Azore Opio
30 March 2008
Just when it seemed Cameroon's political news couldn't possibly get worse, the youths dropped a bombshell. Not only was Cameroon in a recession, but the society had shrank to an abysmal cesspool.
Why, one may ask, did a transporters' strike escalate into a violent destruction? Here is a simple answer. Prolonged looting of the treasury and duping of the citizenry. The notorious corrupt system produced horrendous drafts making the country a tinderbox. The strike seemed to drastically reshape the regime's attitude and it saw its image of infallibility shatter. But let me begin with looting.
The regime has been bleeding untold fortunes from the beggared treasury of the nation, bringing every sector to a limp. Since the 90's corruption scandals, Cameroonians' disenchantment and fiscal mire, the regime now seems dismayed at its sinking status and dwindling public support. A 25-year spree of pillage and plunder; producing and recycling more corrupt officials and politicians all add up to a cycle of looting, pillage and plunder.
Bombshell
The strike has stoked a panic the likes the ruling desperados have never seen. There is absolute reason for alarm. The CPDM cocky cabal is in the midst of a serious morale crisis and emotional meltdown.
This started President Paul Biya and his Minister, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, to exceed their estimate of a scapegoat and tried to escape the roaring rampage and took pains to try to implicate the SDF, a position they will sorely regret sooner or later. They reasoned like practitioners of witchcraft. Without knowing, the Minister's attack on Fru Ndi has fed the massive feelings of contempt and disdain creeping through the citizenry. He has just as good as lit a slow-burning fuse.
In its usual anti-people attitude, the regime is more concerned with defending the status quo rather than clear the path for a quick, efficient solution to the matters of poverty, misery and oppression. Its claims are at variance with the psychological set-up of Cameroonians whose pent-up rage exploded unpredictably recently.
Raising the salaries of civil servants who did not participate in the strike by a paltry 15 percent is a hopeless gesture illustrative of the lack of progress and sense of desperation pervading the regime; a minor hiccup in a pattern of repeated infidelity.
Motions Of Support
Biya's lackeys, ruled by sublime greed, are faced with a doomed-to-die campaign for the extension of the presidential mandate. And they are really flirting with disaster. It is not because they love Biya, but because they want to exploit the corruption inherent in the regime.
That is essentially why many servile minions of the CPDM party want to extend the President's term of office so that they can loot for life. Unfortunately, for them, they have forgotten that the President is a mortal who is bound to succumb to the traditional edict of expiration. Now, into their ranks, charge men like Dr. Fonkam and the Marcuses - sore disappointments.
From what they say about the constitutional amendment bid, we are led to think that the Fonkams are feigning insanity so that they continue to enjoy the soft life of Biya's mental asylum. These people have been going slowly mad. What they don't know is that they will get more than they bargained for. Much more not from Biya. From disgruntled Cameroonians.
The good Dr. should know that the regime has broken all the good laws of the country and that Cameroonians might not need to amend the constitution whether through parliament or by referendum. When they get bored up to their nostrils, they will simply pick the gun and blow the 1996 constitution to hell.
And they will use the regime's skin for parchment, its blood for ink and a bayonet for quill. Then they will craft a constitution that will reflect their will and aspirations. There will be not stopping them when they get started. What the Fonkams have to know and accept is that a majority of Cameroonians, including members of the CPDM party, are fed up with the President and his ways.
Another thing they ought to know is that Section 63 of the 1996 Constitution is convoluted: it gives "the President of the Republic and Parliament the prerogative to initiate a constitutional amendment. The President of the Republic can consequently table a government bill and he alone knows what he would put into such a bill."
A constitution is not a personal law nor is it a reserve of parliament such that only the president can table a bill to amend it to benefit him alone. No. A true constitution is enacted by the people!
The foremost social change needed in Cameroon is the President. He and the state institutions have been there for years and doing their best to deprive Cameroonians of a good livelihood, through cutthroat taxations, a predatory judiciary, institutionalised graft and corruption, highway robbery officially executed by the forces of law and order and so on.
The regime is so vain and unconcerned over the people's right to free expression that the people have no choice but to try and defeat its excesses.
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