Philemon Yunji Yang: who is the new Prime Minister?

01/07/2009 Philemon Yang was born 14th of June in Jiketem-Oku, in the Bui
Department of the Northwest Region of Cameroon.
After studying law at the University of Yaoundé, he became a prosecutor at the
Court of Appeal in Buea in January 1975.
He was later appointed Deputy Minister of Territorial Administration in the
government named on 30th June 1975 and then Minister of Mines and Energy on 8th of
November 1979.

On 23rd of October 1984 he was appointed Ambassador to Canada and later became
High Commissioner when Cameroon joined the Commonwealth of Nations in 1995.

During his stay in Canada, Yang Philemon was designated Dean of the Diplomatic
Corps in Canada for about 10 years.

The man returned to Cameroon after serving as high commissioner for 20 years, when
he was appointed Assistant Secretary General N°1 of the Presidency of the Republic
of Cameroon, 8th December 2004. It is this astute Diplomat who is new Prime
Minister of the Republic of Cameroon.

Music News
Michael Jackson, 1958-2009
June 26, 2009, 2:10 AM EST
The King of Pop is dead

By Jonathan Zwickel
Special to MSN Music

The King of Pop is dead.

Michael Jackson, the world's most successful entertainer, died Thursday afternoon
in Los Angeles of apparent cardiac arrest. He was 50 years old.

There is no questioning the gifts Jackson gave millions of people around the
world. His humanitarianism is well documented, going back decades. (In 2000, he
made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for "Most Charities Supported By a
Pop Star." The number was 39.) His sales figures -- records, videos, concert tours
-- are unparalleled. He never underestimated his audience or lived to any standard
higher than his own. His music was always joyful, even at its darkest, and smart,
even at its most accessible. It was the pinnacle of populism, the source of his
royal title.

Over the past decade, Jackson fell victim to America's orgiastic cult of celebrity
-- a gutless opportunism he unwittingly helped spawn. Personal problems and public
scrutiny overshadowed the image of pop genius he cultivated during the 1980s. For
the last year or so, Jackson was a recluse and an invalid, shepherded via
wheelchair by a phalanx of handlers, seemingly enlivened only by his three young
children. But for all the exaggerated reports of weirdness and allegations of
sexual deviance, Jackson, or at least the idea of him, remained magnetic. Earlier
this year he sold out 50 concerts at London's O2 Arena -- some 1 million tickets
-- in a matter of hours. Whatever the news, his fans believed him still capable of
magic.

In considering the meaning of MJ, the difficulty is that, over the course of one
of history's most public lives, the individual became inseparable from the myth
and the myth became inseparable from the media machine that fostered it. In this
sense, Jackson's life is both a catalyst and mirror of American cultural habits
over the last 30 years, fraught with all the associated triumph and dysfunction
and isolation. An entire nation watched him grow up before a live studio audience,
foreshadowing the voyeurism/narcissism hardwired into the age of Facebook.

His first No. 1 hit, "I Want You Back," came out on the Motown label in 1970 with
his band of brothers, the Jackson 5. Michael was 11 at the time. He followed with
several successful solo albums throughout the '70s, but it was 1979's "Off the
Wall" that put him on an unmatchable ascent. From there, he achieved colossal
stardom during the Golden Age of Pop -- an age he came to define. That Golden Age
brought our other remaining pop icons, Madonna and Prince. It also brought MTV,
where his video for "Billie Jean" was one of the first by a black artist to air in
regular rotation. From there, Jackson's rise coincided with the channel's, his
big-budget, radically choreographed concepts like "Beat It," "Thriller," "Bad" --
which was directed by Martin Scorsese -- and "Smooth Criminal" forever elevating
the production standards for music videos. Along the way, MJ let loose some of the
baddest dance moves known to man.

The '80s were Jackson's heyday, and it's accurate to view the decade as a simpler
time. Celebrity journalism hadn't devolved into the lowest-common-denominator
turkey shoot it is now. Rumors of Jackson's eccentricity -- a pet chimpanzee, a
hyperbaric chamber, the Elephant Man's bones -- were spread playfully by Jackson
himself. During this period, pop was in its primacy and Jackson truly was the
king. It's an overlooked fact that his music was effortlessly progressive: from
the disco-pop doubletime of "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" to Eddie Van Halen's
hard rock riffs on "Beat It" to the electro-goth of "Thriller" to the astro-soul
of "Smooth Criminal." Now entwined in the pop music canon, these songs stood out
as wildly innovative at their vintage.

Though Jackson still produced great music, videos, and concert performances
through the mid-'90s, he never fully recovered from 1993 accusations of child
molestation. He felt betrayed by the public -- his public -- and the greater his
exposure, the deeper his reclusion. Music changed in the '90s: Alternative rock
altered the perceptions of mainstream success, and gangsta rap offered criminality
as entertainment. Culture in general changed, and we, as consumers, changed with
it. By the time of Jackson's second child molestation trial, in 2005 -- which
found the singer not guilty -- he had become a punch line. Oversaturated,
underempathized, cynical, we were cowed by sensationalism and unproven
allegations. Heedless to truth, we wanted the tabloid story, mainly because it was
all that was offered. If we danced to his music, it was with an ironic wink. But
we still danced.

Even his death is a reflection of our age. The news was first reported on tabloid-
style gossip Web site TMZ.com; His name was his name instantly elevated to
Twitter's top hash-tagged search item; capsule tributes were posted on blogs and
Web sites minutes after his passing.

Last year, on the occasion of Jackson's 50th birthday, biographer J. Randy

Taraborrelli wrote a heartbreaking piece for the British newspaper The Daily Mail.
He quoted Jackson: "It all went by so fast, didn't it? I wish I could do it all
over again, I really do."

Michael Jackson's music speaks for itself. It's some of the most infectious,
ebullient pop music ever made. Michael Jackson, for whatever reason, failed to
speak for himself. His legacy, greater than words or numbers can convey, is
entangled within our own media-fed obsessions and assumptions. We will always
celebrate his art, but we should also learn from his life.

Jonathan Zwickel writes about music for the Seattle Times and is working on a
biography of the Beastie Boys.

In Memoriam: Michael Jackson

Press Release

Mamfe High Court Slams Five Months Jail Sentence on

Chief Ayamba E. Otun, Nfor Ngala Nfor and Enow Enow John.

The Mamfe High Court on 27th May, 2009 sentenced the National Chairman and
National Vice Chairman of the SCNC, Chief Ayamba Ette Otun, Nfor Ngala Nfor as
well as another activist Enow Enow John, to five months imprisonment for running
the SCNC, which they said is a “foreign” organisation.

Chief Ayamba, Nfor Nfor, Enow Enow, were arrested along five others in Mamfe on
Sept 27th, 2002. They were charged with importing arms from Nigeria and for
writing and circulating a book “The Truth of the Matter”, which according to them
contained false information.

During the prolonged trial which suffered about 30 adjournments in seven years,
the original charges were dropped and recently the new politically motivated and
trumped up charge of running a “foreign” organisation was preferred on them, a
charge which was eventually used for their conviction.

Barrister Eta-Bessong Junior, Counsel for the accused, has filed an appeal against
the sentence at the South West Regional Court of Appeal in Buea, calling on that
Court to “reverse the judgement, conviction and sentence”.

After the conviction, Mr. Fedelis Chinkwo - SCNC Secretary General, traveled to
Mamfe where he found Chief Ayamba, Nfor Nfor and Enow John in very high spirits
and in good health in their prison cells although molested by hardened criminals.

When Chief Ayamba, Nfor Nfor and others were arrested in September 2002, they were
severely tortured and Nfor Nfor was urgently compelled to undergo two major
surgical operations within a week. Albert W. Mukong, another suspect now of
blessed memory, died in July 2004 as a result of severe torture inflicted on him
while in detention.

Communication 266/2003 of the ACHPR

It will be recalled that Chief Ayamba and Prince Mbinglo Humphrey had just
returned home from Banjul – The Gambia, where the ruling on Communication 266/2003
was highly anticipated. The said ruling was however not delivered in Banjul
because they were told it must first be presented to the AU Summit before the
complainants and respondents are served.

We have every reason to believe that the ruling will certainly be presented at the
next AU Summit due to be held in July 2009.
SCNC is not a “foreign”organisation

What puzzles us is the fact that la Republique du Cameroun has always been
represented in the matter of the said Communication 266/2003 by a government
Minister Mr. Dion Ngute and eight lawyers, whereas back in local courts of la
Republique du Cameroun the SCNC leaders are jailed for leading a “foreign”
organisation. We want to ask by which authority la Republique du Cameroun should
call the SCNC a “foreign” organisation when in effect we know that there are two
distinct Cameroon states! The SCNC is a nationalist Southern Cameroonian
liberation movement with well-defined objectives and methods of approach.
Calling the SCNC as a “foreign” organisation indicates the annexationist ambitions
which la Republique du Cameroun has over Southern Cameroons and confirms the
prophetic words of Marino Busdachin (UNPO Secretary General) who on the occasion
of the release of Nfor Ngala Nfor from detention in 2007, predicted that
politically motivated charges could be framed on the SCNC leadership in order to
get them imprisoned. This is what has just happened.

While we call on SCNC activists and supporters both at home and in the diaspora to
stay calm and wait for the outcome of the judicial process, we appeal to the
international community to bring pressure to bear on la Republique du Cameroun to
stop any further acts of intimidation, arbitrary arrests, illegal detention,
torture and harassment of peace-loving Southern Cameroonians who are simply
clamouring for their inalienable rights to sovereignty, justice and freedom.

Done, in Bamenda, this 29th Day of May 2009

UK: MP Welcomes Asylum Seeker Deportation Delay

Stockton North MP Frank Cook has welcomed the decision to delay the deportation of
an asylum seeker who could face death if he is returned to his native Cameroon.

Anselme Noumbiwa has lived in Stockton since 2006, when he fled from the West
African country.

He claims he was tortured and faces death if he returns because he refused to

marry his dead father's wives.

Mr Cook called on Immigration Minister Phil Woolas to halt the deportation, due to
take place on Friday, so the latest evidence in the case can be considered.

He said: "Quite rightly the plight of Anselme has caused enormous concern in the
Stockton area, especially amongst his many friends in the local churches where he
worshipped before being taken into detention prior to deportation.

"I have made the strongest possible representations to the Government about the
need to reconsider the deportation decision.

"If he were to be forced back to Cameroon, it would be a disgrace and a shocking

betrayal of our long-held tradition of providing comfort and shelter to those
facing persecution, torture or worse."

Originally published in the Northumberland Gazette

See also: Deported African chief Anselme Noumbiwa back in North and

Someone Please Explain why Mr Noumbiwa needs to be outside Cameroon, let alone in
the UK?

Deported African chief Anselme Noumbiwa back in North

Nov 30 2008 by Pauline Holt, Sunday Sun

AFRICAN tribal chief Anselme Noumbiwa is back in the North while claims that he
was beaten up by British security guards during deportation are investigated.

Earlier this month we reported how Anselme feared he could be killed if he

returned home to his native Cameroon for refusing to marry his dead father’s
wives.

After hearing of his plight, hundreds of people across the North signed a petition
and MPs and religious leaders, including the Bishop of Durham, joined the battle
to allow Anselme, 32, to remain on Teesside.

This week he said “thank you” to some of his supporters at the Stockton, Teesside,
headquarters of anti-deportation organisation Justice First.

He said: “I would like to say ‘thank you’ to everybody in the community because
they have supported me and spoken on my behalf. They make me know I am not alone.”

Anti-torture campaigners are to press former police ombudsman of Northern Ireland

Nuala O’Loan, who is investigating the alleged abuse of failed asylum- seekers, to
look into Anselme’s case.

He claims he was assaulted on two separate occasions by security men, first in

July after he refused to board a Kenyan Airways plane and again on October 23 when
he says he was beaten by five security guards as they tried to get him on to a
British Airways flight.

On that occasion he narrowly escaped deportation after he was transferred to an

Air France aircraft in Paris and passengers refused to take their seats until
Anselme’s pleas for help were answered.

Frances Groves, 70, of St Mary’s RC Church in Stockton, who has stood bail for
Anselme when he was previously detained, said: “I am very glad he is back. He’s a
very, very sincere and very devout young man. I don’t know how he has managed to
keep his faith in these circumstances.”

Pete Spence, 57, pastor of Portrack Baptist Church in Stockton which Anselme
attends, added: “To be honest there are some folk whose storylines are suspect but
this guy has integrity and we feel he is very genuine.”

Anselme fled Cameroon in 2006 after he was made chief of the Bamileke tribe and
ordered to marry his father’s wives, even though he was like a son to some of
them. After refusing, Anselme was tortured, a claim verified by the Medical
Foundation for the Care of the Victims of Torture.

NEWS » FUSI EMMERENCIA NGOU

Was there any real lesson for Cameroon in South Africa’s general elections?

Deficit of political will in Cameroon! Was there any real lesson for Cameroon in
South Africa’s general elections?

The lesson for Cameroon from the recent general elections in South Africa was not
so much that they were free and fair but that the S.A. government had willed that
elections be so. A similar will for credible elections has also recently been
expressed in successful elections in other African countries. How is it that
Cameroon is still unable to summon a similar will? Still, the absence of political
will has permeated the entire fabric of the Biya regime, making Cameroon more and
more of a shadow of its more successful early start in Africa.

The will is that human faculty that decides. It is a decision that gives purpose
and prescribes a course of action. But having a will does not always mean using
it, and doing so in a purposeful way. Where the will is withheld from where it was
expected, its absence denies progress. It is common to hear it said that most of
Cameroon’s problems arise from the absence of a political will, meaning Paul
Biya’s unwillingness.

As soon as he got to work a fortnight ago, Samuel Fonkam Azu’u, ELECAM’s board
chair went off to Pretoria, on invitation, to witness South Africa’s general
elections that took place the same week.

The question on many lips as he left was what he had expected to learn from the
elections which passed off so well. Not surprisingly Fonkam didn’t make a
statement upon his return, given his publicised departure. That quiet return was
only understandable. The real lesson from the recent and other elections in South
Africa was not how transparent they were and have always been. The real lesson for
Cameroon is the political will that decided that elections would at all times be
transparent and reflect the voters’ will.

No doubt Fonkam Azu’u didn’t have to be personally present in Pretoria to learn

that fact. Before the South African elections there were local elections in
Senegal in which the ruling socialist party of Adoulaye Wade lost hands down. The
government was defeated in almost all major towns, including Dakar the capital.
Where did Senegal find the political will to organise transparent elections?

Even before then Ghana had had a credible election that led to a change of
president. The new man happened to be an opposition candidate who won by a razor-
thin margin. How did the Ghanaians summon the will to run a credible election?

The same question can be asked of Sierra Leone and Liberia who emerged from long
years of civil war to summon the political will for clean and clear elections
whose outcomes reflected the people’s will? After the controversy about the strong
CPDM membership of ELECAM, sources close to the electoral organ say the members
have expressed determination to do all in their power to have future elections in
Cameroon transparent.

Isn’t that understandable; perhaps even encouraged by the government? Wasn’t that
the same scenario before the flawed legislative elections of July 2007? With
everything clearly not going well with the preparations Paul Biya encouraged
Marafa, the MINATD chief directly responsible for the elections, to try with all
his intelligence to fool western diplomats to believe that all was fine and that
the elections would be free, fair and transparent.

Regime bashing

We know what became of the elections and particularly the western diplomats’
bashing of the regime over the ‘elections that were a lost opportunity for
democratic advance’ in Cameroon.

The point about transparency in an election is that it is first and foremost a

decision taken by the government, and in the case of Cameroon by Paul Biya. Until
that will is expressed the rest counts for nothing. This is a fact that Fonkam
Azu’u must reckon with.

No matter how over brimming may be his and his colleagues’ goodwill to work
honestly, the truth of the matter is that they are already compromised; their
hands are much too tied for them to act otherwise. What can they do to change Paul
Biya’s unwillingness to have transparent elections?

Had the president lived up his promise to have transparent elections in Cameroon
he would have created, as he also promised, an ‘independent election management
organ’ as different from ELECAM. ELECAM is as such a counterfeit of the real
thing.
The very structure and functioning of ELECAM point to the result expected of it.
And to make assurance doubly sure Paul Biya further appointed members who did not
only belong to the CPDM party but also owe it a debt of gratitude for their
careers and other big favours rendered them in the past. If Paul Biya is as clear
as crystal in what he wants, let him also acknowledge that no one is fooled. Not
even the determination of ELECAM members to be honest makes sense to anyone.

The inescapable conclusion is that ELECAM is a translation of the absence of Paul

Biya’s will to have credible elections in Cameroon. Isn’t it foolhardy and even
dangerous for Fonkam Azu’u and his colleagues to think and even say that they can
change things through the use of their goodwill? The reason for the president’s
unwillingness to have credible elections is every Cameroonian’s knowledge. Paul
Biya and his CPDM party will be the instant losers in any credible election in
Cameroon. They have remained so long in power and done so poorly that the voter
wants a change.

And isn’t it only fair game to have a change after 29 years (by 2011)?

The problem of the president’s unwillingness to change things for the better is
not limited to elections. Paul Biya is unenthusiastic about reforming other key
institutions such as freeing the courts which continue to be under government
control.

It is also not understandable why Paul Biya is reluctant to clean the system of
human rights abuse. Why does he refuse to free the national commission for human
rights to fight the extensive abuse of citizens’ rights that are mostly
perpetrated by law enforcement agents?

Furthermore, why does the president refuse to order the systematic emptying of
prisons that are three-quarters full of detainees who have spent months and years
uncharged or untried? How does that hinder Biya’s grip on power?

Ahmadou Ahidjo

And that is still not all about the lack of political will in Cameroon.
Disturbingly, Paul Biya does not have a good record of socioeconomic development.
This newspaper is by no means an admirer of Ahmadou Ahidjo. He established many of
the prejudices and injustices that have since shaped the Cameroon of today.

Yet it must be admitted in fairness that in spite of his self-imposed limitations,

he did his best. For almost all of his twenty-two years as president, Ahidjo kept
the economy growing at a steady 7% of GDP.

He had many wrong priorities. He invested too much in developing a mammoth public
sector at the very high cost of the private sector that he deliberately neglected
because he feared that he would in the process benefit and strengthen Anglophones
and the Bamileke of the West, which two groups had an early start in business.

Ahidjo did not build roads nor did he pay enough attention to primary and
secondary education. His emphasis on food self-sufficiency was good but he would
have put this in the hands of the private sector. All said, Ahidjo put Cameroon
far ahead of other African countries, especially the Francophone ones, when it
came to economic development. He called his economic model the contradictory name
of ‘planned liberalism.’

Flattered by foreign press reviews and fellow Africans, Ahidjo even dreamed of an
economic take-off (after Rostow’s stages of economic growth) when he organised a
huge celebration in 1970 to honour ten years of independence.

When he retired in 1982 he handed over a healthy economy at 7% growth rate, a

robust treasury and a negligible foreign debt. Under Paul Biya much of Ahijo’s
initiatives were abandoned and un-replaced. Decline set in almost immediately
followed by a steep recession that lasted about twelve years.

Economic growth has been much too feeble to pull the country out of the effects of
the decade-long free fall of the economy. Growth rate, once at about 5% in the
late 1990s, has since been falling steadily and presently stands at 3.2%. The
reality of that rate is that Cameroon is in socioeconomic decline.

With the recession came poverty, the acceleration of unemployment, disease, crime
and the galloping cost of living which further intensified misery.

Since 1997 the government acknowledged poverty as a national problem but has so
far been unable to resolve it.

The answer to the fast shrinking economy and all those unhappy consequences would
have been a bold stimulus package to give the economy the means of growth and
expansion. That, we are sorry, is unlikely to come in the near future. For that to
happen there must first be a strong will to move the economy in the right
direction.

Shock therapy

Last year the government was unmoved by a nation-wide anti-government uprising by

the masses against deplorable existence, what many still consider was shock
therapy. The measures adopted were too few, too superficial and ineffective. It
will probably require a greater shock to shake the government out of its lethargy.

The absence of political will seems to have permeated the entire Biya system. Even
after long years of complaints about a grossly inefficient administrative system
the government has refused to budge on the matter. It takes more than a year for a
foreign company in Cameroon to begin business. The same absence of political will
is at the origin of the absence of cohesion among the countries of the central
African sub-region. The unwillingness to apply signed and ratified conventions
makes CEMAC a wasted effort.

It takes a truck of goods from Douala port sixty days or more to travel to
neighbouring Chad, twice as long as the freight time of the goods from Shanghai!
At stake is the non-respect of conventions and corruption.

It may not appear obvious yet it is Paul Biya’s failed political will that is
still fundamental to the decline of Cameroon’s football. A month ago Cameroonians
suffered a rude shock when Togo beat the Indomitable Lions in the CAN/World Cup
football series.

The unexpected defeat sparked fears that Cameroon might not again qualify for the
2010 World Cup which it failed to do in 2006, the first time in about two decades!

The defeat also served to bring home the painful reality, which had been much
avoided in the past, that at last Cameroon’s football was clearly on the decline.

Not only is the government in a leaden slumber, its strict centralised and
sluggish administrative structure denies any decision taking at any level other
than at the very top. That makes the government unable to act in time on any
situation. The result is that the government never anticipates or takes charge of
any situation until the full damage has come home.

In the final analysis the lack of political will to modernise Cameroon in all key
areas of socioeconomic development have held the country much too far behind on
its development.

The early lead that Cameroon had over other African countries even with the
faltering efforts of Ahmadou Ahidjo has been erased. At international conferences
it is common to meet fellow Africans who remember Cameroon as the leader others
looked up to, lament over the failure of Cameroon.

Why does Paul Biya deny Cameroon its necessary modernisation? Why would he define
his political survival in so narrow and self-centred way that imperils the
nation’s progress?

Source: The Herald