Sam Nuvala Fonkem
16 March 2008
opinion
Cameroonians are very fond of the phrase "better late than never." Going by this dictum, we ought to applaud President Biya for the belated measures he has taken to cushion the excruciating effects of the chronic economic crunch the nation has borne since the IMF imposed its structural adjustment programme in 1987.
The 15 percent increase in civil service salaries and the suspension of customs duties on certain essential commodities such as rice, wheat flour, sugar and cement, are laudable measures which have come a little too late and whose impact would largely depend on their effective implementation.
Critics have likened the government's reaction to the week-long violent street protests that rocked the major urban centres of the country last month, to a negligent doctor who, instead of incising a tumour when it was still benign, preferred to dilly-dally until it became cancerous before he began prescribing palliatives for the patient.
How far these palliatives would go to reverse the chronic ailment that has plagued the country is anybody's guess.It would be recalled that earlier measures to check the galloping price of foodstuff had failed because of the unscrupulous manoeuvres by some importers and wholesalers who are in the practice of hoarding commodities or selling their goods to neighbouring countries for higher returns after benefiting from tax incentives.
Instead of setting the law in pursuit of such recalcitrant traders who have proven to be part of the cause of the general economic malaise, Cameroon and the international community are being treated to a melodramatic spate of kangaroo trials of more than 1,500 youths alleged to have perpetrated the street violence in which more than one hundred young persons are said to have lost their lives as a result of police brutality.
The Cameroon Bar has condemned the summary trials for lack of due process, but this does not seem to have impressed the authorities who have consistently demonstrated contempt for human rights. Reports of the seizure at the airport of the passport of opposition SDF MP, Jean Nintcheu, his arrest and handcuffing in public by uncouth security operatives are all acts of primitive governance, which go to demonise the nation's already soiled image.
I still find it difficult to believe government's insistence that the SDF and Honourable Nintcheu in particular were responsible for the bloody protests which, by all accounts, were spontaneous and lacked a sense of direction. If the government truly believes the SDF was behind the unrest, then I fear it is crediting the party with an extraordinary power to mobilise the masses; an influential force which the regime had previously refused to acknowledge if one were to rely on the fraudulent results of last July's general elections.
The SDF did call for a public demonstration in Douala to protest against plans by the regime to panel-beat the constitution so that Mr. Biya can become life president. Independent TV footage showed a rather scanty protest march that quickly aborted when it was confronted with tear gas and water canons.
Two days later the urban transporters' strike came into effect and hordes of angry young men took advantage of the empty streets to express their bitterness over their meaningless condition of life. The forces of law and order even registered a scant presence on the streets in the early days of the strike given that their mobility was severely restricted by the strikes.
This would teach the government to start considering the building of barracks in order to facilitate mobilisation in future.Given this state of affairs, it is hard to see the SDF's hand in the recent turmoil. Perhaps in a desperate search for a scapegoat, the government has conveniently forgotten that not long ago, it had stigmatised the SDF as a regional (Northwest) party.
If truly, the SDF were responsible for instigating and mobilising the strike which degenerated in some cases to deplorable acts of vandalism and that the SDF, as charged by Mr. Biya, was trying to gain power which it failed to obtain through the ballot box, then the regime is tacitly admitting that the SDF is a credible alternative political force to reckon with; a force that can create a veritable earthquake and not just a storm in a tea cup!
The whole idea of singling out the SDF, as if the rest of the opposition parties were unconcerned about the socio-political decay, is a cheap tactic of divide and rule. It is a futile attempt to demonise; to give a dog a bad name and hang it.
While the government is making frantic attempts to control damage, zealots of President Biya's tribal clique, taking cover under the banner of the ruling CPDM party, are busy provoking the tempers of other Cameroonians by publishing threats of ethnic cleansing. The hate literature published in the state-owned daily newspaper Cameroon Tribune early this month by an ad hoc group going under the name of "Elite (Forces Vives) of Mfoundi Division," is a dangerous move to Rwandanise a socio-political crisis which, from all indications, did not arise from ethnocentric considerations.
If, as they claim, the meeting which issued the declaration brought together "sons, daughters, elite etc, of all social status and all political shades of opinion", why then did they choose to meet at the CPDM party house? They talked of manipulators who deliberately sent children to their deaths. Who killed them?
They said they were strongly "opposed to those fomenting trouble and authors of all forms of vandalism on people and their property in our city." Whose city were they referring to? Is it the city which they aptly describe as the seat of national institutions? The so-called elite of Mfoundi warned "those forces of destruction to immediately leave our land because it is no longer secure for them."
They threatened to return act for act and swore to extract an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth. Are they now advocating the replacement of the rule of law by Hamurabi's law?
The excessive use of the phrase 'our land', 'our city' is an obvious consequence of Mr. Biya's indigenisation of national politics. The ethnocentric overtones and the parochial possessiveness expressed by these elite smacks of childishness and immaturity.
They sounded very much like spoilt brats and over pampered tribesmen when they complained that "neither we, nor our children will be forced to trek, after sacrificing so much to acquire the means of movement in relative comfort." Were they referring to the luxury cars and SUVs acquired with ill-gotten state money? This reminds me of one woman who, after queuing for long to buy bread at a bakery in Douala, complained before TV cameras that no one was willing to serve her and her kids were so used to bread that they won't stop howling until she brought some home.
She complained that even the soldiers who were around the bakery also refused to help her obtain bread, the ultimate symbol of gastronomic sophistication.In her ordeal of bewilderment, she did not realise that she was dressed in CPDM party uniform, crowned with a CPDM baseball cap, the arrogant symbol of political monopoly.
Even Biya has forever been very sceptical about appearing in public in the rags of his party emblem, a signal which his blind followers have failed to apprehend.The lesson to be drawn from the recent social upheaval is that if the opposition parties and civil society were to seriously contemplate a seizure of power, since the regime has distorted the democratic process and made nonsense of the ballot box, no amount of bullying and threat of ethnic cleansing can stop them.
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