By Ayah Paul Abine
Mr. Biya has replayed his empty interminable promises to Cameroonians just again! We have moved from empty moral rectitude to entrenched corruption.From failed brash undertaking to personally supervise the tarring of roads to a limping promise of personal supervision of the performance of a “government with a mission!” Read the Head of State's New Year Message to The Nation on December 31,2011
From reckless structural adjustment through vacant completion point, dark light at the end of the tunnel, intangible HIPC funds to a trash “Growth and Employment Strategy Paper”! From hollow “grand débat to large débat! From veiled tripartite talks through self-beneficial constitutional amendments, monolithic multi-party system, retarded advanced democracy to colossal electoral fraud. From…to…From…to…From…to…world without end Amen!
One cannot help calling Mr. President’s “government with a mission”facetious! A few years back Mr. President staged the signing of performance contracts by his ministers. Years later Mr. President
pejoratively caricatured the very government as the mother of inertia.Nor has he depicted it any more differently in the speech under consideration! Those very ministers form today the bulk of the present
“government with a mission”. If in a state of inertia they were at the time they were energetic, what is the foundation of Mr. President’s assertion that, in senility, they will deliver on his novel promise?
Is not it only logical to argue that, just as it has taken thirty years for Mr. rigorous and vigorous President to plan as per the 2012 budget to deliver on his promise to personally supervise the tarring of roads, we shall have to wait for over thirty years for Mr. President in his advanced age to personally supervise with positive
results the “government with a mission?
No-one can help laughing when Mr. President asserts that the last presidential election “was fair and reflect the will of the majority of our people”. Is election fair when Mr. President occupies CRTV 98%
of the time while 22 other candidates share 2%? Is it fair election when over 19.3 billions of taxpayers’ money is spent on Mr. President-candidate with unlawful giant posters even in the forest and in banana plantations whereas another candidate is given 15 millions for his own campaign only three days to the polling day? Who is talking about fair election where civil servants are intimidated into campaigning for and are under the obligation to vote the incumbent conditional on their losing their jobs otherwise? We daresay that fairness forbids anyone calling the election fair when he is possessed of the fact that many were polling stations that displayed only the ballot papers of the incumbent! Where is the fairness when citizens are forced into abject poverty in order to secure the compliant selling of their votes, at times for as little as 500 francs? Is it“the will of the majority of our people” the involuntary purchase by them of misery wrapped in 500 francs notes?
We wish at this juncture to give credit to Mr. President for taking the courage to decry nepotism. But Mr. President himself knows that his lieutenants have missed no occasion to din into the heads of
Cameroonians and Camerounese that top-bottom is a uni-directional order of things in our country. If therefore nepotism has accounted for inertia these thirty years, the top must examine its conscience.
As a matter of fact, few have been comfortable with the examples from the top. Take for instance the composition of the “government with a mission”! Is not it a fact that too big a percentage of it is composed of Mr. President’s kith and kin and/or school-fellows? How does Mr.President convince us that, even as Anglophones constitute some 20% of the population, they are not meritorious enough to occupy more than
two of 37 cabinet positions? A percentage far less than Mr.President’s clan-persons! Mr. President surely will provide us the answer at Buea during the revived 50th anniversary of Reunification!
Then and only then shall we take seriously Mr. President’s apparent condemnation of nepotism, and his subtle indication to combat it.
One is much more at sea about Mr. President’s claptrap about women and the youth. The number of women in the government and the marginal ministries they occupy fall far far below the UN recommended 30%. Any patting on the back relative to such blatant under-representation seems grossly idle. As for the youth, they are completely absent from the government. Mr. President’s CPDM Constitution sets the ceiling for the youth at 35 years. If therefore a person of 45 is appointed in the place of the youth, it amounts to abuse of terms offending against even Mr. President’s party’s constitution to call him a youth. Were he
a youth even, it would still be insulting to give to the youth who are 60% of the population only one of 35 positions? The youth surely will not miss to take note!
As regards the economy, we have already heard so many flourishes about growth with no corresponding positive impact that they are now meaningless to us. If FIMAC, FONADER, CREDIT AGRICOLE, FARMERS’ CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES, and the like have all failed in the past,nothing there is today that tells us the situation of farmers will be any better with the creation of more similar white elephants today or tomorrow. Truly, even we non-economists would opine that growth is not contingent on swelling the Public Service but by creating propitious enabling climate for investment.
All in all then, Mr. President’s message sounds like a high-sounding nothing! Those who have failed him over the decades are still tightly seated, and the system that has been the logical fiasco is still firmly entrenched. Mr. President may wish to borrow a leaf from the book of wisdom and humility!
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