By Bate Besong
I would like to make a preliminary remark before going to the matter at hand. I refer to statements in the local press by the President of the South West Chiefs Conference, His Majesty Nfaw Lawyer Tabetando, during the Philemon Yang-Dion Ngute caravan of opportunism and collaboration. I do not know to what extent these have been reported accurately. But I do know that his interview over Cameroon Calling last September, exuded, with the sort of toady enthusiasm that tends to imperil and suffocate debate and thus generate cynicism and apathy.
In my view, Nfaw Tabetando’s concept of Pax Camerounaise is necessarily bogus, undemocratic and wholly reactionary. It refers neither to democracy as a sine qua non for peace nor to equality as a necessary condition for political cooperation among the unifying parts of the Cameroonian federation.
The neopatrimonial Cameroonian bourgeoisie is necessarily parasitic and predatory and has no interest in transparence, in accountability, in the existence of political opposition or in the culture of political debate that democracy breeds. For the past 44years, our political culture had ensured that only the most rapacious contractors and entrepreneurs secured, maintained, and, expanded, their access to state resources while trying to exclude the access of others. Yet, Mr. Charles Mbella Moki, CPDM Mayor of Buea, presents a special challenge to our emergency form of governance.
The construction of national unity implies the continuous struggle against classes and groups who enjoy certain privileges and rights because of their closeness to the penumbra of power.
The point is simple: CPDM appointed General Managers of Oil and Gas companies, with headquarters in Douala, Littoral Province, are not known to fight external enemies but their own South West population, which is an absolute negation of national integration and ultimate violation of citizenship rights. For that reason, I urge you to set aside the harlequinary of this ex- junior tutor at the Rev. Fr. Van Dongen’s Teachers Training College, T.T.C, Nchang, Mamfe, to ignore his statements, at least for the duration of this matter.
JUST GOVERNANCE
The revolutionary intervention of Lord Mayor Mr. Charles Mbella Moki’s speech, last August, before Viceroy Marafa Hamidou Yaya on the occasion, of the installation of Pro- Consul Eyeya Zanga calls for critical assessment. In drawing attention to the powerlessness and exclusion of his province in the nomenclature of power, he has sensitized Cameroonians on how political assets such as federalism, human rights, accountability of leadership and just governance have been seriously eroded in the recent past. Patrice Emery Lumumba, martyred Premier of the Congo, had been imbued with a similar messianic ardor when he had confronted Baudouin, the Belgian monarch, thus “We are your slaves no more!” In a similar vein, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the famous Russian writer and Nobel Laureate, in his seminal literary work, Gulag Archipelago, states “ We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justices from beneath new generations.
To see facts as they are, unclouded by sentimentality, fear and political insecurity by a CPDM functionary is equal to covering the moon with one’s palms.
H.I.V DEMOCRACY
A neo-conservative Texan republican and former member of the United States Congress, Greg Laughlin, enthusiastically, endorsed the results of the 2004 Presidential Elections in which President Paul Biya had won by 70.92% of the vote on a relatively low voter turn out based upon a stymied, hurricane Katrina-proned electoral system covering 3.9 million of Cameroon’s 16 million population. Laughlin, who specialises in oil-rich areas of the world, such as Cameroon is, according to News Africa magazine, a partner in Patten Boggs, President Biya’s Washington lobbyists who hold a $200 million dollar contract to influence the White House and Congress in his favour (see, www.newswafrica.net, November 30, 2004, pp 10-15).
Twenty observers from the Commonwealth, led by former Canadian premier, Joe Clark, had on 4th October 2004 announced, most bizarrely, that they “Would gather all the elements to come to a verdict whether the polls were straight or not” (my italics). The European Union, E.U. and the United Nations, UN, had bluntly announced that it would not be wasting its time on the electoral circus being rehearsed by the National Elections Observatory, NEO; a cocoon for ultra-conservative elements and the regime’s cats paws.
On October 14, 2004, the French Parti Socialiste (PS), however, condemned, what it saw “as a severe blow to the very idea of democracy” although slave master incarnate, Monsieur Jacques Chirac, unsurprisingly, was the first to praise the polls, not bothering to wait for definitive results from MINATD before congratulating “My dear Paul”.
Ahmed Sekou Toure, in an earlier epoch, had defied General Charles de Gaulle, thus: “We prefer rags in freedom to riches in chains”. There are therefore many today, who are interested in covering the tracks of the true road.
BEYOND THE WONGANGA MASTIFF
Charles Mbella Moki has argued that central to the notion of expanding democratic space in the South West region in particular and by extension, the nation, is, the prevention of the monopolization of power and resources by a few francophone Cameroonian individuals and their various stooges within the Anglophone political castrati.
His is a vision that underscores the way in which the monopoly and misuse of power by a pro-consular, tribal minority may be addressed through the restructuring of the country’s political relations thereby vesting a substantial degree of autonomy in the component units. According to this position, leadership in the breadbasket of the nation, the South West Province, is both backward and alienating, providing little scope for progressive political forces to be a positive force for change. Democracy needs alternative, multiple and antithetical sources of power and control.
Demystified Vice-chancellors-for-life, disgraced ex-Governors, clannish prefêts and pro-consuls, Wonganga blackmailers and archenemies of progress, thrive, under totalitarian conditions and are as such incapable of responding to conflicting interests.
They hide behind queries and “letters of observations” that negate the rule of law. They prefer the Wotolo Zombie dance and are thus incapable of giving democracy a chance.
POVERTY ALLEVIATION IN THE SOUTH WEST PROVINCE OF AMEROON ESPECIALLY IN BUEA SUB DIVISION IS GRADUALLY TAKING A DIFFERENT TURN...I WISH TO PRAISE THE MAYOR OF THE BUEA RURAL COUNCIL FOR HIS EFFORTS...I SEE THESE ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE FOLLOWING ISSUES.
"During our stay in this council, we brought stakeholders on our side within the principle of Public – Private – Partnership Initiative (PPPI). We elaborated a strategic Plan for Buea with the population's valuable input, and mobilized the stakeholders to support and contribute to the enlarged Mile 17 Motor Park. It has not yet reached our dream. But it is up and coming. We embarked on a people-oriented policy with an eye to the future. In this respect, we offered scholarships to more than One Thousand, Five Hundred (1500) children of our council area that is, those who merited them, the needy and under privileged. We offered a lesson here in human capital development. We equally absorbed over twenty-five University graduates to work in the council and renew and modernize its management. The result has been tremendous. We have helped some of them to go abroad for greener pastures, we did job prospecting for others and they got better jobs elsewhere, all to the delight of our population. We offered holiday jobs to over two thousand three hundred (2300) school children to lessen the burden of parents during school resumption. The statistics are there. In fact, our policy of ''Putting People First'' (PPF) has paid off remarkably in keeping with the United Nation Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
In an era of transparency and accountability, we have run the Buea Council like a Glass House. We have opened up to the public, through the press and ''public trials'' to explain what we are doing and the results attained. In this light, the Press which has often put its search lights on our Council, has given us pass marks (kudos), awards and titles. The Buea Council has gained international recognition under our dispensation. We have played a significant role in international conferences in South Africa, China, the U.S.A, France, Kenya where we sold the image of our council in words and gadgets. Twinning programs are in the process. We brought in innovative ways of managing the council. We strengthened and broadened revenue collection, streamlined expenditure, focused on priorities and worked within time frames. All this enabled us realize some investment projects within our mandate, like the highly-appreciated construction of rural markets in Lysoka, Bonjongo and Bokwaongo to address the economic empowerment of our rural population and ease business transactions in those vast areas of our Municipality.
Posted by: AJUH JOSHUA FON | May 04, 2008 at 10:21 AM
Lapiro has been incalcerated by the biya regime - what are cameroonians especially Ni John Fru Ndi doing about this?
Focus seems rather to be on Zacchaeus Fonjindam - the man who ferries 'Antangas' to santa to vote every elections session!
Why do we seem so indifferent????
Posted by: akaba james | July 11, 2008 at 12:42 PM