Julius Awafong Teneng
5 May 2008
opinion
While acknowledging that the former Ministers of the Economy and Finance, Polycarpe Abah Abah, and Public Health, Urbain Olanguena Awono, could be guilty of misappropriation of public funds, the primary motive of their arrests, beyond reasonable doubt, rests on differing political ideologies in a regime that nourishes dearth of a democracy of opinion.
In a bid to settle scores in a political system where everyone in government is obliged to speak the language of his master, and as much as you dance to his tune and without coveting his office, you could embezzle and go free. The two former ministers, who show their disenchantment with the regime by identifying themselves as G11, must be suffering from embezzling, opposing and then coveting the king's palace.
Embezzlers and corrupt officials are simply innocent victims of a trap which depicts the failing democratic machinery in status quo. Like many Africans and particularly Cameroonians, I have spent the past five years evaluating the evolution of corruption in our country and have discovered that we have been playing around with wrong approaches to this cankerworm.
Everybody suffers from corruption, everybody suffers from embezzlement though some see their misery immediately the act is committed and others see it in the long run.Embezzlement of state funds has been a striking issue in Cameroon for the past two decades and I can remember when in 2001 people were shocked, frightened and at the same time excited to learn that the Minister of Post and Telecommunication then (Munchipou Seidou) was convicted and sentenced for years because of embezzlement. The billions of CFA he was accused of embezzling was really frightening.
From this severe governmental act, people thought no minister or any official would ever carry out this kind of inhuman and economic evil act. To our surprise, we discovered that barely four or five years after, other officials who were looked upon as patriots, intellectuals and hard working citizens, embezzled funds that were almost ten times that of Munchipou and this time some of them were sentenced to twenty years in jail.
Recently, many Cameroonian youths from the miserable class have been incarcerated for up to two-year jail terms for going to the street and crying out their miseries. The questions that came to my mind is what about all the anti-corruption measures taken by the highest authority who is at the same time the highest judge, the highest military official, I mean the highest all thing. What about the solutions brought in by the international community, NGOs, civil society, human rights groups, just to name these few?
What will happen in the next five or ten years? Are we still going to jail more officials? Are we still going to have more children killed in strikes? Are we still going to be observing a widening gap between the rich and the poor?
If you promote the belief that the more wealth you have, the more power you deserve or vice versa, then we are left with no option than to continue growing in the way of life we have today. Contrarily, if you tell people the more wealth you have, the less power you deserve and vice versa, then people will learn to use their wealth and power wisely. The trap here is the idea that more wealth is equivalent to more power.
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