Calling Biya’s bluff:Why the SDF must rethink its critical support that keeps the Biya regime hale and hearty

With only 14 seats in parliament the SDF is surely weak. Interestingly it is thanks to the active participation of Fru Ndi’s party in the house that Paul Biya can proudly claim as he does often that Cameroon’s institutions work. But the regime’s record is far too unflattering. Its political and economic record is a disaster. The question that faces the SDF now is whether it is politically correct to continue to give support to the regime. We fear that the SDF is negotiating with the regime out of weakness rather than from strength. That will surely not help. Why not think of withdrawing the support you have from the regime in order to force it in its relative weakness to reconsider its many unacceptable policies?

Long live the Biya regime! Long live Biya’s democracy! Ephraim Inoni turned up at last on Friday for the Q and A session at the national assembly! The PM was forced out after both the SDF house leader and the CPDM house speaker openly criticised him for habitually disrespecting the session. The PM’s truancy was only symptomatic of the problems government ministers were having. Many of them are simply not ready for the probe and seek ways to avoid the session. This newspaper even understands that ministers bribe members of the chairmen’s committee responsible for collecting and forwarding questions to ministers, to kill the questions! Add to the Q and A session the budget questioning of ministers over their allocations which provides yet another opportunity for deputies to punish the ministers. For the superficial or casual onlooker these exchanges at the assembly are evidence of democracy at work! Ephraim Inoni called the assembly “the high place for the expression of the vitality of our democracy.” For Paul Biya himself there is no question, “the institutions are working.” But are they really working? Any one who cares to look knows that the assembly and all of that play are only theatre and nothing more. Paul Biya is the great playwright and producer. He proudly points to the assembly as a power! Look closely enough and it is mostly the opposition deputies, and particularly those of the SDF who shoot the hard questions and make the exchanges heated and interesting. CPDM deputies proceed by another logic. Partly out of respect for CPDM ministers and partly for fear of hurting ministers whom they depend on for their contracts, they prefer to cool their game by asking, if they must do, easier questions. That unfortunately does not raise or keep the level of play to that which permits Biya to proudly declare satisfaction with the performance of the assembly as an institution. We are therefore obliged to recognise the crucial role of the SDF to keep the house as alive as it looks.

Functional institutions
So it is correct to an extent for Paul Biya to state as he often proudly does that public “institutions are working.” This statement is often made to answer or even mock critics of the regime. The thought fully expressed goes somewhat like this: don’t you worry, in spite of what you may think; Cameroon is functioning normally and peacefully. As we have already pointed out, the role of the opposition and especially that of the SDF is critical in all of this. This is an important point not to miss. For proof just imagine that the SDF decided no more to be part of the national assembly, don’t tell me Paul Biya would still display the same confidence in thinking or stating that all is normal with Cameroon as a functional country. In April 1992 the absence of the SDF was immediately made up for by the UNDP most of whose 68 seats were actually SDF’s by default. The regime could get on even though that absence worried Paul Biya. In 1997 Biya failed to get the SDF into the government but great was his joy to have them in the assembly. But as things stand today, after all the scrapes the regime has had with its foreign partners over its reluctance to reform it very much places a high premium on the stability and functionality of Cameroon as a country. The regime has been further weakened by other factors not least of which is widespread opposition to its dreadful mandate extension project. If the SDF were to withdraw from the assembly, the least anyone could say is that the withdrawal would deal a devastating blow on the regime at this delicate juncture. To be sure, that might not create a domino effect whereby the whole regime collapses like a pack of cards. What is most likely to happen is that it will destabilise the regime in no small way especially at a time it does not have all its strength. That could lead on to other damage which in the end actually brings the regime to its knees. Whatever is the case an SDF withdrawal from the house would weaken Biya quite well. The question to ask is if there is need now for the SDF or any opposition party to want to quit the house. At individual level deputies are simply comfortable. They earn salaries, allowances, benefits and other facilities which put together make them a privileged lot when compared with dreary salaries of civil servants. Being a deputy also grants a much elevated social status. Since most deputies were only handpicked their new status represents a lifetime gift. For social and financial reasons no one would therefore readily want to give up all that. But the story is hugely different at institutional level. Would the opposition and the SDF really want to continue to give that much needed support to a regime whose economic and democratic credentials are so defective?

Non-accountability
Apart from those important shortcomings it is now formal that the Biya regime is not accountable. Last April’s constitutional amendments specified that the president cannot be held accountable for his acts in and out of office! How is anyone to understand such a provision, knowing that accountability is a major pillar of any responsible government? Would a well-meaning party in quest of democracy consciously participate in an irresponsible government? Wouldn’t that only perpetuate it instead of discouraging it? Is that what the SDF is up to? Apart from the personal emoluments of individual deputies what does the SDF take out of its participation in the Biya regime? Today they have 14 seats down from 21 in the previous parliament, and further down from 44. Had they contested the 1992 legislative election they would have got more than the 68 seats that went to the UNDP mostly by default. What a slide! Therefore as things stand today the SDF is very weak and keeps growing steadily weaker. But even in this weakened condition, as already pointed out, their active participation in the house lifts Biya and his regime. Then something really curious is happening. Biya is taking advantage of SDF’s weakened condition to mess up if not utterly ruin SDF’s chairman John Fru Ndi! We mean the court case. What a paradox! This can only be so because, finding themselves in a position of weakness, Fru Ndi and his party are negotiating or trying to negotiate with their adversary from weakness, not from strength which they do not believe they still have any iota of. What a shame! This newspaper has already questioned the SDF. How can a respectable party in quest of democracy, good governance and socio-economic development remain as silent as the SDF over the most glaring shortcomings of the Biya regime? Why would the mighty SDF stoop so low? Why beg the regime on your knees for pity? Why don’t you use your own power no matter how diminished it is in talking to the regime? No matter how little you think it is, power is power and that is what you must try to exercise. You will be surprised what David can do to Goliath. We have in this newspaper always pointed out that all politics is a power game. Don’t expect your adversary to have pity on you if he has the power to destroy you. It doesn’t work out like that. You may have only a little power, try to use it. The human experience proves unfailingly that it is in adversity that we often find our greatest strength to overcome if only we do not yield to it but seek the opportunity hidden in it.

Karamazov brothers
Examples abound starting with the biblical case of David and Goliath. Fyodor Dostoevsky tells us of the powerfully transforming experience of the Karamazov brothers who found incredible strength in devastating adversity. It was during his time in a Cairo prison that Anwar Sadat took the time to think out his political programme which inevitably lifted him to the pinnacle of power following the demise of Abdel Nassar. The story of Nelson Mandela is now everybody’s knowledge. He refused to succumb to the humiliation of his enemies. Instead he spent those years in self-transformation. He formed a school in which the likes of Jacob Zuma who spent ten years with him at Roben Island received helpful instruction. He himself emerged from prison a moral and political giant, a world leader of exceptional class. We call out to the opposition and the SDF especially to wake up and throw off this ignoble burden lying on Cameroonians. You may be down but be sure that you are not by any stretch of the imagination out. Rise up and challenge the Biya regime. By being silent and indifferent you only open the way for Paul Biya to continue to lord it over Cameroonians. Do not forget that it is with SDF’s cooperation that Biya tells the world that all is fine in Cameroon. What more he is even now poised to ruin the SDF chairman. We call on the opposition to rise up and call Biya’s bluff. Use the little power you still have and speak to him powerfully. That is the way. Don’t accept any favours other than political concessions which he can only make because you use your small power to speak to him powerfully. Unless so, let the SDF count itself finished. And Biya will continue to ride high like Ozymandias, king of kings – on the ruins of the SDF and the grave of a once powerful Fru Ndi who died a coward, weak and defeated on the political battlefield.

Culled from The Herald