UN: 4 million on AIDS drugs, others still in need

                         

  By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng
LONDON – About 4 million people are now getting AIDS drugs worldwide — a 10-fold jump in five years — but 5 million others are still in dire need of the medicine, U.N. health officials estimated in a report issued Wednesday.

The figures represented a major increase in rolling out drugs to patients across Africa, where the AIDS epidemic is focused, even though they were based on incomplete data and modeling.

They were released in an annual AIDS report jointly published by the World Health Organization, UNICEF and the U.N. AIDS program.

"Even though some of the data are not fully clear and there are some unanswered questions, this is a dramatic improvement," said Daniel Halperin, an AIDS expert at Harvard University. "It shows that all this money that has gone to treatment has made some difference."


In 2008, officials estimated more than 4 million people were on AIDS drugs in low- and middle-income countries. The biggest increase was in sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 3 million people are now on the drugs.


Overall, about 44 percent of people with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa who need AIDS drugs are now taking them. In the U.S., about 71 percent of patients in need got AIDS drugs, according to 2003 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


"We have invested a lot of funds into HIV/AIDS, but it has been a worthwhile investment because we have saved lives," said Dr. Teguest Guerma, WHO's acting AIDS director.


The authors admitted "there remain uncertainties related to the quality of data reported." Of the U.N.'s 192 member countries, 158 provided government-approved data, most of which was not independently verified.


Last year, the world spent nearly $9 billion on AIDS. For every dollar spent on public health, AIDS gets about 23 cents. It causes about 4 percent of deaths globally.


Guerma said the number of people who need AIDS drugs might double by the end of the year because WHO is considering revising its treatment guidelines. Several studies have suggested that AIDS patients could live longer if they started taking drugs sooner.


Now that millions of AIDS patients are on treatment, some experts said it was time for the U.N. to focus on other strategies for stopping the outbreak.


"We really need to do something about preventing HIV because there are more people getting infected every year than there are being put on treatment," said David Ross, an AIDS expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.


At a press conference in Johannesburg, Dr. Nono Simelela, head of South Africa's National AIDS Council, said it had asked the country's health department to draw up policies on circumcision. Studies have shown that circumcised men can reduce their chances of catching HIV by up to 60 percent.


South Africa has the world's largest number of HIV cases, about 5.5 million people. About 700,000 South Africans are on AIDS drugs, Simelela said.


She also called for other prevention strategies, like addressing the stigma around AIDS and encouraging an open, fact-based discussion of sex.


"That's where we are missing the mark," Simelela said. "The social, moral regeneration must come to the fore."


Experts warned it would be challenging to continue financing AIDS programs, given the global financial crisis. And since patients must take AIDS drugs for the rest of their lives, the cost of treatment programs will continue to increase, particularly when drug resistance develops and more expensive drugs are needed.


"The fact that WHO has come closer to meeting its target of universal AIDS treatment is certainly a good public relations coup," said Philip Stevens, a director at International Policy Network, a London-based think tank. "Whether or not this is sustainable as billions more dollars are needed in the future is an entirely different question."
____
Associated Press Writer Donna Bryson contributed to this report from Johannesburg

DEAD AND BURIED

By AYAH Paul ABINE

Some American (or was it a European?) recently had very kind words for Cameroon. The person declared that “Cameroon is the only country in the world (he/she) knows where the more arrests are made of embezzlers, the more embezzlement thrives”. Every true Cameroonian should dismiss that person as ignorant or as an inconsequential personality. That would be in perfect congruence with how we were dismissive of Transparency International when that world-renowned organization classified us as most corrupt in the world? It would also be consistent with our notorious national doctrine of self-righteousness and hollow deification of “very inferior personalities” – vips. Nothing new!

The CRTV programme “Cameroon Calling” plays on every Sunday morning, at least in part, one of the richest guidelines on the fullness of life on earth. It teaches, inter alia, that we all are children of the universe as much as wild life and flora. By extension, Cameroon is part of the universe even as we are “an Island of peace in a turbulent sea”. It is ipso facto suicidal for us to continue to glorify the delusion that we are unique. If truly we were, we would not be investing so extravagantly these days in the cleansing of our image abroad.

There lies the motive that impels us to opine whenever we can that it is dangerous for our community to depart from the universal canons that make for lasting stability, genuine peace and, of course, development. The primary of those canons is the rule of law. And the taproot of the rule of law is universal respect of the law. To put it otherwise, the law is no respecter of persons. Anything short of that is fantastic fallacy.

It follows that we are sewing dangerous seeds of discord when members of government and other self-proclaimed owners of the Cameroonian nation divest the law of its binding force with celebrated impunity. In the recent past, some of those persons have proclaimed that our national capital is their village, followed by their ordering tenants-at-sufferance on their land to quit… This was the crime of ethnic cleansing falling within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal. But in our “island of peace” with accentuated unity in advanced democracy, even verbal disapprobation of such utterance so manifestly inimical to unity and true nationalism was not forthcoming.

In similar vein did our leaders apply the law on ELECAM in a way that, invoking our uniqueness, they transformed condition precedent into condition subsequent; and yet they attracted the approbation of persons with notorious sectarian proclivity from certain parts of the country. Reason became the idle business of those that were seen as seeking to counter the novel national doctrine of alternating between heaven and hell as willed by St Peter at the glittering gate.

Little wonder then that the Minister of Armed Forces has now logically amended the law equating GCE Advanced Level in “two papers” with Bacalaureat to GCE Advance Level in “three papers”… It is alleged that before him, another minister had identically conducted himself in respect of the entry examination into the medical school. But who wants to question, much less contradict the policy that government is team spirit?

Yet, such are the dangerous ramifications we anticipated when we argued the case against toying with the supreme law of the land that the Constitution is. Never can the roof leak without wetting the ceiling. As few have failed to learn that the said supreme law has been reduced to discretionary prerogatives, they have similarly reduced the ordinary law, with the result that discrimination against minorities contrary to the law is covered with absolute impunity.

But are we not the root cause of our powerlessness, even if only in part? Let us be honest enough to appreciate the following few instances out of the many when we have conducted ourselves as if communal life is individualized rather than general and continuous.

We erratically sang a song after reunification with “our brothers in the east” in self-congratulation on some vague future success. Secondly, if President Ahidjo received ten million “motions of support”, (whatever that means), Anglophones, who were only about a fifth of the population, were the authors of half of them. Is it not true that two of the first three CPDM Sections that called for constitutional revision to make the current president eligible for a third term of office, were west of the Mungo? We surely are not without knowing that the first of such Sections to plead the case for life-presidency for the current president is also west of the Mungo. None of us can feign ignorance that Anglophones were among the first Cameroonians who preached that ELECAM should be judged on the field and not on whether it was legally constituted or not. Nor were those who conducted marches in support of the contemporary establishment outside the realm of value judgment any others than Anglophones.

All this was prompted by sordid sectarian interests and greed. Those that have to pay the price tomorrow are the children of the poor, and posterity in general. That is the concrete foundation of our apprehension. If we who were brought up in missionary institutions are so deficient in the solid moral values that a true nation should be built on, it goes without saying that the children growing up in the present system stand no chance of preaching, let alone, practicing morality.

May we be humble enough to learn that a coin is the other side. In other words, one cannot take advantage of “beneficial” (?) illegality to the exclusion of “adverse” illegality. Jurists would submit that he who comes to Equity must come with clean hands. I may have offended some sporadic believers when I wrote “The North West Contagious Virus”. But I am consoled today that my vindication has come sooner than later. The myopic who called me names then may wish to read the article in question again. I am consistent because I am nourished by the indisputable truth about human life that “a taste of the forbidden is a second transgression”. Those who find it difficult to understand that statement of mine are counseled to seek assistance rather than expose themselves to ridicule with senseless demagogy dictated by sectarian and parochial outlook.

The true Cameroonians are not yet born. Otherwise, few would doubt that, if we persist in our self-serving complicity, legality in our beloved nation may soon be dead and buried?

NB:Ayah Paul Abine ,who is currently a second-term Member of Cameroon's Parliament ,is a career Jurist.He is a noted critic of ill-conceived government plans and practices.

HIV vaccine comes closer to reality

A research team from The University of Texas, including an Indian origin scientist, has come closer to creating a vaccine for human HIV AIDS immunodeficiency virus (HIV) by creating an antigen that induces protective antibodies capable of neutralizing genetically diverse HIV strains.

"The complexity of HIV has for long thwarted development of an effective HIV vaccine. Our findings open a new path toward an effective preventative and therapeutic vaccine," said Dr Sudhir Paul, the study's senior author and a professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

"The new antigen is a prototype vaccine. This prototype successfully eliminates nature's restrictions on the production of broadly-neutralizing antibodies to HIV by the immune system," he added.


The vaccines work by introducing an antigen into the body, which spurs the immune system to produce antibodies that guard against infection.


Previously-tested HIV vaccine candidates stimulated vigorous production of antibodies to the mutable segments of the virus envelope. But, these vaccine candidates did not stimulate the production of antibodies to the regions essential for virus attachment to host T cells, the process that initiates infection.


In the new study, the researchers used a chemically-activated form of the HIV envelope protein gp120 to stimulate the production of mouse monoclonal antibodies that block infection of cultured human cells by genetically-diverse HIV strains from around the world.


Paul said these same antibodies can be found in humans who remain free of AIDS despite long-term HIV infection.


"Dr. Paul's team has developed a revolutionary antibody technology and used it to overcome major obstacles to a vaccine for HIV,” said Dr Robert L. Hunter, professor and chairman of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the UT Medical School at Houston.


They identified antibodies that neutralized 100 percent of strains drawn from the major viral subtypes.


Furthermore, they have developed ways to immunize animals to produce them. No previous vaccine candidate has even approached these objectives," he added.

The study appears in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
courtesy:The Times Of India

ARROGANT CONTEMPT

BY HON AYAH Paul ABINE

The containment of bestiality in the man is apprehension of the consequences of wrongful conduct. That is what provoked and promoted the development of the reasoning faculty ending up with peaceful community life. The reverse would have been anarchy with “the survival of the fittest” as the unique crude law governing interactions. Man has come a long way to discard such ferocious uncertainties of life. Over the ages, positive refinements have added up to consensual social contracts culminating in democracy.

Convinced that it is erroneous to take refuge behind such grotesque propaganda as “advanced democracy” to cut off additives preservative of that fountain of peace, I argued recently in all good faith that granting immunity that places a citizen above the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, could liberate the bestiality in the human being. That particular person could well be reasonable enough to impose self-restraint. But the case may not be true of his successor or even his entourage, especially where the person does not exercise strict oversight. That appears to be the situation with the Cameroonian society of today.


We never can overemphasize that justice is the ultimate guarantor of peace. That palpably explains why the Bible insists that justice will be the final act in the winnowing of mankind on Doomsday. One should not, therefore, hesitate to regret in absolute terms that Cameroonians, claiming to have the confidence of the President of the Republic, are trampling the law underfoot to the extent of showing arrogant contempt even for the decisions of the highest court of the land that the Supreme Court is.


The case in point is the Minister of Culture. Her disregard for the Supreme Court’s judgment declaring illegal the “company” she wants to impose on Cameroonian musicians in replacement of the existing legal body is a mark of absolute lawlessness. And the silence of the President of the Republic over her arrogant contempt of court only does bolster her foolhardiness. One must wonder aloud what respect that Minister has even for her late father. If she takes cognizance that her late father was for years the head of the body that enacts laws in Cameroon, and yet she treats with contempt her late father’s works, then of course she is showing contempt even for her father. Nothing can be more dishonourable!


One may not be totally surprised, though. The modern trend on the African Continent is that those in power have placed themselves above the law. In the result, even where legal process has been followed and persons below them have worn elections, the pragmatic outcome has been power-sharing, whereby the winners have accepted positions on the lower rungs of the ladder of power, holding overturned hats for the collection of crumbs from the high tables. Even as “an island of peace”, our country has not been spared by the storm of contempt for the law this time around. Who argues to the contrary?


Is it not in line with the growing trend that Papillon has pleaded the case for the amalgamation of the minister’s “company” which the Supreme Court has declared illegal and the legally existing body? And is his stance not consistent with the Green Tree Agreement? If a judgment of a United Nations’ court can be set aside in favour of an agreement between the parties, and yet that has attracted overwhelming international approbation, how much less the judgment of a local court! And have the power-that-be in Cameroon not told the citizenry time without number that the truth and the good example come from above? Why waste time then arguing the case for the outlandish principle that court judgments are binding on all, and are therefore automatically enforceable?


So forward ever, Madam Minister! After all, Supreme Court c’est quoi?.. But wait a moment! Here is some food for thought for you: will all your children, if any you have, be as powerful as you are so as to dispense with the courts and the law, and yet live in peace? You may wish to accept that that is the guiding principle for parents who love their children, and posterity at large, Madam!

Gabon Misses The Colour Revolution!

By Tazoacha Asonganyi in Yaounde.


The travails of the "opposition" since the wind of change blew across Africa in the early 90s has reduced them, especially in Cameroon to the impotence of numbers: of parties, of media outlets, of trade unions, of associations… All opposition to de facto one-party rule has become nothing but window dressing, and the resultant proliferations of laxity, inertia, corruption, one-upmanship, and total public disgust in the selfishness, cronyism and unresponsiveness that characterise state power.


The gesticulations of the opposition during and after the recent elections in Gabon resemble those of the opposition in Cameroon in 1992, 1997, 2004, and possibly in 2011; they show clearly that they have learned little from the "People Power" Corazon Aquino (RIP) gave birth to in 1986, and which produced the wave of "colour revolutions" that swept through Eastern Europe and other regions of the world, and liberated the people from the fangs of communism, and from the clutches of failed elections managed by dictatorial regimes.


Aquino achieved her revolution by organising and teaching the people about the benefits of selflessness, courage, and determination, and the helplessness of tanks, guns, truncheons, water cannons and other tools of oppression in the face of masses of a determined people. Indeed, Aquino’s revolution triumphed on the mutual lessons learned by the political elite and the masses: the elite learned not to fear popular participation because it is controllable, and about the effectiveness of coalitions; and the popular masses learned about the pleasures of political action, and the effectiveness of their own power!


Aquino knew how to teach the people about the ever continuing confrontation between power (the state/dictators) and freedom (the people), with power always wanting to expand, and freedom always seeking to contain it; republican government, initially believed to be the incarnation of triumphant freedom had turned around to be an incarnation of the people’s oppression, so the people needed to reestablish their sovereign freedom.


She knew how to make the people aware of the futility of asking dictators to establish what the people usually refer to as a level playing field; instead, she encouraged the people to focus on dealing with the reality of their situation, as it was: the people had to focus on the goal of overthrowing the dictatorship, not get distracted by obstacles put on their way by the regime! The people came to know that with totalitarian regimes, election fraud is inevitable because any regime-sponsored candidate must steal votes to win.


Therefore, rather than indulge in the illusion of winning at the ballot box, they formed coalitions, identified appropriate leadership, and an inner core of strategists to formulate strategies and tactics for turning election fraud to an advantage, and using it as a trigger for mass protests in… especially the political capital!


Such simple teachings empowered freedom (the people) to rise against a despotic regime, and overthrow the entrenched power of Ferdinand Marcos!


A number of colour revolutions followed Aquino’s revolution, including Viktor Yushchenko’s Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004. Like Aquino’s, it involved mobilizing the people through their specific strategies that included: empowering the people to identify and combat electoral fraud, and in the process, sharpen the engagement and commitment of thousands of actors; organizing a marathon rock concert that was planned and impeccably executed to bring Kiev, the political capital, to a standstill after elections, until the people’s victory was won; keeping information about various activities in distinct compartments so that very few grasped the complete picture; doing good arithmetic on troop numbers and tactical operations on distribution of tracts, use of FM radio stations and other communication avenues to ensure that some 200.000 people came out in Kiev to outnumber the 15.000 strong troops. At the final count, not just 200.000 people turned
out; some 1.000.000 people flooded the streets and defeated the candidate of the regime, Viktor Yanukovych!


What is going on in Gabon betrays opposition ignorance of the nature of power. In the face of the struggle between freedom and power, power always knows how to be patient because it knows exactly what it wants: it can outwait slogans, disorder, prayers, destruction, condemnations… At the end of the day, power always triumphs over the disorganised force of freedom!


The Aquino revolution has so far triumphed only where freedom got organized, and surreptitiously launched its attack using as stepping stones, elections organized on the imposed terms of dictators. Invariably, the ensuing non-violent struggle always overcame water-cannons, tanks, guns and police truncheons and overthrew dictators and their cohorts. It does not matter that the regimes humbled by these revolutions were backed by the whole state machinery: the administration, the judiciary, the armed forces, the laws, the state treasury, and neocolonial powers…!


General strikes, sit-ins, and civil disobedience are the weapons of these revolutions, but they are not about selling after the market! The burning and destruction in Port-Gentil are very similar to the holing of the opposition, and the burning and destruction that went on in the native "province" of the opposition leader following the 1992 elections in Cameroon. Power knows how to outwait such disorganized acts of freedom! The evidence is there for all to see: Gabonese power is already globe-trotting; disorganized freedom has only its eyes to weep!!

World Leaders Believed German Reunification Would Lead to World War III

From theTrumpet.com

Documents released leading up to the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall contain a powerful warning for us today.


Twenty years ago, as Germany moved toward reunification, leaders in Britain, France and Russia feared that a newly united Germany would threaten the security of Europe.


Official transcripts of Kremlin meetings smuggled out of Moscow and published on the Times Online Thursday show that then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev that Britain did not want a united Germany.


A separate set of documents published by the British foreign office show that French President Francois Mitterrand feared a united Germany, and even considered a French-Soviet military alliance to stop it from happening.


Mitterrand told Thatcher that a united Germany could “make even more ground than had Hitler.” He said that if Germany expanded, then Europe would be in the same position that it was in before World War i. He also said that reunification could turn Germans into the “bad” people they used to be. He pointed out that historically Germany never accepted its current borders, but pushed outward.


The Time’s Kremlin papers show that the Russians also were worried about a united Germany. Premier of the Soviet Union Nikolai Ryzhkov told Gorbachev that if Germany was allowed to reunify on its own terms, “then in 20 or 30 years Germany will start another world war” (emphasis ours throughout).


Jacques Attali, adviser to the French president, was equally concerned. He told one of Gorbachev’s senior aides that French leaders questioned whether Russia’s lack of interference in the fall of the Berlin Wall meant that “the ussr has made peace with the prospect of a united Germany and will not take any steps to prevent it.”


“This has caused a fear approaching panic,” he said.


Attali later told Mitterrand that he was so scared of a united German that should it come to pass he would “fly off to live on Mars.”


Thatcher believed that a united Germany was so much of a threat that she was willing to work with Gorbachev to stop it from happening. The British prime minister asked to go off the record while she told Gorbachev her real opinion on German reunification. Although this conversation was not recorded, Kremlin officials reproduced it from memory after the meeting was over.


“The reunification of Germany is not in the interests of Britain and Western Europe,” she said. “It might look different from public pronouncements, in official communiqué at nato meetings, but it is not worth paying one’s attention to it. We do not want a united Germany. This would have led to a change to postwar borders and we cannot allow that because such development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”


Thatcher was horrified when she heard reports that the Bundestag in Bonn sang “Deutschland Über Alles” to celebrate the wall’s destruction. The song includes the words “Germany, Germany above all, Above all in the world.”
Her worries persisted. In 1990, she told Gorbachev, “All Europe is watching this [German reunification] not without a degree of fear, remembering very well who started the two world wars.”


At a meeting with Mitterrand she said then-West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl had forgotten that “the division of Germany was the result of a war which Germany had started.”


Unfortunately, too many other diplomats had forgotten this same fact. Mitterrand soon caved in to a unified Germany in an effort to increase France’s power within the European Union. America also backed a united Germany. The entire British Foreign Office supported German reunification. Strong as the “Iron Lady” was, Prime Minister Thatcher could not stand against the world alone. Germany united less than a year after the wall fell.


These leaders knew their history. They knew Germany. They knew where a unified Germany would lead.


Thatcher continued to warn about a united Germany. “You have not anchored Germany to Europe,” she said in 1995. “You have anchored Europe to a newly dominant, unified Germany. In the end, my friends, you’ll find it will not work.”
History alone warns that a unified Germany will threaten Europe, and, in today’s era of advanced weaponry, threaten the whole world.


These leaders were right to be worried. For years the Trumpet and its predecessor, the Plain Truth, have been issuing exactly the same warning. Germany has been expanding economically and politically within the EU. Very soon it will begin expanding militarily, just like these leaders feared. Watch for this to happen

News Analysis: Ali Bongo visits Cameroon for support to stabilize post-election Gabon

By Liu Fang


YAOUNDE, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- One week after Gabon officially published the Aug. 30 presidential election results, which are being contested by the opposition, president-elect Ali Bongo arrived in the Cameroonian capital Yaounde on Friday for a visit to seek support to stabilize his country.


Many observers believe his face-to-face meeting with Cameroonian President Paul Biya was not only meant for friendship between the two neighboring countries, but political solidarity inwhich Yaounde bolsters the eldest son of the late Gabonese president Omar Bongo Ondimba, who died on June 8 in Barcelona, Spain, after having been in power for nearly 42 years.


"President Biya was among the first foreign heads of state to congratulate Ali Bongo. It seems to me that Ali Bongo has come to thank him for his support in the Gabon election and to ask him to assist by bringing together all the different factions that are dissatisfied, so that he could successfully come out of the crisis," Prof. Joseph Vincent Ntuda Ebode told Xinhua.


Ali Bongo, 50, was declared the winner of the race with 41.73 percent of vote by the electoral commission. The outcome was confirmed by the Constitutional Court afterwards.


His challengers include former interior minister Andre Mba Obame who won 25.88 percent of vote and opposition leader Pierre Mamboundou who scored 25.22 percent. They both denounced the published results, comparing Ali Bongo's victory to "a constitutional coup d'etat."


The results provoked a wave of violence in the Gabonese capital Libreville and the second largest city Port-Gentil, leaving three people dead, according to the official sources.


The opposition, however, insists that at least 15 protests were killed by the security forces.


A coalition of losing candidates led by ex-prime minister Jean Eyeghe Ndong reiterated on Monday their rejection of the results, while calling for a recount of votes because of "great manipulations of the results," stuffing of ballot boxes and incomprehensible interference with the voters registration which tilted the outcome in favor of Ali Bongo.


Despite the accusation by the opposition in Gabon, Cameroon's head of state send a congratulatory message to the new leadership in the south neighbor on the same day.


"Cameroon is currently considered to have the most senior head of state in the zone of CEMAC (the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa States). It is evident that in the exercise of his new functions, Ali Bongo came to seek advice from president Biya," said Ntuda, the head of the Center for Political Studies and Strategic Research at the University of Yaounde.


The same opinion was shared by Dr.Mathias Eric Owona Nguini, political scientist who also teaches in the university.


"President Biya is going to use his experience of the long time he has been in power to convince some political actors in Gabon to negotiate so that they can calm and pacify their country," he told Xinhua.


He recalled a role played by Cameroon in the past in mediating between the members of Bongo's clan before his death, notably between Ali Bongo, the former minister for defense and his sister Pascaline, the ex-cabinet director, whose husband was the foreign minister.


The same Biya asked Casimir Oye Mba, the former baron of the Omar Bongo regime, to pull out of the elections in favor of Ali Bongo.


The head of state of Cameroon was at the Yaounde-Nsimalen International airport with officials of his government where he received and accompanied Ali Bongo.


They held a tete-a-tete at the State House, but no information about their discussions was divulged to the media.


"President Biya has always honored me and he considers me as his son. He was a brother to my father," Ali Bongo told a Cameroonian public radio CRTV on his arrival in the afternoon in Yaounde.


He affirmed that he had reserved his first visit to his "father" so that "he can give me his advice." He claimed himself as "one of the presidents who are much respected on the continent."


Insiders, however, disclosed that Biya and Ali Bongo touched on the formation of a future government in Gabon.


"We are waiting for a date to be set by the Constitutional Court (for the inauguration). We are going to form the government and get back to work," Ali Bongo said.


According to Ntuda Ebode, negotiations need to be held before the forming of a government of national unity. The talks could help reconcile the people of Gabon.


He observed that Biya will also weigh in, as he did during the elections "to help avoid any sociopolitical instability which could also affect Cameroon."


The Gabonese ambassador to Cameroon, Michel Madoungou, who was interviewed by Xinhua, said the visit by the president elect, Ali Bongo to Cameroon, was "a campaign promise."


"President Ali Bongo made a promise during his election campaigns that he will reserve his first foreign visit for Cameroon," the diplomat affirmed. "In any case, in his capacity as the head of state, president Paul Biya is a father to Ali Bongo."

Courtesy:WWW.XINHUANET.COM

CAMEROON:CONFUSION OF POWERS

*By AYAH Paul ABINE
When a group of concerned catholic Christians set up the Justice and Peace Commission in the Diocese of Buea in the early nineties, the foundation of the scheme was their firm conviction that justice and peace are inextricably glued together. Ant truly, the interdependence of Justice and peace makes no allowance for the existence of the one without the other. That statement is beyond disproof today and tomorrow. Justice automatically anticipates peace, and peace is the inevitable consequence of justice. The collateral dimension is that whoever talks about justice talks about the law. It can only be so because justice is compelling conformity with the law, and/or sanctioning lawbreakers.

Wisdom then is the recognition or, at least, the acceptance that the law is supreme. No-one, for instance, can hold an office without complying, a priori, with the law laying down the conditions for holding that office. If a member of the security wears a uniform and bears a gun, it is because the law so provides. Conducting oneself to the contrary breaks the law, and is necessarily a breach of peace. It is akin to self destruction because destroying what makes one what one is destroys what one is.
As self is more often than not the fatal end of impartiality, civilized societies regard the law as almost sacred. They have used it to organize themselves in three complementary arms of governance that interact with and restrain one another, namely the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The main function of the Legislature is the enactment of laws. The laws so enacted guide the Executive in its conduct of State affairs. And the Judiciary interprets and applies the said laws to ensure observance. As it is, no one arm does everything: there is division of labour as the economist would describe it. Democratic societies that have stood the test of time are those that have adopted and maintained that neat separation of powers, assuring that each of those three arms of governance has reasonable autonomy.

As a lawmaker and a crusader for peace, one should naturally wish that our system of governance was modeled on that time-tested system of governance. This is essential in that genuine peace means conducting oneself in a manner that leads to and promotes peace; and refraining from perpetrating conduct that disrupts the peace. That can be summarized as being amenable to the law. Such preventive conduct is most salutary as no-one doubts that a taste of the forbidden is a second transgression. Negation is resultant instability and insecurity for all.

Therefore have we stated more than once before that making the President of the Republic head of the Judicial Council and the guarantor of the independence of the Judiciary inevitably undermines the independence of that arm of governance. That is not our concern here though. Our present objective is to opine that saddling lawmakers with executive duties outside their traditional realm of legislating is bringing the Legislature under the authority of the Executive, and thereby weakening it.

Over the years, Cameroonians have heard and read about the President of the Republic being represented at some summit of Heads of State by the President of the National Assembly; and about some new ambassador to Cameroon or some foreign envoy being received by the President of the National Assembly on behalf of the President of the Republic. The media have similarly informed us several times that the President of the National Assembly was “the personal representative of the President of the Republic” at some funeral or another. Much as those statements may have sounded normal to the ordinary Cameroonian, someone with legal knowledge should be courageous enough to state that such practices are typically Cameroonian and outside the law. In our thirst for finding what has favoured the thriving of major democracies in the world, we have searched unsuccessfully for any similar confusion of roles in those democracies. Neither have we chanced upon any enabling local legal instrument that justifies this departure by our system from what is usual in those democracies?

We are making but a statement of fact that appointing the head of one arm of government as “the personal representative” of the head of another arm reduces the appointee to the position of an errand boy. The autonomy of such errand boy of course is eroded, and the doctrine of the separation of powers becomes a mere illusion. It makes no difference that ours is a presidential system. Equally immaterial would be the argument that the one is the head of a party, and the other owes him allegiance as a member. The constitution of a party cannot prevail over the constitution of the nation. Nor can Parliament ever be on the same plane as an organ of a political party, whatever its epithet.

Nobody denies that the Constitution of Cameroon provides for relations between the Executive and the Legislature. But those relations are limited to co-operation in the realm of legislation. It would be important to take note that co-operation and collaboration are not synonymous. The latter connotes subordination; and that is the essential characteristic of an errand boy. Nowhere in the constitutional provisions on relations between the Legislature and the Executive does one find, even by inference, any allowance for collaboration between the two arms of governance. The head of the Legislature cannot therefore substitute for the head of the Executive in the performance of the latter’s executive functions. As a matter of fact, the law prohibits a member of parliament from even being on the board of directors of a semi-public corporation. This is in contrast with the members of Government who very often add those positions to their ministerial functions. Much less therefore can the head of the Legislature assume executive functions, even of only temporarily.

The Constitution of course provides that the President of the Republic can expressly “delegate some of his powers to the Prime Minister, other members of Government and any other senior administrative officials of the State, within the framework of their respective duties”. Let us hasten to state that the translation is grossly wrong as the version in French does not contain the equivalence of the phrase “and any senior…duties”. Even if the translation were accurate, few would argue that the President of the National Assembly in his official capacity is a “senior administrative (official)”. Granted hypothetically that he even was he would still not receive new ambassadors as that is not “within the framework of (his) duties”.

As the President of the National Assembly is neither “the Prime Minister” nor one of the “other members of Government”, the President of the Republic is definitely not within the Constitution when he procures him to deputize as the President of the Republic at those summits, conferences and funerals. The contrary can only be true if some instrument higher than the Constitution of Cameroon has provided to the contrary. But no such instrument have we found.

It is only reasonable and logical then to conclude from the foregoing that the practice of effacing the line of demarcation between the two arms of governance as per those “appointments” is inconsistent with our Constitution. It would therefore not be audacious for one to opine that it was high time the practice was discarded.

*Ayah paul Abine ,who is currently a second-term Member of Cameroon's Parliament ,is a career Jurist.He is a noted critic of ill-conceived government plans and practices.

Cameroon:Revisiting 7th African Traditional Medicine Day

By Mofor Samuel
The 7th African Traditional Medicine Day has come and gone with not much done as far as its celebration was concerned. But for the Secretary of State for Public Health, Alim Hayatou, who presided over its celebration at the national level, little or nothing was done at the regions.

In the South West Region, and more precisely in Buea, Dr Richard Fru, a traditional healer, and the CEO of the Dr Fru’s Garden of Eden International Healing and Research Foundation, organized a press conference to educate the population on the importance of traditional medicine.

For two hours pressmen from within and without the region bombarded him with questions on the subject matter. The theme of this year’s celebration was:”Traditional Medicine and Patients’ Security”. Some of the major issues raised during the press conference centred around the day’s theme, Wealth Health Organisation’s promotion of traditional medicine, clarification of doubts about traditional medicine, malpractice in the domain-the issue of quacks, charlatans and fake traditional healers; no law regulating the practice in Cameroon, the divided nature of traditional healers, and the administration blocking traditional healers etc on the media.
The Administration was conspicuously absent during the press conference even though it was the only activity in the region to celebrate the day. Was it a sign of the unhealthy relationship existing between the administration in the region and the traditional healers?
Whatever the case, one thing is certain: traditional medicine has its place in Cameroon -whether we like it or not.
The one big question is what is traditional medicine all about? Secondly what does the World Health Organization say about it? Traditional medicine is generally the old health care practices linked to a culture. It used to exist before the coming or advent of modern scientific medicine. It has been practiced in different forms by all cultures and so we can talk of African Medicine, Asian or Chinese Medicine. Traditional healers consider health as the intimate association of the physical, mental social moral and spiritual wellbeing. In traditional medicine, emphasis is on the moral and spiritual aspect of existence and this gives a new dimension to healthcare and permits man to maintain good health.

As far as African Traditional Medicine is concerned, the progressive development of this medicine resurfaced again on the scene following the political events in the 60's.
With the coming of independence, the African saw the need to redefine his socio-cultural identity and traditional medicine was an integral part of this heritage. Hence the forceful comeback of traditional medicine as Africans freely went back to their roots.

Moreover, Africans had never been completely cut off from traditional medicine in spite of the introduction of modern medicine by the colonial masters. The economic situation of African countries made the techniques and importation of medicines less accessible making the powers that be to look into the problem and study the possibility of going back to traditional medicine to improve on the healthcare situation.
This concept was approved by the International Conference on Primary Health Care which held in Alma Ata in 1978. The Alma Ata Declaration in its description of Primary Health Care, stressed on the need of bringing together all those involved in healthcare, if need be traditional healers, prepare them socially and technically to work as a team and to respond to the health needs of their localities.
Since the incorporation of traditional medicine in WHO’s programmes in 1976, the gap between traditional and modern medicine seems to be somehow filled. Practitioners of modern medicine henceforth show some keen interest in numerous traditional practices and a growing number of traditional healers have started to accept and use certain modern techniques.

In certain developing countries some health administrators have recommended the association to Primary Health Care of traditional healers who understand the socio-cultural context of the local population, who are well respected and who must have acquired a considerable experience. Economic consideration, the distances to be covered in certain countries to get to a health facility, the influence of traditional beliefs, the lack of health professionals particularly in rural areas are some of the factors that contributed to this recommendation. Adequate programmes for the training and orientation of traditional birth attendants have already been put in place in many countries.
Finally in Resolution AFR/RC28/R3, WHO and member states were invited to take appropriate measure on the use of essential drugs and medicinal plants of the traditional pharmacopoeia to satisfy the fundamental needs of the African Pharmaceutical Industry.

Earlier in Resolution AFR/RC24/R14, The Regional Committee had decided that the technical discussions of its 26th Session will have as theme: “Traditional Medicine and its role in the development of health services in Africa.” The inclusion of experts in traditional medicine in the board of regional committee experts saw the creation of Resolution AFR/RC25/R8 underlining the interest to revalorize this heritage.
Following these resolutions, the WHO Regional Office for Africa gave a strong impulse to the traditional medicine programme both at regional and national levels. Different member states have been trying to put in place a mechanism to create a narrow link between traditional and modern medicine laying emphasis on the training of the traditional healers and to educate them to improve on the results and eliminate negative practices.

After independence traditional medicine regained its rights in most countries as moves were made towards its acknowledgement, official status, harmonization and last but not the least its collaboration with modern medicine. In spite of all these moves, it has not been easy to establish the facts on the actual situation of traditional medicine due to lack of data and statistics in several countries where things have been reduced to conjectures.

The first meeting of regional experts on this question was held in 1976 at the Regional Office. After analyzing the situation prevailing in countries, proposing definitions, bringing out both negative and positive aspects of traditional medicine; the meeting proposed approaches to be used, underlined the need of a political option in member states and formulated recommendations on the training of traditional healers, the circulation of scientific information as well as the research to be carried out to promote traditional medicine and to integrate both traditional and modern medicine in the health system.

After defining terminologies like: traditional medicine and traditional healer, studying the diagnostic procedure, including methods, techniques and products used underlining the positive aspects and the inadequacies, the participants came out with recommendations underlining the need to:

-take a firm political decision in matters of traditional medicine
-promulgate laws and regulations translating this decision
-identify and carry out a census of valuable healers
-establish a narrow collaboration between the two systems
-motivate traditional healers to participate in health team work activities
-motivate members of the health team to accept traditional healers
-promote multidisciplinary activities by including traditional healers.

Judging from these recommendations and going by what is obtained in Cameroon today, there is still a lot of feet -dragging on this domain particularly by the powers that be, health workers ,and to some extent the traditional healers themselves.

For example the law regulating the practice in Cameroon is yet to go through in parliament. Traditional healers are still in dispersed ranks. As far as the collaboration between healthcare practitioners and traditional healers are concerned, there is much of talking than action. When one realizes that traditional medicine existed before the advent of modern medicine and that close to 80% of Cameroonians still rely on it, there is every reason for the government to put in place a mechanism to regulate the practice. By so doing, the local population which depends on this medicine will see their health problems better taken care of and this will go a long way to improve on the health status of the Cameroonian population.
Great

CAMEROON:INVITATION FOR UPCOMING EVENTS

*November 1-6, 2009-CAMEROON NATIONAL YOUTH FORUM UNDER THE THEME " PLAN JEUNESSE"

*December 6-11,2009-AFRICAN YOUTH FORUM UNDER THE THEME "RE- AWAKENING OF THE AFRICAN YOUTH।

VENUE : UNIVERSITY OF BUEA ,SOUTH WEST , CAMEROON.

We pass our most distinguished greetings from the National Executive committee of the Association of Youth for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy, the Millennium Development Goals and Africa’s Unity. We are organizing a national youth forum under the theme " PLAN JEUNESSE",and an African Youth forum which will also very much also high light on the potential youth in promoting intercultural, and Youth oriented activities within the region, country and continent in the developmental process of the above settings.

The purpose of this forum is to have our African leaders, elite, stake-holders, development agencies, NGOs, IGOs, donors and the diplomatic core to reorient their development strategies in Africa to suit its realities. This will therefore instill a sense of self confidence among the African youth. Knowing that involving them in the developmental process of Africa, would go a long way to enhance peace and development, for, it is only in having a sense of belonging that the Youth will be motivated to take part in the developmental process and thus contribute meaningfully to their societies ( Give back to Society).

PARTICIPATION FEES:

Comrades, participation fees vary according to where a comrade finds himself in the continent or the globe; Local participants

(Cameroon ) Individuals, 60,000frs (both forums) members of organizations 50,000frs (within Cameron)

International Participants;

(Africa) Individuals $1000frs (both forums) members of the organizations $700

NB: Please you can choose to attend only one of the above forums thus pay only half of the set participation fees according your status and place of Domicile on the continent or globe. Please fees will be paid on arrival at the conference venue. What is needed most importantly are a list of your members and organization if you belong to one, with your passport numbers if you are not a national, so we can facilitate your obtaining of entry visas and be at the airport to receive you. The information can be sent to the following emails:

fedafricyouthleaders@yahoo.com, mbangtangson@yahoo.com . the Number below can also be contacted for more information. Attached is the program of activities for both forums

Song Stephen M

President

THE EROSION OF CAMEROON’S JUDICIARY

BY AYAH Paul ABINE
In 1993, Cameroonian civil servants (including members of the Judiciary) suffered two major salary cuts; and the franc was devalued by fifty per cent. Strikes by poverty-stricken civil servants ensued. The Minister of Justice then was a certain Douala Moutome, said to be a lawyer. Either from ignorance or from crude violation of the law, he purported to suspend members of the Judiciary with contemptuous disregard for their legal right to be heard. He additionally threatened to recruit “law graduates” to replace the striking members of the Judiciary if the latter did not return to work expeditiously. That the Constitution of Cameroon provided that the Judiciary was independent meant little to the powerful Lord Minister.

Few persons familiar with the Cameroonian Judiciary would dispute that the Executive has since embarked on the systematic weakening of the Judiciary that was already more of a decorative appendage to the Executive. Examples are legion. The few mentioned hereunder are merely selected to illustrate that assertion. What beats the imagination is that the very persons preaching peace would be oblivious that there can be no genuine peace without proper and efficient dispensing of justice.

A salient example of the blatant undermining of the Judiciary the Moutome way is the 2004 presidential decree which empowered the President of the Republic to appoint, inter alia, university lecturers, “category-A civil servants, bailiffs and notaries public” as members of the Judiciary. Any euphemistic colouring of the ulterior motive is like hiding bush meat in a net. For every nursery-school pupil in Cameroon knows that a good many university lecturers do wear party uniforms and march in their threadbare academic apparel in support of political party leaders. Nor are there many who are unaware that the Public Service is wholly politicized, so much so that civil servants are party resource persons and campaign managers.

Aside from jesting, what else can be considered as watering down the legal profession more than raising such partisan lopsided laymen to the Bench reserved for learned friends? It surely does not require much thinking to come to the conclusion that the intention of the Executive in preparing the ground for such unorthodox replacement of members of the learned profession was to put on their enquiry any members of the Judiciary contemplating ever again taking independent positions vis-à-vis the Executive.

Prior to that decree even, registrars-in-chief, arrogating to themselves legislative powers, had enacted a law that a litigant must deposit five per cent of his claim as a condition precedent to his filing a claim in court. Apart from protecting public authorities against claims for abuse of office, that illegal condition transformed the courts into lawless institutions with registrars-in-chief at the helm, regulating the filing of civil cases in courts of law nominally headed by professionals as per the law. Even as the Minister of Justice is well aware that this is a monumental illegality, his ministry strictly observes, and enforces the strict observance of the illegality. After all, as long as money is perpetually available for the grabbing by the bold, dogs can keep barking but the train goes on.

As a taste of the forbidden ripples greater transgressions, the Executive has now proceeded to fuse High Courts and Courts of First Instance together. They certainly do not doubt that this is totally inconsistent with the law. And that surely explains why, to dissipate alarm, they have maintained the structures of those courts for the time being while their composition is being eroded. The fusion started selectively with the professional corps. But the recent appointment of registrars-in-chief to those tribunals is conclusive evidence that the fusion is near completion.

For a better understanding of how the fusion is unlawful, it is instructive to traverse briefly the three kinds of jurisdiction of the two tribunals. To start with jurisdiction ratione loci, every High Court corresponds to the surface area of a Division on the political map of Cameroon. But there is a proviso that, for want of manpower, one High Court could cover more Divisions than one. A Court of First Instance, formerly called Magistrates’ Court in West Cameroon, on the other hand, corresponds to the surface area of a Subdivision, with a similar proviso mutatis mutandis.

As for jurisdiction ratione materiae, a High Court entertains felonies in criminal proceedings; and hears civil cases whenever the claim exceeds 10.000.000 francs. A Court of First Instance similarly hears simple offences and misdemeanours; and entertains civil suits each time the claim does not exceed 10.000.000 francs.

In respect of jurisdiction ratione personae, the law on Judicial Organization clearly provides that each of those courts has a distinct composition with a president as the head of the Bench, and a registrar-in-chief as the head of the registry. Their competences are circumscribed by jurisdiction ratione loci and ratione materiae.

But what obtains in those tribunals today is that, in appointing the personnel, the President of the Republic fuses the composition of the two tribunals together as if the two were one and equal. For instance, judges appointed to the High Courts are simultaneously appointed to the Courts of First Instance. This is definitely not within the law. It would be absurd to hold that Parliament took all the time to legislate for tribunals at two levels following a Bill tabled by the President of the Republic, and that that Parliament and the very President intended in fact that the tribunals be indistinguishable in their composition. Nor would anyone seriously contend that the law intended an absurdity here when it is common knowledge that the law does not intend an absurdity.

If the argument is that the Constitution of Cameroon provides that “Judicial power shall be exercised by the Supreme Court, Courts of Appeal and Tribunals”, without distinguishing between High Courts and Courts of First Instance, the only avenue open to the President of the Republic is to refer the matter to the Constitutional Council for the determination of the constitutionality of the relevant law. There is no constitutional provision permitting him to ignore a law duly enacted by Parliament, or to conduct himself as the Constitutional Council.

Again, the said Constitution provides that the “composition” of those courts “shall be laid down by law”. It was therefore in the pursuance of the Constitution that the law laid down the composition of the tribunals. Even if the argument were that, in the event of any conflict, the direct constitutional provision would prevail over the law, the body having exclusive jurisdiction to determine the matter is the Constitutional Council.

It is abundantly clear to every real legal mind, therefore, that the law is unambiguous that the two tribunals are distinct from each other. If the Legislature intended that their composition be fused under certain circumstances, it would have so stipulated by a proviso as it did with respect to jurisdiction ratione loci.

Such provision would not have been anything new. In West Cameroon, justices of appeal had jurisdiction to hear and determine cases in the High Court. But that was in accordance with an express provision of the law. It cannot be by presumption; much less can a presumption be invoked to defeat an express provision of the law. It would be useful to add that the law on jurisdiction is strictly construed. That is why in the Magistrates’ Courts of old, magistrates were classified in grades, and their jurisdiction ratione materiae was strictly restricted even within the same court.

We cannot think our system so crude that it would permit green heads from school to sit in High Courts and toy with the lives of citizens by hearing and determining capital offences. Nor can it be a valid point that we so lack judges that there is real need to appoint partisan lopsided laymen to interpret the law they have not learnt. No reasonable man with elementary legal knowledge would advance a proposition that the classification of offences in the penal code, and the enactment of the law by the Legislature providing for two distinct tribunals were meant for jest.

Media Exposes Biya's Lavish Expenditure in France

But Cameroon Government Fights Back

By Chrsitopher Ambe Shu
Cameroon President, Paul Biya , who was recently cited by a French NGO of having enormous ill-gotten wealth hidden abroad,has again been a subject of harsh media attack.

French media have just reported that the Cameroonian president and co. who are in France since Mid -August ,have been spending each day 27 million 300 hundred thousand francs on hotel bills.But Cameroon Minister of Communication has dismissed the report as false.

Following is a press release issued by the Minister of Communication.

«The Minister of Communication is hereby informing both national and international opinion that on 28 August 2009, some French based media, France Inter, Radio Fidélité Nantes and a cybernetic journal published articles on the Head of State's visit to France. The articles were taken over by some national newspapers.
Essentially, the articles hold that for the Head of State's stay in Hôtel Lucien Barrière de La Baule, a daily amount of 27 million 300 hundred thousand francs is spent on hotel bills.

In detail, the articles recall that after the ill-gotten wealth, here comes very costly vacations, in spite of the economic crisis which is ravaging the country and which led to a civil unrest of February 2008.

The Minister of Communication wishes to inform opinion that the very first reactions to these accusations came from France.

First of all, there was a right of reply by the Managing Director of Hôtel Lucien Barrière, which was published in the accusing media, in which he underlined the in-exactitude and false nature of the information earlier published. The right to reply was followed by a strong editorial from the French journalist, Yannick Urrien, which was published in "La Baule +». Here are some extracts of the editorial:

Quotation N°1: «Some people are still surprised to know that the profession of journalism is losing its value to the point where a recent survey shows that the French people place journalists and prostitutes on the same level This says it all: The people of La Baule in general and business persons in La Baule in particular have just lived a good example of media manipulation». End of quote.

Quotation N°2: «Of cause, this is about the vacation of a Head of State who benefits from every regard due his rang, through the image perceived by the people of La Baule is not that of expenditure or of eccentricity». End of quote.

Quotation N°3: «The question is whether the journalists who write these things have been to La Baule to find out from the business people». End of quote.

Quotation N°4: «Beside, commentaries heard are contrary to what is written in the media The stay of President Biya's delegation pales into insignificance besides the trip of an Emir with his close guards, or beside that of an international rock star To lie to one's readers or to one's listeners in order to serve political or malicious interests, does not serve the profession of journalism». End of quote.
With these two reactions, we can conclude that the mass has been said.

However, the Minister of Communication who believes in the words of the French journalist, Yannick Urrien, thinks that once more the Cameroonian Head of State is a victim of assault from underground forces which manipulate the media, even beyond our national frontiers.

It is worth mentioning that, like any other worker, President Paul Biya has a right to his vacations. This is not a privilege but a right, which he can exercise wherever he wishes to do so, with the means put at his disposal by the sovereign people, by the electors, to cloth himself, for his accommodation, for his feeding, for his healthcare, to provide his needs.

The question has to be posed without bias: Why does the Cameroonian President's recent visit to La Baule cause a problem? Is it his first visit to France or to the West? Is President Paul Biya the only Head of State to have spent his vacation out of his country?

We cannot provide answers to these questions without agreeing with the French journalist, Yannick Urrien that it is a manipulation which aims at serving malicious political interest.

The Minister of Communication hereby takes the national and international opinion as witnesses and strongly holds that in the face of such manipulations, the Cameroonian people will provide appropriate answers in order to challenge such de-stabilizers and to defend the Republic".

The Minister of Communication,
Issa Tchiroma Bakary