C.P.N Vewessee
21 April 2008
opinion
On the eve of the 118th anniversary celebrations of Labour Day which comes up on May 1, 2008, my message to Cameroon workers in both public and private sectors, is to first of all recognise the suffering they have had to endure since the advent of the ongoing man-made economic crisis and the tremendous sacrifices they have had to make and for this.
I wish to congratulate the workers for their selflessness as patriotic Cameroonians. I am, of course, aware of the fact that your suffering like the suffering of all other Cameroonians in the rural as well as urban areas has been, and remains the result of the mismanagement of national wealth created by workers of this country.
You as workers have been emasculated and exploited because you have allowed yourselves to be divided and made to believe that by singing praises to the powers that be and selling your consciences for a political spoon of porridge, you are indeed helping and encouraging the mismanagement of the wealth of the nation which is the patrimony of all Cameroonians.
I know that you and the rest of the Cameroonian population while enduring your suffering, you took solace in the Presidential term limit which was enshrined in the 1996 Constitution. With the term limit, patriotic Cameroonians optimistically looked up to 2011 in the hope that after 2011, good things will start coming their way.
That come 2011, they will have the opportunity to actively participate in the resurrected democratic process and, for the first time, be able to democratically choose their parliamentarians and not continue to be represented in parliament by those who rigged their way into and some who bought their seats.
Is there one MP either of the ruling party of flames and from the opposition who can with his parliamentary micro-finance be able to put bread on the table of his or her constituent? Now that a majority of CPDM and NUDP MPs have collectively betrayed your trust, do they deserve to be known and addressed as "honourable" men and women?
The sin they have committed against the nation in the name of party discipline is beyond pardon by Cameroonians of good will in general and workers in particular.Workers should know that as we celebrate Labour Day, the flicker of light that was at the end of our political, economic and social tunnel has been extinguished by those who rigged the July 22, 2007 elections in order to constitute a majority in parliament which they have now used to change the status of Cameroon from a republic to a monarchy and crowned Biya as a life-time monarch.
Workers and their families and ordinary Cameroonians should know that their world which they hoped was going to come in three years was precipitately destroyed on that 'Dark Thursday' of April 10. With the conscious and deliberate reduction of his tribesman's (Emmanuel Gerald Ondo Ndong) prison term from 50 years to 20, less than one year since being convicted,
it is a sign of things to come and Cameroonians should read the writing on the wall and know that they are in for decades of very cold winters because embezzlement will from now on be carried out by members of the chosen tribe with reckless abandon and impunity.
God, only, helps those who help themselves and since Cameroonians have been intimidated this time around, God has also withheld his gift from our youths who can no longer see visions and withheld from the old men and women the gift of dreaming dreams.
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