second statement on Ethiopia since the fighting began a year ago, the 15-member council Friday urged all parties in Ethiopia “to put an end to hostilities and to negotiate a lasting cease-fire.”

The council also “called for refraining from inflammatory hate speech and incitement to violence and divisiveness.”

“Today the Security Council breaks six months of silence and speaks again with one united voice on the deeply concerning situation in Ethiopia,” Ireland’s U.N. Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason said in a statement. She said it was the first time that the council called for an end to hostilities in Ethiopia.

Council members said the language in the statement was amended to remove a call for an “immediate” end to hostilities “without preconditions” because of objections from Russia, according to The Associated Press.

The U.N. call comes as Tigray forces announced Friday that they have formed an alliance with other armed and opposition groups around the country, including forces in the Oromo region, to end the government of Prime Minister Abiy. The Tigrayan forces said they were willing to bring down the prime minister through negotiation or force.

Ethiopia’s government called the creation of an alliance “a publicity stunt.”

Also on Friday, all Americans were urged to leave Ethiopia “as soon as possible,” according to a security alert posted on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, which called the security situation in the country “very fluid.”

In a warning on its travel advisory website, the State Department warned Americans Friday “not travel to Ethiopia due to armed conflict, civil unrest, communications disruptions, crime, and the potential for terrorism and kidnapping in border areas.”

On Saturday, the State Department said it ordered “non-emergency U.S. government employees and their family members” to leave the country on November 5.

The Ethiopian government declared a six-month state of emergency Wednesday and called on residents to defend their neighborhoods if rebels arrive in the capital.

Tigrayan forces said earlier this week they were advancing on the capital of Addis Ababa and that it could fall within months or even weeks.

Threats of physical harm on Twitter prompted the social company to temporarily deactivate its Trends section Friday in Ethiopia.

“Given the imminent threat of physical harm, we’ve … temporarily disabled Trends in Ethiopia. Alongside continued efforts to disrupt platform manipulation, we hope this measure will reduce the risks of coordination that could incite violence or cause harm,” Twitter said.

Thursday marked the first anniversary of Prime Minister Abiy’s deployment of troops to Tigray in response to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front’s seizure of military bases. The ensuing conflict has killed thousands of people, displaced several million from their homes and left 400,000 residents of Tigray facing famine, according to a July estimate by the United Nations.

The escalating violence in Ethiopia could trigger a humanitarian crisis that could spread to neighboring countries and even Europe, according to Hassan Khannenje, director of the HORN International Institute for Strategic Studies in Nairobi, Kenya.

According to Reuters, Khannenje said in an interview with China Global Television Network that Ethiopia’s uncertain status as an anchor state in Africa threatens to cause “a potential humanitarian catastrophe that may affect not just countries neighboring Ethiopia but countries in much of the continent, pushing refugees probably all the way to Europe and elsewhere.”

A joint investigation by the U.N. and the government-created Ethiopian Human Rights Commission published a report Wednesday concluding that all sides in the conflict have committed human rights violations, including torturing civilians, gang rapes and arresting people based on ethnicity.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said some of those abuses may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Source: Voice of America

RABAT, MOROCCO — Morocco’s King Mohammed gave a speech Saturday about Western Sahara but made no mention of an Algerian accusation that Morocco targeted Algerian civilians in an incident last week that the United Nations said took place in the disputed territory.

Algeria’s accusation has raised fears of further escalation between the North African rivals after Algeria cut off diplomatic relations, stopped supplying gas to Morocco and blocked Algerian airspace to Moroccan flights.

Ties between the countries have been fractious for years, but have deteriorated since last year after the Algeria-backed Polisario Front said it was resuming its armed struggle for the independence of Western Sahara, a territory Morocco sees as its own.

King Mohammed’s silence on the dispute with Algeria in his annual speech on Western Sahara is in line with Morocco’s practice since soon after Algeria broke off ties in August in ignoring all statements coming from Algiers.

However, Algeria’s accusation Wednesday that Morocco had killed three civilians driving in the Sahara on Monday has sharply raised the stakes.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune vowed in a statement that the death of the three men “would not go unpunished.”

Morocco has not formally responded to the accusation.

The U.N. peacekeeping force in Western Sahara, MINURSO, visited the site of the incident in territory outside Moroccan control and found two badly damaged Algerian-plated trucks, a U.N. spokesperson said on Friday. The spokesperson said MINURSO was looking into the incident.

Last year the United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara as part of a deal that also included Rabat bolstering ties with Israel.

Morocco has been more assertive since then in pushing European countries to follow suit. However, they have not done so, and in September a European Union court said some European trade deals with Morocco were invalid because they included products originating in Western Sahara territory.

King Mohammed said on Saturday that Morocco would not agree to “any economic or commercial step that excludes the Moroccan Sahara.”

Source: Voice of America