By Tazoacha Asonganyi,Yaounde.
Recently,
the press informed us of a declaration of Fru Ndi’s that there will be
no senatorial elections in Cameroon until Paul Biya meets with him. This
was said to be a statement he made to those who attended his rally in
one of the towns in the North West region. A few days after the “threat”
was published, Paul Biya called his bluff (for the umpteenth time!) and
went ahead to convene the senatorial elections for 14 April 2013. Last
Saturday, the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the SDF met in
Bameda and “adopted” the Fru Ndi threat, calling on Paul Biya to
urgently dialogue with Fru Ndi, otherwise there will be a disruption of
peace.
This is how past “resolutions” of NEC like “no good laws, no elections” came about. Like
this one, it was a “slip” during a rally that made its way to NEC, and
without profound reflection on how it would be enforced, it was taken up
as a resolution!
Now,
no one knows what Fru Ndi means by wanting to meet Paul Biya. He has
met him several times before, and knows very well that he never kept any
promise he made to him. He met him early this year when he joined
others like him to salute Paul Biya. He told Paul Biya that he would
want senatorial elections to be held after the upcoming municipal and
parliamentary elections. Paul Biya has ignored his wishes and gone ahead
to convene the senatorial elections for 14 April 2013. Instead of
getting the people out to put pressure on Paul Biya, he is wasting his
time telling everybody who wants to listen that he wants to meet Paul
Biya! This is a new type of politics: confused, lack of preparation,
visionless!
Interestingly,
many people are saying that Paul Biya has really exaggerated this time
around. These are people who do not know Paul Biya. If you lock up the
public service of your country during elections because the civil
servants are out campaigning for you in the field, you have really
exaggerated. If you use state resources for your personal campaigns, you
have really exaggerated. If you convene the electoral corps of a
country like Cameroon during the rainy season, you have really
exaggerated. If you allow everybody around you to be corrupt so that you
can use it as a weapon of control, you have really exaggerated. If you
create a political environment where there are over 200 political
parties in a country of some 20 million people, and yet do not allow a
two round election for some of the parties to be
useful to the country, you have really exaggerated! So
how much do we want Paul Biya to exaggerate before we know that
exaggeration is one of his trademarks? He exaggerates, not for the sake
of the country, but for his own sake!
In
politics, one has to always reflect on lived experience in order to
conceive more effective actions. It is such permanent reflection that
makes it possible for a human grouping to create new beginnings, new
openings and breakthroughs. A political party is supposed to be a
“reflective” grouping that endures, evolves over time and generates
responses to new challenges that arise from time to time, ensuring that
collegial, consensual, and consultative – collective – leadership is
privileged over leadership based on command, control, and diktats. The
SDF has issued a lot of threats before, which all ended in naught.
Issuing threats without a very clear idea on how the threat
would be implemented, or converting half-thought-out statements at
rallies into party resolutions is nothing short of ridicule.
A
journalist has already asked Fru Ndi the following question: This is
not the first time you are threatening that elections will not hold if
things are not done correctly. But nothing has ever been done to stop
these elections. What strategy do you intend to use this time more than
ever before?
And
Fru Ndi gives the type of answer we have heard before: My first weapon
is the population. Let the population fight now to defend their country.
We believe in “power to the people.” I am calling on each and everyone
to prepare for the great fight that is about to start…
True,
the most potent counter-force to a neocolonial regime like the one we
have in Cameroon is “the population” – the people. However, as Mandela
says in his biography, Long Walk to Freedom, a slogan should not
end at just providing a link between the organization and the people it
seeks to lead, or at synthesizing a particular grievance into a succinct
and captivating phrase; the party should prepare the people to live the
reality of the slogan.
The
SDF has neither prepared the people to use the power their slogan
promises them, nor to assume it. For this reason and more, this new
bluff of the SDF will fizzle out like the others, due to the fault of
its leadership!
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