Clarion Call to Leaders of Bona Fide Political Opposition Parties in Cameroon

By Dr. Peter Wuteh Vakunta

Common sense dictates that when you plan to build a house, all the steps of the process have to be considered before construction starts. Failing to do so, you could wind up installing the doors and then finding out that the bed would not fit through them. Similarly, the electoral process has to be considered together as a whole instead of one piece at a time.  Not long ago I sent out a strong call to Cameroonian compatriots urging them to prepare themselves both physically and psychologically for the upcoming do-or-die presidential poll billed for October 9^th (“Death of a Taciturn Zombie”, 2011). Today, I am emitting yet another strong call to all leaders of bona-fide opposition parties in the Republic of Cameroon. You realize I have used the epithet “bona fide” to qualify genuine opposition political parties in our fatherland. Many are actually bogus contraptions fired by greed and hunger. As Dibussi would have it, many opposition parties in Cameroon “are moles of the regime in power” (Cameroon Presidential Election….”,2011)

Before I get to the crux of the matter, I would like to revisit a statement made by an authority on African political affairs, Professor George Ayittey, who observes: “In far too many countries, dictators have triumphed because the opposition is weak, fragmented, prone to squabbling and susceptible to co-optation or bribery by the despotic regime” (Defeating Dictators, 2011). I know not if Ayittey had the Cameroonian opposition in mind when he wrote this, but it seems to me that his statement is a perfect portrait of Cameroon’s political opposition.

Leaders of Cameroon’s opposition political parties have failed us, to say the least. As all informed Cameroonians know full well, Cameroon is a one party State where opposition parties are allowed but have no real chance of gaining power. Cameroon now counts over 200 political parties, with more than three-quarters being mushroom parties that harbor the sole objective of causing confusion and mayhem in the Cameroonian political landscape. Fragmenting the political tapestry bodes ill for the movement toward change in Cameroon. Here is what I just read on the webpage of Radio France Internationale: “L’organe chargé d’organiser la présidentielle a reçu une quarantaine de candidatures. » [the institution tasked with organizing the presidential election has received documents from about fifty candidates.] Believe me, this is mindboggling and just goes to show that Cameroon’s opposition parties  are comporting themselves like a bunch of chickens without heads. Honestly, these are signs of very bad times to come. In the real world nothing works like this. The game plan has to change  pronto. If not, we will be fighting a battle that is lost from the onset.

Contrary to expectations, Cameroon’s opposition parties have failed woefully to take advantage of Mr. Biya’s monumental incompetence. Like Biya, the majority of them are power drunk. The SDF, for instance, saw the light of day in 1990 and since then, Ni John Fru Ndi has remained the unchallenged party chairman and presidential candidate ad infinitum. He silences all rivals or simply gives them the boot when challenged. The same can be said of  Ndam Njoya, leader of the second largest opposition party in Cameroon, Cameroon Democratic Union,  Bello Bouba Maigari of National Union for Democracy and Progress, and Augustin Frederick Kodock of UPC to name but a few.

Interestingly, the SDF which cried foul when the CPDM presidential majority in the National Assembly scraped the presidential terms from the constitution in 2008,  allowing Mr. Biya to run for elections  as many time as he deems fit, has equally changed its constitution giving extra powers to the chairman. In this light, Agendia sounds the pessimist note that follows: “in as much as Fru Ndi… Ndam Njoya, Bello Bouba etc would continue to lead their parties and represent them in elections; most Cameroonians would stay home and refuse to vote”(op.cit). He further points out that during the 2007 council and legislative elections, for example,  just a little over 3 million of the 12 million potential voters registered and less than 60 percent of the registered voters  actually cast their votes. Now, this is sad, especially in a country where a bloodsucking president has literally put the lives of all citizens on hold.

Jean Jacques Ekindi’s  annoncement that he is ready to join the Biya government if he is invited is full of ignominy for lack of better words to describe this kind of mental slavery.The worse part of it is that most of these aspirants gunning for the presidential palace at Etourdi are as hostile to change as Paul Biya himself. Some of have been chairpersons of their parties for 18-20 years. At this rate,will Cameroonians ever see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel? We cannot hate change and want change; it is oxymonic. Some opposition parties behave as if they were competing from a level ground with Mr. Biya. The truth of the matter is that they are not. Biya is an incumbent and has mastered the ropes of trickery, gerrymandering, and fraudence pretty well. The task of the opposition is to pierce his bag of tricks by acting  in tandem.

French writer, Pigeaud, bemoans the disarray within the ranks of Cameroon’s opposition in very strong terms and points out this attitude has made it impossible for them to “organiser autour d’une candidature unique” (56-57) [to rally behind a single candidate]. Though some observers of the Cameroonian political scene consider talk about an opposition coalition as hot air, I subscribe to the ideology that unity is strength. It is not too late for the opposition to put their acts together and unite against a common foe: the vampire at Etoudi.Factors that have weakened Cameroon’s political opposition include:

• the power of incumbency,
• regional divisions
• the ineffectiveness of opposition boycotts,
• the tendency toward party schisms and the creation of parties based around one figure, and
• the incumbent’s ability to divide and conquer

There is no gainsaying the fact that, Mr. Paul Barthélémy Biya  Bi Mvondo has made huge political capital out of the weaknesses of the opposition. A case in point is the early presidential election he organized in 1992 and won with 39.9% of the votes against 35.9% for SDF Chairman John Fru Ndi. Of course, Cameroonians know why Biya won that election. We know that the then governor of the East Province, George Achu Mofor, resigned his post a few days following the proclamation of the results alleging that the erstwhile Minister of Territorial Administration, Gilbert André Tsoungi, had given all governors orders “d’employer  tous les moyens, quels qu’ils soient, pour assurer une victoire à hauteur de 60% du candidat du RDPC.”(Pigeaud, 2011, 58) [to use all means necessary to ensure that the CPDM candidate win by more than 60% of the votes cast….]

In his resignation letter, Achu Mofor explained that “pour nous aider dans cette tâche, un document en six pages émis par l’UDC sur les techniques de fraude électorale nous a été distribué (op.cit., 58) [to help us accomplish this task, a six-page document detailing the techniques of electoral fraud was distributed to us by the UDC]. I leave it readers to try and make sense of this sort of electoral obscurantism practiced by the Biya regime. I have discussed Mr. Biya’s gigantic fraud machine at length in a previous article (“The Gargantuan Fraud Machine, 2011).

It is imperative for opposition parties in Cameroon to put forward credible candidates for the upcoming election. They should avoid settling on candidates who lack what it takes to win votes in areas other than their birthplaces (Agendia, 2010).  If feasible, let all the opposition parties with some leverage sink their petty differences and produce a single credible candidate. Doing so would enable them to channel their energies and synergies against a common adversary: Mr. Biya.

The Game Plan

I am sending out this clarion call to leaders of all opposition parties competing in the October poll:

• One dependable safeguard against voter fraud is election monitoring.To the extent permitted by law, make your participation in this election contingent on the presence of International (bilateral and multilateral) election observers in Cameroon on October 9^th. In many cases, election observers are used to help prevent gerrymandering and fraud, and assure voters that the ballot is free and fair. Insist on having domestic election observers as well. But they must be non-partisan (i.e. not representing the interests of one or a group of election contestants). Critics contend that observers cannot spot certain types of election fraud like targeted voter suppression but they are capable of detecting the others.
• Stay wide awake and vigilant on voting day.  Be mindful of the fact that electoral fraud occurs in uncanny ways: electorate manipulation, gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, intimidation, vote buying  or “electoral treating”, misinformation, misleading or confusing ballot papers, ballot stuffing, fallacious recording of votes, misuse of proxy votes, destruction or invalidation of ballots,  attacks on polling places, legal and economic threats,booth capturing,  ghost votes, and more. I call on you to avoid the pitfalls of electoral boycott.  Our friends les gaulois say “les absents ont toujours tort” [you cannot be absent and right.] Boycotting elections has not cut it in the past and will not do the trick this time around. It is time to act together or perish.
• Party chairpersons should urge their party militants to come out en masse on October 9th for a punitive vote. The biggest surprise the opposition could spring on Mr. Biya is to put on their thinking caps, deflate your petty egos and present one credible single candidate to confront him at the polls. If they did this, the outcome of the October election would be unanticipated.  
• Enjoin your militants to stay put at the polling-stations until their votes have all been counted. They should resist the urge to retaliate or answer violence for violence when provoked by Mr. Biya’s savage security forces. Mr. Biya simply wants to create chaos and distraction in order to steal your votes. It is a trick he has played over and over to the point of becoming adept at it. With determination you can put spokes in the works for Mr. Biya. On election day, enjoin your militants to desist from behaving like sheep without a shepherd.
• Let your militants be at the best behavior at the polls. They should remain calm throughout the entire process, knowing that the entire world will be watching this momentous event via channels unknown to Mr. Biya. They should endeavor to graph the number of votes against turnout percentage (i.e. aggregating polling stations results within a given turnout).
• Most importantly, let your militants take the tally and use their mobile phones to send out the results to Cameroonian citizens at home and in the Diaspora. We should be able to have the big picture of the results of the whole voting process during the first twenty hours. We need not wait for ELECAM—Mr. Biya’s gigantic fraud machine— where Mr. Marafat Hamidou Yaya is leaving no stone unturned to hand over the people’s palace at Etoudi to Mr. Biya on a bloodstained platter. ELECAM is bogus. As  Emil  Bischoff points out, “ELECAM  does not have financial autonomy, cannot declare  election results and is subordinate to  the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization (MINATD) which is responsible for organizing elections”(1). I have the conviction that the moment is yours. You only need to seize it without fear or hindrance.

Conclusion

Regardless of what the outcome of the October 2011 presidential poll may be, it should be noted that Mr. Biya’s regime is tottering on the brink of imminent collapse.  His ruling CPDM party is not as unified as he would have us believe. For the first time in the history of the party, Biya is up against an ‘adversary’ from within. Mr. Eloi Bidoung has declared his intention to run for the party’s leadership during the party’s ordinary congress, arguing that Mr. Biya, aged 78, is too old to live through another seven year mandate.

Not only does Mr.  Biya’s age count against him but also the emerging radical group within his own party is a sign of fissures within the ruling party. This is a phenomenon that is very likely to weaken his grip on power even if he is re-elected in October. More importantly, civil society has become more vocal in its call on Biya to step down. The Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) though outlawed at home is still alive and active in the Diaspora. Others are in the offing. Cardinal Tumi has added his voice to many who are asking Biya to pass the baton to younger blood (RFI, 2011).

Last but least, let Mr. Biya and his supporters not lose sight of the fact that a popular uprising against a corrupt system that has lost touch with the governed does not necessarily have to be masterminded by an opposition political party. In the event that the upcoming presidential election fails to meet the aspirations of the Cameroonian people, mass mobilization could start from unsuspected quarters. Cameroonians should massively register and vote on October 9^th. They should protest by all means necessary if their votes are rigged. What happened in Ukraine, Madagascar, Thailand, and Iran should give us some hope. In the event of an uprising, leaders of the opposition should lead the protests. As Agendia opines, “It must not be an issue of sitting at home and asking militants to go to the streets” (op cit, 2010).

Works cited

Agendia, Aloysius. “Cameroon: Why Participation in 2011 Presidential Elections May be Poor.” Retrieved July 24, 2011 from http://agendia.jigsy.com/entries/cameroon/cameroon-why-participation-in-2011-presidential-

Ayittez, George. Defeating Dictators: Fighting Tyranny in Africa and Around the World.  New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Bischoff, Emil. Pre-Election Reflection: Cameroon’s 2011 Presidential Election.”  Retrieved September 9, 2011 from http://www.consultancyafrica.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=843:pre-election-reflection-cameroons-2011-presidential-elections&catid=42:election-reflection&Itemid=270

Dibussi, Tande. “Cameroon Presidential Election: Opposition Coalitions Are Overrated.” Retrieved September 9, 2011 from http://www.dibussi.com

Gomez, Juan. Présidentielle au Cameroun: une cinquataine de prétendants, RFI, 2011.”

Pigeaud, Fanny. Au Cameroun de Paul Biya. Paris: Karthala, 2011.

RFI. “Cameroun: Monseigneur Tumi, ancien archevêque de Douala, dresse un état des lieux du pays à la veille de la présidentielle.” Retrieved September 3,2011from http://www.rfi.fr/search/sinequa_search/%20le%20cardinal%20TUMI%20CAMEROUN%20ET%20LES%20ELECTIONS%20PRESIDENTIELLES%20AU

Vakunta, P.W. “The Death of a Taciturn Zombie: A Day of National Abstinence in Cameroon.”  Retrieved September 5, 2011 from http://www.postnewsline.com/2011/09/the-cruel-death-of-a-taciturn-zombie-a-day-of-national-abstinence-in-cameroon-by-dr-peter-wuteh-vakunta-fellow-cameroon.html#tp

Vakunta, P.W. “The Gargantuan Fraud Machine of Mr. Paul Biya’s Embargoed Regime” Retrieved September 6, 2011 from http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=142502905831755

 

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