A specter is haunting the Cameroonian political scene. It is the specter of irrelevance. The political apathy that last left Cameroonians with a depressing feeling about politics stems from the feeling of futility in their efforts to realize political change in the country. And since the alternative is war that most Cameroonians do not want, this feeling of being trapped by an anachronistic system that does not represent the will of the people is casting a heavy cloud over the heads of Cameroonians. While Cameroonians have lost faith in the system, the Biya regime and the CPDM (former CNU), Cameroonians have equally lost faith in the opposition led by the SDF that finally conciliated with the system. The people now feel none of the political parties that took part in the elections are relevant in realizing THE NEW CAMEROON.
While it is true that Fru Ndi and his clique in the SDF became compromised years ago, there was a faction of the SDF that never conciliated (the union nationalists and revolutionaries). In 2002, they dissociated themselves from the compromised SDF that Fru Ndi was leading. Why did they wait until 2002; people would ask? The fear from the union nationalists and revolutionaries in the SDF at the time was that any attempt to set things right by confronting the growing cancer in the SDF would have jeopardized the struggle, divided the ranks of the SDF, put the opposition in disarray and enabled the system to last longer. The union nationalists and revolutionaries in the SDF put the struggle above personal considerations back then.
But following the 2002 parliamentary and council elections, when Fru Ndi and Ngwasiri orchestrated a pact with the CPDM to pick up the few seats the Biya regime had apportioned to the SDF (despite the fact that the Dutch ambassador had revealed to Fru Ndi in 1999 that they in the EU knew that the SDF had more than 70% of popular support in Cameroon), even though the party was two days away from holding a NEC ( National Executive Committee) meeting to vote on whether to participate in the National Assembly and the councils or not ( NEC voted against participation and Fru Ndi overturned it).It became obvious then that Fru Ndi and his clique had accepted the branding of the SDF as a regional or NW party, even though it had the majority of the support of Cameroonians. And worst still, it became obvious then that the compromised Fru Ndi had become irrelevant, if not an obstacle in the struggle. That was when the genuine revolutionaries in the SDF quit also. SDF's Dr. Samuel Tchwenko from Limbe led that drive to save the soul of the struggle.
Where are these genuine exponents of change today? One thing for sure is that they did not participate in the charade called elections. They oppose the system, the Biya regime, the CPDM and the artificial so-called opposition political parties that are in a symbiotic relationship with the anachronistic French-imposed system, and that are helping it to survive in its deceptive ways.
If Biya goes through this election charade smoothly with the world accepting the cooked up results of this election, all the participants in the whole charade would have to do a lot of convincing to Cameroonians that they were not enablers in the masquerade. Because in a world of black and white, they are collaborators in the deception carried out by the system.
I understand the psychological process of denial that follows a person or people who just realized that they misplaced their trust on the wrong people. That is the dilemma for many honest advocates of change today who are being confronted by the rotten side of those they believed in.
Yesterday marked the end of the third phase of the Cameroonian struggle. The fourth phase has begun. The first part in this forth phase is the "rude awakening", not only from the side of the opposition (genuine and delusional) but also from the side of the beneficiaries of the system. The system is not sustainable and it is unraveling even at this moment that it seems omnipotent. None of the current political parties would be able to garner more than 10% of the national vote in 2020. So, Cameroonians desiring a NEW CAMEROON would have to wean themselves off their current deceptive political parties, sink into a period of political lethargy, bounce out of it and then seek to be a part of the conflagration of the forces that would represent the country's union nationalism and revolutionary objectives. The conflagration of forces for the
NEW CAMEROON would seek to:
- redress the wrongs in the country's history; reconcile the country;
- bring back its children and heroes denied of their rights to burial at home;
- clamp hard on tribalism, corruption and other inhuman divisions;
- bridge the gap in the development of its English and French speaking sectors;
- build a genuine bilingual ethos;
- develop the economy;
- institutionalize freedom, democracy, liberty, liberalism, human rights and social security;
- reverse the decades of brainwashing by the system;
- and prepare the nation to be a major player in Africa's economic union and political integration.
The realization of this task would be entirely on the shoulders of the post-independence generations who reject not only the system, but all the corrosive values (tribalism, corruption, Anglophilism, etc) it encourages. On the side of the struggling Cameroonian masses is all that is fresh, youthful and promising. On the side of the system is all that is rotten. All we need to do is organize the progressive forces of the land, galvanize the struggling Cameroonian masses, and then bring down the rotten and unraveling system.
October 10, 2011 Janvier Tchouteu
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