By Bate Besong
The totalitarian temptations or tendencies of the “new” Deal government of President Paul Biya and its consequent paradoxical resemblances to the “Volk” of Hitlerian Nazi Germany and the “Popolo” of IL Duce Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy were, more ominously, adumbrated on October 12, 2005, during the conferment of the honoris causa in Political Science of the University of Buea on the Rt. Hon. Don McKinnon, Secretary General of the Commonwealth.
On that eventful day, the University campus was, in every material particular, reminiscent of the American gulag archipelago in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib Prison. Additional gendarme, military, police and security personnel were deployed in the classrooms, and surveillance around the Amphitheatres was tightened.
In the bowl of the Amphitheatre 750 where this teleguided ruse was taking place; the orator’s citation credited the Secretary General with the following feats: democratization of the Ministry of Territorial Administration (MINATD), through the creation of the General Secretariat; insistence on the Harare Declaration; appointment of Commonwealth officials for monitoring elections in Cameroon; Commonwealth assistance in the areas of capacity building: health issues, habeas corpus judiciary – but more significantly – the creation of the National Election observatory, NEO. It is easy to see why this grandiose ruse is objectionable for a variety of reasons.
Partly as a result of the myopia to meet the popular and legitimate demands of the Cameroonian people – and more germane in our context – partly, as a result of the failure in addressing the Anglophone question with sincerity; the government, as will be made hyaline clear below, has not only become sensitive and insecure, but also very oppressive and unresponsive to the mass of the people whom they rule.
Yet, the Southern Cameron’s National Council, SCNC, was born because of an ethno-fascist power structure that has ignored the call for dialogue over true federalism.
STATE OF THE UNION
Despite the many reasons advanced by some members of the Law and Management Sciences of the University of Buea for their preference of the Commonwealth mode of governance, experience derived from the manner in which the Gaullian state has conducted politics of Re-Unification, tends to show that issues of democracy, academic freedom and good governance were not necessarily what the mandarins at Etoudi were interested in confronting.
The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, civil society and ecclesiastical groups in Cameroon have mounted pressure on President Biya’s government to persuade it to enact a legitimate constitution that should reflect the popular views of the majority of Cameroonians. Unfortunately, however, the inclination has been for the Presidency to behave as if Parliament and other institutions such as the Central Bank or the Supreme Court, for example, derive their authority and legitimacy from it rather that the other way round.
Ten years after she was grudgingly recommended for admission, the “new” Deal government’s continuous relevance in the Club of Gentlemen is based on questionable democratic legitimacy.
McKinnon is aware that an independent, impartial authority that would organize and conduct elections does not exist in Cameroon. Bureaucratic machinery of MINATD resists and resents innovations. The prime inspiration of the electoral almanac was the capture of power for the President and his helmsmen. The powers give the functionary prestige, prerequisites and overwhelming privileges. Malpractices and irregularities compromise the credibility of election results.
IN THE CHARACTER OF POLITBUREAU MATRIARCH
The democratic credentials of the University of Buea Senate remain highly questionable. It is paramount in any Anglo-Saxon, Commonwealth framework that what is considered as good, rests with those that are governed.
The point being made here is that under the National Elections Observatory, NEO, the main plank on which the University of Buea conferred the honoris causa on the Rt. Hon. Don McKinnon is neither an independent body nor can it generate a developed system of political parties and traditions between which the Cameroon people can choose their representatives. The Cameroonian electorate has been further deprived of their democratic rights to change the present social order by electing and choosing their representatives on the basis of policies and programmes of their choices.
The superstructural foundations of academic freedom are to be found in the values, beliefs and attitudes of the academia that make-up congregation and Senate. In the case of the much-praised “Anglo-Saxon citadel of learning”, however, it took the intervention of the Lord Major of Buea, Mr. Charles Mbella Moki, to prevent the folly of the (ex) Vice chancellor pushing the institution into a Rwanda-type situation.
100 Million Francs was the price requested as registration fee for a Student Union in a Commonwealth University. The blood of the assassinated is still wet on the stars. The University of Buea Students’ Union, UBSU, represents the sense of rupture, despair, frustration and vulnerability of individuals and community caught in the midst of the contemporary Focartian jungle. Against this background, the attitude of a right-wing axis in the Senate to the idea of Student Unionism, within Mr. McKinnon’s much-espoused Commonwealth norms, remains most hostile.
The fortunes of Democracy, based as it were, on the Harare Declarations have not only been irreparably damaged by the creation of the leprous bobby-trap, named NEO; but also by the role of the academic Gestapo on campus, which at once reminds us of how little freedom one has in advancing views contrary to a Senate foisted by that one-track minded Jezebel.
In the light of the above, it would be dangerous to qualify Mr. McKinnon’s honoris causa with any academic or democratic concepts.
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