Cameroon: Of Motions Of Support and Supporters

A compilation of motions of support to Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, hit the stands a few days ago. Of 364 pages, the compilation of messages from the President’s supporters is only a figment of the thousands of motions allegedly sent from the four corners of the country. It stands out from such declarations of support, therefore, that Cameroon’s Head of State for over 28 years enjoys popular acclamation, after all.

By Christopher Fon Achobang

In the context of Cameroon, a motion of support is a written or verbal statement sent or said to somebody in authority, usually Paul Biya, as a sign of solidarity and agreement. The messages will come thanking the President for appointing a family member or tribesman as a minister or senior member of the administration, or manager of a corporation. Such motions of support come in anticipation of the gains to accrue from the position. ‘Mon frère est en haut’, they say. Other motions of support condemn detractors of the regime for writing or saying what the madding crowd is politically engineered to see as subversive or defamatory.

When the ‘Wind of Change’ unleashed its violence from the East blowing fiercely towards the West and heating Cameroon in 1990, some political lame dogs mobilized dozens of people to march against multipartism. The Biya they thought they were supporting declared to a cheering jammed full Congress Hall of RDPCists that ‘Je vous ai bien compris’. A few days later, he did the exact opposite and opened the political floodgates for a plethora of opposition parties to mushroom through a barren democratic wilderness. Once more, thousands of motions of support poured in, to the bemusement of Biya and myself, as I saw an illiterate chief from my village leading a constellation of ‘fons’ from my tribe to present what was called a motion of support from my people.

I find one definition of support from Webster’s Third New International Dictionary quite appropriate to Cameroon: to endure especially in silence or with courage: BEAR, SUFFER, TOLERATE. 1) To keep from fainting, sinking, yielding or losing courage: COMFORT, STRENGTHEN. 2) To maintain in condition, action, or existence.

We may say that all Cameroonians support President Paul Biya in that we have shown a lot of courage and fortitude in going through his 28 years, and beyond, of inertia, corruption, and bad governance. These three condemnable ills have regularly been criticized by Biya in his messages to Cameroonians. Therefore, no overzealous supporter should accuse me of reproving the President. We Cameroonians have borne, suffered and tolerated Biya beyond the wildest human imagination and tolerance, and most neighbours conclude that maybe there is a spell over Cameroon.

A supporter in Cameroon, today, appears to be somebody who decides to hide under the umbrella of the Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement (CPDM). English, at least in great expectation, calls this political team ruling Cameroon a democratic movement. The French counterpart of the same political outfit does not hide its lack of vision and aspiration by calling it ‘Rassemblement Démocratique du Peuple Camerounais, (RDPC). We may translate this as a Willing Group of Cameroonian People. The French appellation of the party does not indicate an aspiration for democracy, but a free association of some Cameroonian people, which justifies the English saying that ‘birds of the same feathers flock.’ A supporter of the CPDM, it would be agreed, is all those who wished to hide behind the party and flock towards immunity from prosecution for crimes committed against the Cameroonian people.

I have always believed that to be called a supporter, one had to comfort and strengthen the person we so claim to be supporting. If I declared that I was supporting President Paul Biya, it will mean that I was ready to go an extra mile with him. Support to me means standing by the person I declare my support for, sustaining that person’s vision and helping to crystallize and realize it. Support means, if Biya is condemning corruption, I will elevate myself into an anticorruption crusader and do everything to combat it wherever it raises its ugly head.

Short from being supporters, the alleged millions who support Biya do so only in words. How can a supporter of Paul Biya be the one embezzling, rigging elections, corrupting society, blackmailing and perpetrating inertia and bad governance? Baffling indeed! Perhaps, I qualify among the nincompoops who over credit Biya for being a victim of a sinning and criminal regime. History will judge us.

From the outset of the Biya era, he declared that he was for Rigour and Moralization. It means on coming to power, Biya determined that he had inherited a country which was morally bankrupt and institutionally lax. To restore morality in Cameroon, Biya has indeed, for 28 years, been sparing no energy in combating the many evils he acknowledges every day. Yet, every passing hour, Cameroon slides steadily into the infernal abyss of moral decadence and institutional perfidy.

When supporters become Judas Iscariots, experts at debauchery and deceit, then we may see them as people only interested in maintaining their conditions, actions, or existence. They are not participating in preventing Cameroon from fainting, sinking or yielding to the enemy as Biya publicly preaches.

The condition of the ordinary Cameroonian is that of the wretched of the earth. To get to this categorization, Biya’s supporters have taken actions like increasing taxes, prices of basic commodities to raise money which they eventually embezzle. Remember Polycarpe Abah Abah; Olanguena, who after waving banners of support at the G11, bled Cameroonians white through their embezzlement of billions. Remember hadja Haman Adama, even though a grandmother is alleged to have misappropriated and embezzled billions meant for basic school needs in primary schools for the education of her grandchildren.

May we also remember the hundreds of other state functionaries, Prime Ministers, Ministers, Vice-chancellors, Deputy Vice-Chancellors, directors, commissioners, justices, lawyers, mayors, tax inspectors, customs officers, registrars and all Honourable Crooks who claim to be supporters of Biya, yet turn around to perpetrate the moral tsunami which has wrecked Cameroon.

I am probably dimwitted to be presenting President Biya as a victim of the RDPC gangsters waving motions of support. Forgive me if I mentioned that a prominent conman, today serving as a cabinet minister was whisked out of the New Bell Prison in the last part of the last century to present his motion of support to the Biya government. Also ignore my defamation when I remind you that the billions Biya promised best students at university level in his 2010 New Year speech, acclaimed with more motions of support, had been embezzled or misappropriated in 1991 by one of the current Deputy Secretary Generals at the Presidency. As Chancellor of the University of Yaounde, this illustrious son of Southern Cameroons reminded striking students, that university bursaries were a luxury and free education was a policy aberration. This poor boy, himself a beneficiary of the welfare State, failed to remember his background and chose to forget where he was coming from. Today, he sits at the Presidency engineering and receiving fictitious motions of support in hopes to be appointed Prime Minister.

Biya might not be a fool like me. He is calm like a dove but wise and scheming like a serpent. He waits patiently for the criminal and lays ambush for them close at home, and then strikes them with the precision and deadly venom of a green mamba.

Such lip service supporters, perpetrators of our hard times, remind me of the ironies of Coketown in ‘Hard Times’ by Charles Dickens. Remember the lady serving Josiah Bounderby, the Bully of Humility. So angered by the master checking her, would point her sweeping broom contemptuously at his portrait on the wall, saying “you this noodle”.

Since Ahmadou Ali, Vice Prime Minister, Minister of Justice has declared that he has a long list of public servants to arrest, I am sure these lip service supporters, the righteous Catherine Abenas will be pointing whips at the thousand Biya portraits on their walls saying “You this bi-Mvondo, we shall see how you follow us down.” Another thousand motions of support will flow, like palm wine, if Biya declared that Camerounese should put on sackcloth and cry for the beloved country his supporters are spoiling.