By Professor Asonganyi
Tazoacha
As usual, I sat by my TV screen around 7:30 p.m. on December
31, waiting for the end-of-year speech of Paul Biya. To kill time, I flipped to
France-24 to follow the report on the release of Father Georges Vandenbeusch
that was being presented over and over again by the Channel, until I was jolted
to consciousness by the image of French president François Hollande making his
own end-of-year speech to the French. So I flipped to CRTV to find Paul Biya
already at the stage of congratulating ELECAM. This did not worry me because I
knew I would follow the beginning of the speech from the background voice of
the journalist that would read the English version of the speech at the end of
his performance.
At the end of the speech, without really
knowing what I expected from it, I felt disappointed or dissatisfied, and
decided to flip to other channels to avoid the 'griots' that were preparing to
“dissect the speech” for us commoners. Although it was already past 9:00 p.m.,
I fell on RTS and found Macky Sall still addressing the Senegalese people. I
found his own quite engaging, but had no time to sit through it, so I decided
to go get the speeches from the internet. At around 10:00 p.m., I found the
French versions of Biya’s and Sall's on the net but not the English version of
Biya's.
The two speeches
were interesting in the way they differed from each other. Sall’s was about
one-and-a-half times longer than Biys’s. As for figures - excluding dates and
timeframes; figures that report government action in concrete terms - Biya’s
had just four (3 reference hospitals, 4.8 % growth rate, 6.1 % projected growth
rate, and 50% level of consumption of investment budget); for Sall’s I counted
some fifty six in all domains of Senegalese society! Sall’s allows government
action to be scientifically evaluated periodically; Biya’s does not because it
is based on generalities and is really unfocused.
Paul Biya says
correctly that it is time for Cameroonians to engage in serious and objective
debate of issues dear to them. To him these include purchasing power,
employment and living standards. Important as these may be, Cameroonians need a
pre-requisite, a constitutional framework acceptable to all. Like framers of
the American Constitution that stated that “we are not giving our people the
best constitution, but the best one they can accept,” we have not yet given the
people of Cameroon the best constitution they can all accept. The present
constitution is basically just rules and procedures to regulate the affairs of those
who have power, and to help them to keep power in perpetuity. It is a
constitution that serves the interests of a faction; it puts all the powers of
decision in the country in the hands of one man!
Another
urgent issue that deserves “serious and objective” debate for urgent resolution
is related to double citizenship, which Biya did not address. When Mongo Beti
returned to Cameroon in the early 1990s, he wanted to run as the parliamentary
candidate of the SDF in Mbalmayo in 1997. His candidature was rejected on the
pretext that he was a French national. More recently, there is a polemic on the
“American nationality” of Ndedi Eyango who recently won election as the “PCA”
of the Cameroon society for music and arts. Judged by what is practiced in
Cameroon generally, it seems that the issue of “double nationality” is treated
with levity by the Cameroon regime; turning a blind eye here, and opening their
eyes wide, depending on who you are and the interests at stake!
Yet, the issue of
double nationality is an important issue long resolved by many countries.
Taking Ghana which many people consider as a “good example” of liberty and
democracy in Africa, after the country reached its own “tipping point” in 1980s
and actually tipped into chaos and disorder for some time, they got their axe
together, so to say, and made a spectacular turnaround; they crafted a constitution
in 1992 which laid down limits within which government power would be
exercised. In 1996, to ensure that Ghana and Ghanaian citizens exploit all
avenues opened up by globalization, article 8 of the constitution was amended
to introduce dual citizenship as follows: “A citizen of Ghana may hold the
citizenship of any other country in addition to his citizenship of Ghana;
without prejudice to article 92(2)(a) of the constitution, no citizen of Ghana
shall qualify to be appointed as a holder of any office specified in this
clause if he holds the citizenship of any other country in addition to his
citizenship of Ghana: Ambassador or High Commissioner; Secretary to the
Cabinet; Chief of Defense Staff or any other Service Chief; Inspector General
of Police, Commissioner, Customs, Excise and Preventive Service; Director of
Immigration Service; Any office specified by an act of parliament…”
Back to the
speech, Paul Biya said in many words that the Vision-2035 crafted by his
government is a mirage. Indeed, the poverty reduction strategy Paper (PRSP)
that came before the Vision did not work, and the revised version now called
the growth and employment strategy paper (GESP), which we are told, will
address the first 20 years of Vision-2035 will not work too for the same
reasons. In short, the manner in which we are governed today provides no hope
for the famous Vision.
In this other
speech, there are still rhetorical questions Biya keeps asking himself, since
he is the one at the foot of the proverbial wall. Are we different from others
that are succeeding in other places? What do we lack? What is the use of some
follow-up commissions? Why does government action lack coherence and
transparency? Why are there so many administrative bottlenecks? And so on! Well,
speeches and questions, however well framed, however good or impressive, cannot
on their own change anything; only institutional politics can. As John Maxwell
would tell him, the attitude of the people is a reflection of the attitude of
the leader; or better still, those closest to the leader determine his level of
success or failure.
As Karl Marx
would also advise him, the human world is open to human actions because it is a
creation of man. What obtains in the Cameroon society today – the stagnation,
the corruption, the domination of self interest, generalized laxity – is
generated by human action or inaction with Paul Biya as a willing accomplice in
their perpetuation during the last (over) 30 years. He is mired in a routine
that seems to be impossible for him to break. Added to that, his own party
people have become confused and settled on empty slogans like “grandes
ambitions,” “grandes realizations,” none of which has content nor implies a
politics of existence, like “socialism,” “liberalism,” Marxism, Leninism,
Maoism did. He has put in place an absolutist infrastructure that sees all
“new” action as a dangerous rupture with his routine of facility and “order.”
He keeps telling
us that we are advancing in “democracy” because we are organizing elections.
Fareed Zakaria would tell him that for countries like ours, democracy and
liberty are not the same. He always pays little attention to how much elections
are undermined by crooks, thugs, party zealots, fanatics and ethnic bigots, all
elements that block progress in all domains of our society. Indeed, laxity and
generalized failures of our society have led to an unstable equilibrium that is
constantly used as justification for the existence of the regime; as a measure
of the “success” of the regime. Those who complain about the failures of the
regime are always asked to look across our borders to see that there is chaos
outside, and "peace" within. In this, Paul Biya and his acolytes do
not seem to buy Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping point” – the magic moment when a
“peaceful” society gets to a point and tips into chaos. We have witnessed such
tips in Ghana, Kenya, the Arab world, South Sudan, Central African Republic,
you name them. They are jointly testimony to the fact that societies like ours -
under the cloak of electoral fraud, longevity in power, corruption, abuse
of human rights, ethnicity, nepotism, use of government institutions and powers
to impose social unity and cohesion, and all other abuses - are close to the
brink.
Paul Biya has been
around for quite some time because this was his 32nd New Year
address to Cameroonians. Like the many rendezvous’ he missed with the people
during 2013, he obviously missed this one of December 31, 2013. Since he still
talks about “un délai raisonnable” [a reasonable
time] for putting in place the constitutional council that was supposed to have
been in place since 1996, time does not seem to be his problem, although it is
not on his side. The speech, like past ones, left us with much uncertainty, even
if we are certain that the next New Year speech of the President of the
Republic to Cameroonians will be either the first or the 33rd.
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. Minute by Minute Report on Cameroon and Africa
No comments:
Post a Comment