By Fuatabong Achaleke
Reading through this rigmarole, one thing is discernible nevertheless; namely that President Paul Biya comes out as someone racing against time to conceal, explain and misrepresent his anti-people actions and criminal proclivities.
First, he explains failed economic policies on the current world food crisis. To a Cameroonian audience, he would have been lauding the success of the politics of the new deal/appeasement/grand ambitions and so on.
In celebration of the very poverty he purported to condemn, he would have been dishing out crumbs stolen from state coffers to sycophants, political turncoats, hangers-on and cronies while using the same poverty as a weapon to cajole, subdue, corrupt and compel allegiance.
One thing he did not say is that in his prison republic, pauperisation is celebrated as a key component of his strategy to eternalise power. The few people who cared to listen to his speech must, therefore, have been amused at his citing real problems without suggesting any meaning idea about how the said problems could be solved, save praising the UN ostensibly for paying lip service to the fight against hunger.
Biya evoked the February crisis that rocked his prison republic; listed the purported measures he took to redress the alleged grievances of the said crisis.He failed to mention the fact that a key element of the protest was about the constitutional coup he staged against constitutional order in order to remain in power for life.
He failed to say that amongst the measures he took to redress the situation, was an order to soldiers, gendarmes and the police to massacre in cold blood women, men and children whose only crime was to lay claim to the fundamental basic freedoms guaranteed all by virtue of our creation.
And he failed to say that his said criminal orders were carried out and several hundreds died as a consequence. In any case, the mere evocation of the situation is indicative that Biya is on the defensive on the matter and was taking advantage of the podium at the UN General Assembly to present a pedestrian defence of his actions.
I wish Mr. Biya also remembered that there is a time for everything under heaven. And that he and those who acted in this systemic joint criminal enterprise will be called to defend themselves.Then, Mr. Biya, will know that in conduct bordered on crime against humanity, the voice of the dead is not always dead silent as many may foolishly think.
He alluded to his purported crusade against corruption and promised to arrest even more. He failed to acknowledge that the alleged embezzlers were his appointees over whose malfeasance he bears criminal responsibility. He also failed to say that in his prison republic, he is judge and party in his cause, as far as corruption is concerned.
He evoked the sorry plight of immigrants, many of whom have perished in the desert on their way to Europe or the acts of indignity visited on them by white immigration criminal gangs on arrival in Europe.
Even Biya's mere presence every year at the UN symbolised a quagmire of a satanic dagger on the conscience of Africa, still he would have been honest to admit that it is thanks to suffocating political repression like the one that he set loose in February this year that is forcing many young people to flee the country at the risk to life and limb.
A lot more can be said about this speech. I reserve it for another forum. Suffice for now to say that those who listened to this speech should by now know that Cameroon, indeed, is a prison republic, reason why discerning to which audience he intended the speech is patently elusive, to say the least.
The ICC (of which i am no great fan)is weilding its knive against El-Haj Omer Bashir a siting president, and while the King of our Kingdom has made the republic an unconstitutional monarchy, he should hope that like his peers Houphet Boigny, and more recently Mwanawassa (who accoding to me is in the book of the rare breed of good African leaders)death should be his ultimate sanction, otherwise if as he has established that he cannot be tried under cameroon law for any crime he has committed on the people.
My little knowledge of international law informs me that in cases of crimes against humanity & gross human rithts violations, ultimate responsibility falls with the head... hence the HEAD of all the institutions in the kingdom should expect to oneday end up in the ICC cos the events of february constitute a crime against humanity, for his royal highness felt threathened by unarmed civilians and ordered their liquidation.
Posted by: numvi | Tuesday, 30 September 2008 at 11:01 AM