How United is the Republic of Cameroon? (Book Review)

Tazoacha Asongayi

Book Review by Tazoacha Asonganyi

Dr. Atem George, How United is the Republic of Cameroon? The unification of institutions of the Republic of Cameroon, ANUCAM, 2011, 265p, 8 Chapters. 

The defining moment of Southern Cameroons - Anglophone - history in Cameroon is its unification with the Republic of Cameroon, marked by the plebiscite of February 11, 1961, and effective unification on October 1, 1961.One of these days, Paul Biya will be in Buea to commemorate what he calls 50 years of Cameroon’s reunification. 

In preparation for the event, articles, books and other art forms are coming up to jolt our memory in various ways. One of such contributions is Dr. George Atem’s recent book titled “ How United is the Republic of Cameroon?” and subtitled “The unification of the institutions of the Republic of Cameroon since 1961.”

The book is written in eight chapter as follows: 1) The Origins of Unification, 2) The Foumban Constitutional Conference, 3) Consolidation of Unification, 1961-66, 4) The politics of the abolition of the Federation, 5) Consolidation of the unitary state under President Ahmadou Ahidjo, 6) Effective Unification of Cameroon under President Biya, 7) Education in Cameroonian unification, 8) Unification in social services and institutions.

ELECAM and the Super-Chief Electoral Officer

Tazoacha Asonganyi

by Tazoacha Asonganyi

The hullabaloo about senatorial elections persists, but the process of producing a new electoral register that some people claim would have produced a more acceptable Electoral College for the senatorial elections seems to be going on unperturbed. Meanwhile, Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) has been claiming that its activities are controlled by the electoral code, even if it is in violation of the code that it started the biometric registration of voters in Cameroon on October 3, 2012 and said it would last until February 28, 2013.

With the approach of the closing date for the registration of voters, the election body’s promise that it would register some 7 million voters started haunting it, since it had hardly succeeded in registering up to 50% of the promised target. Therefore cries of low turnout started coming from all over the country, including from within ELECAM itself. And so the Super-Chief electoral officer, Paul Biya decreed that registration should continue for another month, until March 29, 2013; and so did it!

Another SDF bluff to be called!

Tazoacha Asonganyi

by Tazoacha Asonganyi

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!

Paul Biya like Kamuzu Banda!

Tazoacha Asonganyi

by Tazoacha Asonganyi

This time around in Paris, Paul Biya was not faced with any complicated, philosophical question which would allow him to give the demeaning response of “best pupil...”One of the questions concerned his longevity in office. In response, he repeated what he has been saying for a long time: the ballot box is there; it is the people that decide.

Such answers echo what Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the Malawian dictator who was worshipped like a God used to say at political rallies: “People outside this country call me dictator. But I tell them this: if I am a dictator I am a dictator by the people’s will...” Who can beat that? Which dictator will not borrow such a leaf from him?

Rene Sadi: Jacobin to the core!

By Tazoacha Asonganyi 

The German philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas tells us that there are two schools of natural law: the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental. The Anglo-Saxon school is optimistic and believes that the natural is good and can be “corrupted” or “deformed” by an external intervention. The task of politics is to restore society to its natural freedom – a freedom that society itself is best placed to administer.  

In contrast to the above, the Continental (French) school of natural law begins from the premise of a corrupted society which must be guided by a state which can impose upon “disorganised” society; power is exercised to influence society in a “positive” or “corrective” manner.  

It is in the exercise of this concept of state power that the Jacobins emerged in France during the French revolution, guided by the principles of Continental natural law to prosecute a revolution they saw as the rational transformation of society by the state. Constitutions like those of Cameroon are directed by Jacobinism and provide a central place for power which is exercised to achieve state-led initiatives. Such constitutions contrast with those in which the place of power remains unoccupied, with checks and balances ensuring that strong institutions of power control and complete each other. 

Marafa, the CPDM, and the rest of us

By Tazoacha Asonganyi

Marafa Hamidou Yaya was arrested and put on “preventive detention” in April 2012, with Ephraim Inoni, a former Prime Minister. In the process, we are learning again that it is not free, independent state institutions that are playing their role of investigating, arresting, and detaining suspects; it is all at the pleasure of one all powerful man, Paul Biya, President of the Republic. Reason why motions of support to Paul Biya are with us again to praise him for the arrest of Marafa and Inoni - from CPDM MPs, the National Youth Council, Mfoundi CPDM, and many more probably to follow in the days ahead...

Like for many political parties, “democracy” is also the pet “slogan” of the CPDM, which they included it in the name of their party, but their militants seem to have very little idea of what it means. Party solidarity cannot be allowed to endanger the rights of the individual member whose free will must remain realised and promoted by the party. Since Marafa published his letters, the CPDM has promoted the politics of personal destruction – visceral, mean-spirited campaigns to destroy him in public opinion – which I find disheartening and bad for the present and future of the country. I know in the jungle of the politics the Cameroonians play, the importance of putting one’s self in the place of another – empathy - to experience what they were feeling, and to understand their motives and desires is never as strong in us as in other societies we look up to.