Politics

Cameroon: Govt insists 91-year-old President Biya in good health

Published

2 months ago

October 11, 2024

The government of Cameroon has declared in a statement that the country’s ninety-one-year-old president, Paul Biya, is in good health and that stories claiming otherwise are “pure fantasy.”

Since early September, when Biya attended a China-Africa summit in Beijing, he has not been sighted in public. His absence at a summit in France last weekend, which was scheduled, added credence to rumours that the nonagenarian was ill and reports of death surfaced on social media on Tuesday.

“Rumours of all kinds have been circulating through the conventional media and social networks about the president’s condition,” government spokesperson Rene Sadi said in the statement. “The Government unequivocally states that these rumours are pure fantasy … and hereby issues a formal denial.”

Civil society organisations and opposition parties have been requesting an update on Biya’s health and precise location.

Biya had a private trip to Europe after Beijing, according to Sadi. “The head of state is in good health and will be returning to Cameroon in the coming days.”
His passing would increase political unrest in West and Central Africa, which has already experienced eight coups since 2020 and multiple more military attempts to topple governments due to a lack of a clear succession plan.

Three non-Cameroonian African ministers in attendance said that there was substantial discussion about his recent absence from the Paris gathering of leaders of French-speaking nations.

“He’s over 90, he hasn’t been involved in day-to-day business for a long time, but if he dies, the situation is likely to get out of hand,” said one of the ministers, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“No one has prepared for the aftermath. We don’t know what Cameroon (would) be like without Paul Biya.”

Cameroon has only had two presidents since gaining independence from France and Britain in the early 1960s and is currently experiencing two major crises: a bloody Boko Haram insurgency in the north and a separatist struggle that has claimed thousands of lives.

President Biya is one of several long-serving African leaders, including Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who has been in office since 1982, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda’s Paul Kagame is also gradually evolving into the group.

Related Topics:Cameroon Featured Paul Biya

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Politics

Egyptian court upholds ex-presidential candidate Ahmed Tantawy’s sentence

Published

11 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Former presidential candidate, Ahmed Tantawy, and his campaign manager, Mohamed Abou El-Diar, were found guilty of faking election paperwork, and given a one-year jail term with labour by an Egyptian court, Tantawy’s legal team announced Tuesday.

Last year, Tantawy was the most well-known candidate to run against Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for a third term, winning 89.6% of the vote.

To avoid receiving the necessary number of public endorsements to be on the ballot, he halted his campaign before to the election, alleging harassment and arrests directed at hundreds of his family members and associates.

Egyptian authorities criticised Tantawy’s tactic of distributing unapproved copies of endorsement forms to garner popular support, but they denied any misconduct.

Egypt’s Misdemeanour Appeals Court upheld the May court ruling on Monday, which prohibits Tantawy from seeking public office for five years and mandates that he pay a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($395).

Tantawy’s defence team member and well-known human rights attorney Khaled Ali said in a Facebook post on Tuesday that the appeals procedure was riddled with anomalies.

Ali said lawyers struggled for months to confirm court dates, with hearings appearing absent from official schedules and case files missing from court registries.

The public prosecution was not immediately available to comment on the ruling or on Ali’s allegations over the process.

Politics

Court orders Uganda to compensate LRA war crimes victims

Published

11 hours ago

December 18, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Uganda’s tribunal has ordered the government to pay up to 10 million Ugandan shillings ($2,740) to each victim of Lord’s Resistance Army commander, Thomas Kwoyelo, the first senior rebel leader to be convicted.

Kwoyelo, a mid-level LRA leader, was sentenced to 40 years in jail in October for war crimes like murder, rape, slavery, torture, and kidnapping.

Kwoyelo’s “indigent” status prevented him from compensating the victims, thus the court ordered the government to compensate.

Kwoyelo’s crimes were “a manifestation of failure on the part of the government that triggers a responsibility on the state to pay reparations to the victims,” the verdict added.

The court also ordered various financial compensation to Kwoyelo’s property destruction and theft victims.

From strongholds in northern Uganda, the LRA brutalised Ugandans under Joseph Kony for over 20 years while it fought the military to destroy the government.

The militants raped, abducted, cut off victims’ limbs and mouths, and bludgeoned them to death using crude implements.

Under military pressure, the LRA withdrew to lawless forests in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic in 2005 and perpetrated civilian atrocities.

Although assaults are rare, Kony and splintered groups are reported to dwell there.

Kwoyelo was taken by the Ugandan military in 2009 in the northeastern Congo, and his case made its way through Ugandan courts until he was found guilty in August.