Cameroon Has a Ruling Class, Not a Ruling Party

By Martin-Luther Fon Yembe in Ngarum-Ndu

It is Mahamat Gandhi who once stated that power is of two kinds : One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment. When the National Chairman of the RDPC ( CNU cum CPDM) declared at the party’s congress in 2011 that his party was “close to power”, and not in power, all the sheepish militants went “Hurray” and nearly brought down our Congress Centre down with applause. Few have cared to dig into the profundity of this declaration. Mr. Biya is no fool. He chooses his words and statements very carefully, and posterity will judge him right. The CPDM has never been a party in power because no party runs Cameroon Republic. What obtains is that there is a ruling class in power and the CPDM is yet to be in power.

When the Social Democratic Front surfaced with the catchphrase of “ Power to the People”, it was a serious jingle and many have never yet understood what it entails…even in the SDF. When power will finally be with the “people”…where the grassroots decide, where power will be devolved to the grassroots…true federalism, then we can have a party in power. But, as of now, even Biya says it that the CPDM is NOT in POWER…it is just close to power…as it is a ruling stratocracy that is using powerful methods with strong and powerful men to man very fragile institutions.

The Biya ruling clique has exhibited tremendous trends of a brilliance in manipulating the people and kept the majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, struggling business men pay heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return. With all the atrocities that this ruling clique engages on a daily basis through its agents on the field…administrators; security officials; etc., it beats the imagination of right thinking people why Cameroonians still gape as if hypnotized! In fact, the moral climate in the CPDM, where crimes are committed in the name of the party and the culprits go scotch free is not strange. The CPDM Party is a swathe that wraps a huge chunk of shit of the ruling class, void of true power. Its supposed militants think that they are in power, while Biya and his Think Tank know that CPDM is not in power, but exploiting the circumstances, in time and by slow operations, to pervert the government and the state institutions into tyranny.

The question on many lips is why this observable fact is persistent for over thirty three years. Even Jesus Christ, God in the flesh did not go beyond thirty three years. Someone had said that we should never underestimate the power of human stupidity. Paul Biya, Joseph Owona, Belinga and their French advisers are exploiting the stupidity and idiocy of the susceptible and impoverished Cameroonians to dig deep into their mindset. Biya is a top pupil of Niccolo Maciavelli who says “He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command”…and so he adopts the Hitler Nazism technique to rule the people, not following some party ideologies or principles. And Cameroon sways on with the current tides…until the “means justify the end”…and he and his class become very bad history.

When News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)