A former French president Giscard d’Estaing with an insight shaped by being a witness and participant in the triumph of the human spirit over unimaginable odds because he fought in the Second World War, once said that history is tragic, and that there can be no response to history without effort. What is sure is that Paul Biya was not a participant in the struggle for the independence of Cameroun. That is why he probably did not understand the French journalist who asked him questions during the joint press conference he held with François Hollande in Yaounde recently. But I think the mention by Hollande of the struggles of Um Nyobe and his colleagues for the independence of Cameroun was indirectly drawing his attention to where the French journalists were coming from.
Human history is one single
continuum of the march of humanity in search of liberty, freedom and rights.
The British as part of the continuum shed their blood and provided humanity
with the Magna Carta. The Americans in the effort to move the struggle forward,
also shed their blood in the American Revolution and provided humanity with a
written constitution that famously declared that “We the people…in order to
form a more perfect union…and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and
to our Posterity do ordain and establish this Constitution…” And the French
shed their own blood during their own Revolution to take liberty, rights and
freedom to their own next level.
In Cameroun, Um Nyobe and his colleagues
struggled to add their own value to this human struggle for liberty, freedom
and rights; to add their own quota to the continuum of human effort.
Unfortunately, the French joined Ahidjo to prevent Um and his colleagues from
making any contribution to the advancement of the continuum. The result is that
Ahidjo and later Paul Biya understood and copied only the letter of the
constitutionalism that is the outcome of this long and continuing human
struggle, neglecting the spirit shaped by several centuries of sacrifice to
establish rights, liberty and freedom. This is why Paul Biya thinks that the
constitution is just a piece of paper that can be manipulated to refuse the
freedom, liberty and rights that the constitution is supposed to incarnate; why
he can freely turn the constitution from a charter of freedom and rights for
all, to a charter of personal power and the liberty and authority of
repression!
Paul Biya’s declaration that he has
been in power for the last 33 years because the people want it to be so, is a
confirmation that history is indeed tragic. He most obviously failed to
understand that the question put to him was based on the spirit of
constitutionalism, not the letter.
In his boastful answer, he left the
impression that he is a messiah, gifted by nature above other humans. Although
he is human like you and me, he thinks that he is a god; so he plays god! Since
by the letter of his manipulated constitution he is the lone manager of all the
powers that he considers sacred, he can play god! He has acquired absolute
power, unchecked, creating fertile ground for corruption. In a way, it is his
absolute power that provides the fuel for the corruption we live with today. As
the wielder of absolute power, he takes liberties to bend and ambush laws and
regulations to suit his convenience, desires or aims – all of which has given
birth to filthy corruption. Somehow, all coopted persons – appointed officials
– decided to imitate the king to the extent they could, and so corruption
spread in the various centers of sub-absolute powers the king created and
controls!
Paul Biya knows very well that his
longevity in power is not because of the people; it is because of the inner
logic of the power grid that he has purposely engineered into the fabric of our
society. With the power architecture in place, he freely wills himself into
power, “election” after “election.” As with all such human exclusionist effort,
the state’s political and bureaucratic order has become confused with the
state; and the the perception has been created that only the king-cum-chief
priest-cum-philosopher and his power servants are true servants of the state.
The rest of us in our various team corners doing our best in the service of the
state are perceived as outsiders. These perceived “in” and “out” groups – those
near the center of power and those removed from it, are also perceived to live
opposite lives: the “ins”a “juicy life” and the “outs” a life “in the cold.”
Small wonder that our society is what it is today, with the majority “outs”
feeling alienated from the state and also constituting themselves into centers
of corruption, in imitatation of the center and sub-centers of power.
Power is most obviously not a divine
gift; it is a product of the human mind. Power predisposes to greater power, to
the delusion of possessing a blank check - politically and otherwise. Humans
can decide to aggregate power or allocate and share it rationally and
symmetrically. Man uses power to serve specific purposes. This is why a major
future challenge for Cameroon and Cameroonians is to think up a new power grid
that disrupts the present order and the present attempt to stabilize the power
grid in the interest of a cabal, a cartel or monopoly. We have to engineer a
new power grid that renders politicians impotent and the people powerful - for
the good of the state, and the people.The new power grid will so disperse power
that no one bloc, no one person, however temporarily triumphant, can become a
domineering or dominant boastful power. As it is usually the case, when we give
and scatter powers back to the people, back to their greatest numbers, it will
be to ensure that their genius opens windows of creativities and pours out a
national abundance for us all, not only for people of power…
Corruption is the abuse of power or
office; the use of office, influence or power for what it is not intended by
rules and regulations. Corruption is not so much about persons; it is the
system that co-opts or pushes persons, most of the time innocent, into corruption.
Corruption is about power games, power grids. It is the nature and
infrastructure of power distribution in society that can adequately check
corruption. Therefore the fight against corruption has to be the fight for the
re-engineering of societal power architecture - the distribution of power.
Power needs to be democratically shared and allocated to serve the state and
all of us well. By using the fight against corruption as a self-preserving
weapon to arrest and imprison selected people, Paul Biya has been giving the
impression that there are corruption-free “nationalists”, or even saints in his
regime. By that, he has indirectly nominated himself and some of his cronies as
these “saints” and “nationalists”! However, nobody doubts that they appear to be
clean just because their own reputation has been placed beyond enquiry, or the
aggregated powers he controls spares them for self-serving reasons.
Politicians are known for their
greed. Paul Biya has been emotionally involved for over 30 years in the engineering of the suffocating
power grid that we have in Cameroon. It is obvious that time has dented the
clarity of his thoughts and the quality of his vision and discernment. His exit
will serve the nation better than his further presence and continued assumed
contribution. This is why he should not stand election in 2018. And he should
leave us to choose his successor through the polls, rather than foist another
unknown on us, like Ahidjo did for him.
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