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Cameroon: Paul Biya, a Desperate President
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The Post (Buea)
OPINION
3 March 2008
Posted to the web 3 March 2008
Azore Opio
If President Paul Biya had presented himself for 25 years as the Father of the Nation, on Wednesday 27, he doffed his Dr Jekyll hide and donned Mr. Hyde's loathsome demonic cloak. He was point blank that he doesn't care a hoot and that he was not going to brook any opposition!
Biya chose a most inopportune time to stage his one-man act drama. The taste of the audience was bitter, emotional and partisan.
Biya had forgotten that he was play-acting to an evening audience with a larger proportion of men, not a matinée audience composed chiefly of women. Biya himself was motivated by emotion, paranoia and the desperation to survive instead of reason. His greed overrode his sound judgement.
By the time he finished issuing his threats, the message had dissolved into a glob of meaningless babble. The 'speech' jarred as if it was written by an Orang-utan for an Idiots' Convocation ceremony, so much so that the usual spin that handpicked journalistic parrots apply to Biya's speeches became wobbly and didn't just stick.
Without understanding the perils of speaking carelessly to an angry people, Biya had raised the adrenaline level by several uncomfortable calibrations and raised temperaments to unbearable degrees.
From what the President said, he seems to be living in a precarious world, where fact and misinformation have become so entangled that he is unable or unwilling to extract a pristine truth. He even dared to mention negotiation as an alternative to using violence to be heard.
But what chances have cockroaches to negotiate with a council of fowls? Biya has never negotiated with any of the disgruntled members of the Cameroonian society - teachers, medics, the judiciary, warders (civil servants) the Southern Cameroons, the youths - but on Wednesday, he shamelessly called the very youths he has been manipulating to his advantage (they took FCFA 1000 each to vote for him) "delinquents with a prospect to looting" and even killing some.
The Head of State condemned delinquency forgetting that he is at the head of a coterie of adult delinquents. He conveniently found a scapegoat in the opposition parties and failed to address the root cause of the strike - general bitterness and disaffection against the repressive regime which provided fodder for the protestors.
Biya reacted in the way he did because he was taken completely by surprise by 'docile' Cameroonians and perhaps because they destroyed some of his interests. He did not know until Monday morning that Cameroonians had been making up their minds, albeit slowly, to spit out their grievances in unison - they had been spitting randomly their bile in the media, in their 'country meetings' (njangis) inside buses and taxis, over bottles of beer, in the markets, on the farms and so on. Now the venoms are coalescing.
Suddenly, the pendulum has swung. The rules have begun to change. The kaleidoscope of power has been shaken. A regime that once could not imagine that it could go back on its decisions saw its image of infallibility shatter in the day time. The very foundations of the regime have been shaken. It seems likely now that change in Cameroon will need more doses of violence.
Without doubt, the tide of public opinion has been turning swiftly against Biya and his government, which has an astonishing chronicle of disguise and deception, secrecy, blackmail, betrayal, corruption, hero-worship, tokenism, clienteleism, cronyism, cultism and all the other bad isms.
Election rigging, anti-constitutional amendment sentiments, regular price and tax hikes, police brutality and so on are the combination that underlies the recent strike. And Biya has, over the years, laced up this combination with catalysts such as lying, graft, corruption, embezzlement, human rights abuse and arrogance, which have been speeding up the reaction time, which sooner or later will reach the critical mass.
Biya is the desperate leader of a notorious clan, which has, for 25 years, terrified the people of this tropical rainforest country of Central Africa, Cameroon. With utter disregard for the law, Biya's troops keep the country in terror, fear and misery. He has given the police limitless power and they seem to be a law onto themselves - an autonomous army of sorts independent of any interference.
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For those like the Santa Mafia and some Northwest Chiefs, Southwest elite, CPDM lackeys and others who have thrown the spanners in with the repressive regime and resigned to work wits members, they will live to tell the story.
Thank you Mr Azore! We the members of the diaspora are watching events very closely and are in solidarity with the hardworking peace-loving people of cameroon. Your article leaves no point untouched and gives an unbeatable picture of this 'Animal Farm' of a regime. Yes, would you not be surprised to see(as George Orwell would say)pigs in charge even where lions dare!? Not to put too much maggi in an already scrumptious curry you have made, I would like to share my personal experiences for the one year i stayed in the country. ON TAX: I am a businessman... [Read Full Text]
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