Ministerial Road Maps: Will the Yang government please stand up!

                   By Tazoacha  Asonganyi in Yaounde.

Professor Tazoacha Asonganyi

Paul Biya took over the helm of power from Ahmadou Ahidjo in Cameroon in November 1982. He ruled for some 10 years before Cameroonians together, at the tripartite conference of October/November 1991, decided to limit the mandate of any person who sought the presidency of Cameroon to a maximum of two-seven-year mandates. He was given the leeway to start afresh with all other Cameroonians, under the ambit of the new rule. He did, but before the end of his second and last mandate, he forced the hand of the country to change the constitution to give him the possibility of a life presidency. This is why he is still at the presidency some 30 years later!

During the 30 years Paul Biya must have formed some 20 governments or more. Choosing a government is undoubtedly one of the most important ways in which he, like most rulers, exercise power over the whole conduct of government. During 30 years, choosing a good government team would have virtually become routine to him, since he would know many people with the calibre of becoming good ministers.

A good ministerial team is of great importance in keeping effective political control over the work of government departments. It is the job of government to create a framework for stability, the rule of law, and sound economic policies within which individual families and businesses are free to pursue their own dreams and ambitions. It is also the duty of government to provide the right framework of laws and an educated work force to widen choice, generate wealth and jobs and improve the quality of life of the citizens.

Unfortunately, Paul Biya is not a man of force and character. He seems to agonise a lot over decision making, taking too much time to reach most decisions; he seems to be too concerned with personal detail, and less with discussion and collective action. He has been docked with the problems of nurturing democracy which he does not want, but talks a lot about it like a pet project. In appointing his plethora of members of government over the years, he hardly ever pays attention to the fact that if a person is disloyal in one department, he would be in another; he pays too much attention to regional “balance” without ensuring that a man of the same or better calibre replaces the “brother/sister.” He regularly papers-over cracks, not seeming to know that the cracks will come later to haunt him, as they are doing now; he ignored for a long time that irresponsible behaviour that does not involve penalty of some kind, slowly becomes the norm.

Upon the formation of each government, the overall strategy of the government has to be defined in a very clear way. Such strategy is supposed to be repeated over and over again at regular ministerial meetings to compel every minister to relate problems to the overall strategy of the government, thus constantly keeping the eyes of the government on the ball. During such ministerial meetings, each government department is supposed to provide the facts which constitute the framework for thinking, talking, writing, discussing, debating, and fine-tuning overall government policy.

Rules of engagement are usually the means by which the politician authorises the framework within which the military can be left to make operational decisions; they have to be clear and cover all possible eventualities. It is supposed to be the same with the overall strategy of government dished out to new governments, and repeated to the government regularly.

Regular ministerial meetings also allow the government to talk to itself, and so prevent tensions from building up when departmental actions cause frictions which are always present due to the frailty of human nature; the meetings give vent to such tensions and clear up misunderstandings which build up when people do not see and talk to one another frequently enough.

On top of ensuring the choice of good governmental teams, the public service should be professional to allow governments that change from time to time, to come and go with a minimum of dislocation and a maximum of efficiency. Unfortunately, our public service is at the beck and call of the ruling CPDM party: highly corrupt, prompt to descend to the field to defend the interests of the party, constantly abusing and misusing state property, highly unprofessional!

Of recent, we have been told that each department of government has been asked to draw its own “road map” for government action. And the league to which they will belong – bad, good, or excellent – will depend on how well they do this. This is preposterous, given that a government should act as one harmonious unit meant to deliver or facilitate the delivery of goods and services to the citizenry. If each department has to think up what to cook and how to cook it, the cacophony on the table of Cameroonians would be beyond description, as it already seems to be already. A ministerial department should enter a common kitchen, find the ingredients, the cookbook with the various menus, and prepare only menus already present in the cookbook of a government that intends to deliver a good nutritional health to the citizens.

Asking each individual minister to identify their own ingredients and write their own menus and cookbooks, is like bungling the classical work of government, while leaving the perception that the government has its hands on deck. It will just not work that way.

Will the Yang government please, stand up!