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Gilles Thibault,the new head at the French Embassy in Cameroon , presented the true copy of his credentials to Adoum Gargoum, Minister delegate for External Relations,on Teusday, 27 September 2016.

Ambassador Gilles Thibaut who officially took up office in Cameroon on 17th September 2016  is as well  to present his Letters of Credence to President Paul Biya later. 

The 57-year old diplomat before coming to Cameroon was French Ambassador to Burkina Faso where he spent three years.

H.E. Gilles Thibaut was also Ambassador of the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

He has a Post Graduate Diploma in Public Law, is married and a father of four.

CRTV

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Rita Akana

28.Sep.2016

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The Southern Cameroon National Council, SCNC,would announce a new leadership after their planned demonstration on Saturday, October 1.

Information filtering out of the SCNC holds that the youth wing of the movement plans to hijack its activities. Plans have reportedly intensified to get a leader who will defend the course of Southern Cameroonians.

It is believed that having a youth at the helm of the Secessionist Group will make its activities robust and more convincing.

The Post gathered that the new leader is yet to be identified, but the target of those spearheading the plan is to make public the person’s identity after the upcoming events.

The firs is the obvious October I controversial outing. 

The October outings have always resulted in a standoff between persons claiming to represent the interest of Southern Cameroons and security forces.

October 1, 2016, The Post learnt will see the activists try to stage their activities in the Southwest Regional capital, Buea.

In this light, The Post learnt that hundreds of T-shirts are already being processed for the event.

The T-shirts,according to proponents of the movement, may even outnumber those willing to stake their identity come Saturday in the face of growing Government effort to maintain public peace.

It is reported that the shirts would be made available to anyone who wish to get them in preparation for the event.

The channels of circulation have persistently beat security and public findings.

Secondly, the announcement is expected to come whenever the current case at the Buea Magistrates’ Court concerning 15 activists comes to an end.

Reports hold that with growing legal support for those activists on trial, the strategy of a new leadership is to fasten the tune of the group’s activities.

Planned demonstrations in Buea are being earmarked after a campaign was launched against French Language signboards.

The meeting which gave birth to the campaign ended in disagreements over a proposal to start kidnapping Anglophone elite, who are indifferent to Anglophone plights.

Observers of SCNC activities hold that the rising interest of splinter Youth groups within the movement could be linked to different factors.

The commentators point to the delay in achieving the illusionary independence50 years since the struggle began.

Pundits also advance reports of mistrust and suspicion among the leaders of the SCNC. Claims and counter claims of one group collecting money from the Biya regime in secret dialogues have equally rendered the group placid.

Press reports have equally uncovered that; most of those who started the struggle have lost steam.

In this light, some are said to have transformed the movement into a Business venture. They gain through scooping money from donors, Government and similar interest groups elsewhere:

Cameroonpost

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Rita Akana

28.Sep.2016

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The ICC has sentenced a member of the Ansar Dine Islamist group to 9 years in prison for destroying historical buildings in Timbuktu, Mali, marking the first time it has ruled on a crime related to cultural artefacts. "The chamber unanimously finds that Mr. Al-Mahdi is guilty of the crime of attacking protected sites as a war crime," Judge Paul Pangalangan told the court on Tuesday. 

Considering Mahdi's cooperation with the prosecutors and his impeccable behaviour during detention, judges awarded him with a sentence of 9 years in jail.

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Rita Akana

27.Sep.2016

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Gabon’s president Ali Bongo is due to be sworn in on Tuesday after the country’s highest court validated his re-election Friday. Opposition leader Jean Ping rejected the court’s ruling and said he "will not retreat" but his next steps are unclear.

Bongo has called for political dialogue after this month’s contentious election.

Ping also claimed to have won the August 27 poll. He called the Constitutional Court's ruling on Friday "a miscarriage of justice."

But his options now are limited, says Paul Melly, West and Central Africa analyst at London-based Chatham House.

“Jean Ping is probably realistic. He knows that in the normal constitutional process, it is highly unlikely that there is any possibility for the election results being reversed…So I think what Jean Ping is trying to do is to maintain the political pressure on Ali Bongo,” he said.

Ping is a former ally of Bongo’s father, who ruled the country for over four decades until his death in 2009. 

Deadly violence erupted in Libreville earlier this month after the electoral commission announced that Bongo had beaten Ping by a margin of just under 6,000 votes.

France joined Ping in calling for a recount of ballots in disputed areas. The United States called for the release of results by polling station. The government refused. The European Union continues to express concern about the fairness of the poll.

Analysts say Bongo has also faced pressure at home with several members of the ruling party defecting even before the vote.

“He had, in his first term, tried to position himself as a reformer, and he made some progress with that. But it was patchy," said Melly. "And it may be that now, the combination of international pressure and domestic political pressure, would force him to make wider concession, for example we could imagine that in municipal elections or parliamentary elections… He might have to cede a genuinely transparent and credible process in those types of vote.”

Analyst Gilles Yabi, founder of the West African think tank WATHI, says electoral reforms could very well be on the table during the proposed political dialogue.

Yabi says that we could imagine that at some point a deep reform of the Gabonese electoral system will have to be discussed, including the lack of presidential term limits and the current practice of a single-round election. He says reforms would be needed to open the way for a change in leadership through credible and transparent election results.

Ping has not said whether he will answer Bongo’s invitation for political dialogue.

VOA

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Rita Akana

27.Sep.2016

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The first presidential debate between Republican nominee Donald Trump, left, and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, was held at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., Sept. 26, 2016.
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 U.S. presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton put their contrasting plans on the economy and America's role overseas in front of potential voters Monday night as they squared off in the first of three head-to-head debates.

Trump repeated his assertion that Clinton lacks the stamina to be president, and said her policies have led to a range of problems facing the country, including the threat posed by the Islamic State group.

Clinton portrayed Trump's economic plans as favoring the rich over the middle class and suggested he does not want to make his tax returns public because he is not as rich as he says or is hiding something that would be a conflict of interest if he were elected.

The debate was the first of three they will have before Americans vote on November 8.

Clinton touted her experience traveling to more than 100 countries and negotiating peace deals and cease-fires while secretary of state during President Barack Obama's first term.

Trump responded that while she has experience, it is "bad experience." He sharply criticized the nuclear deal the United States and five other powers struck with Iran to limit the country's nuclear program, while Clinton cited it as an example of effective diplomacy that cut off Iran's path to a nuclear bomb.

The two candidates did agree that nuclear weapons are the biggest threat facing the world, and that anybody who appears on a terror watch list should not be allowed to buy a gun.

Clinton called for criminal justice reforms to "restore trust between communities and police" and to make sure that officers only use force when necessary.

Trump emphasized the need to "bring back law and order" and promoted his plan to bring back controversial "stop and frisk" policing.

"We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African Americans, Hispanics, are living in hell because it's so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot," Trump said.

Clinton rejected that view of black communities, calling it "dire."

"There's a lot that we should be proud of and that we should be supporting and lifting up."

Both candidates also noted the threat posed by cyber attacks from abroad, saying the U.S. needs to do more to fight back.

On the war in Iraq, Trump strongly asserted that he never supported the war, despite interviews he gave at the time suggesting he did. He criticized the Obama administration's handling of withdrawing U.S. forces, saying at least 10,000 troops should have stayed behind and that coupled with "taking the oil" would have prevented the rise of the Islamic State group.

Clinton pointed to the Iraqi government's unwillingness to agree to a Status of Forces Agreement that would give legal protections to American troops as a key in the decision to pull out.

The next debate will be October 9. Trump's running mate Mike Pence and Clinton's running mate Tim Kaine will have their only debate on October 4.

VOA

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Rita Akana

27.Sep.2016

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Gabon will return to normal after a bitterly disputed election, its newly re-elected President Ali Bongo said, as soldiers patrolled and military aircraft flew over a capital that has been bracing for another explosion of violence.

The Constitutional Court late on Friday threw out a challenge against the election results by rival Jean Ping, enabling Bongo to extend his family's dynastic 50-year rule over the small, oil-producing central African country.

Ping swiftly rejected the ruling as biased, and many Gabonese feared a return to the violence that killed at least six people - Ping's supporters say it was more than 50 - when the result was first announced at the start of the month.

But in a nation that usually manages to avoid the massive bloodshed that afflicts other countries in the region, like Congo and Central African Republic, when power is contested, Bongo said he was confident of a peaceful resolution.

"It is business as usual. We are not worried about this state of crisis," Bongo told Reuters in an interview late on Saturday. "I think that we will go back to normal ... Gabonese are peace-loving people."

On Sunday, soldiers deployed along main roads and a helicopter hovered over Ping's headquarters. A fighter jet roared above the city. The red and white taxis that normally ply its palm-lined seaside avenues were mostly absent.

"Things are not normal. The people's voice was stolen," Richard Obame, 46, an unemployed Ping supporter, said, after the jet noise had died down. 

"If it was calm, would we need the military presence on the streets and the helicopters above the house of Mr Ping?"

And yet Ping, whom authorities have threatened to arrest for inciting violence, has so far refrained from calling people on to the streets. That raises the possibility of a peaceful resolution, although Ping insists that the will of the Gabonese people be respected.

A statement from the office of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday said he "welcomes the call by the president-elect for national dialogue."

"It is of utmost importance that all actors demonstrate maximum restraint," it added.

 

"OPEN GOVERNMENT"

Ali Bongo came to power in a contentious 2009 election following the death of his father Omar Bongo, who was president of Gabon for 42 years and to whom Ping himself was very close.

"Bongo Junior", as he is nicknamed, is showing signs of wanting to handle opponents in much the same way his father did: by bringing them into the tent. On Saturday he called for members of opposition parties to come and join his cabinet.

Communications minister Alain-Claude Bilie By Nze was quoted on France's Journal du Dimanche website on Sunday as saying that from next week there would be "an open government, with members of the opposition, civil society and independent personalities."

Whether this will be "business as usual" for Gabon and the Bongo dynasty may partly depend on the international reaction.

Gabon has never had a poll that international observers judged free and fair, and Western powers, especially ex-colonial master France, always looked the other way.

But on Saturday France and the European union both expressed "doubt" about the poll, which swung it for Bongo on a province, Haut-Ogooue, that gave him 95 percent of a 99.9 percent turnout.

Bongo pledged to address some of the issues that have fueled anger in the country of 1.8 million, like youth unemployment and over-reliance on dwindling oil revenues.

"We want to move from just enjoying the profits of oil to an economy where we can also start producing," Bongo told Reuters. "Manufacturing is very important ... We are also inviting the national and international business community to invest. They want to find a country that is in peace and stable."

Reuters

 

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Rita Akana

25.Sep.2016

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