Uncaring attitude:Why Biya regime doesn’t mind Being unpopular

The nervous enthusiasm with which governments elsewhere attend to the welfare of their citizens makes Cameroon a truly strange case. The Yaounde authorities have a legendary disregard for the people. No investment in roads, education and health. Not even relief supplies to disaster victims in Cameroon, not to talk of helping Cameroonians in trouble abroad. Governments try to appeal to the electorate because they expect to be voted back. But the Biya regime has successfully kept on because it has rigged with impunity. Who at home and abroad can stop him? So well-honed is his method of winning elections without being popular that he now intends to stay in power for life. Will the world sit back and watch a power monster destroy Cameroon?

Why would the British government rush to the rescue of a British woman teacher who gets a 15-day prison sentence for running foul of Islamic law in Sudan? Gillian Gibbons was set free after she had, in fact, served nine days.

How on earth would the French president personally fly to Chad to rescue three French journalists cleared of the zoe child abduction scandal? What is Nicolas Sarkozy’s interest in putting so much time and energy to have the French-Columbian woman, Ingrid Betencourt, released by the FARC guerrillas of Columbia? What was the French government’s interest in securing the release of the six Bulgarian (non-French) nurses from Libyan prisons?

Why would the South Korean government take so much trouble to secure the release of their citizens taken hostage by insurgents in Afghanistan? RANSOM MONEY
What is it that obliges American, German, French, Italian and other European governments to pay huge ransom money to secure the release of their citizens abducted in Iraq or elsewhere? (No one ever accepts they paid ransom money).
Why wouldn’t this government ignore their citizens, usually private persons, who run into trouble in foreign lands?There are two answers to that. One, it is the moral responsibility of governments to protect their law-abiding citizens everywhere. Governments are best able to approach other governments or private group’s abroad to negotiate for their citizen’s safety.
The second answer to the question is that governments actually gain in popularity when they demonstrate that they care for their citizens in trouble abroad.
All governments want to be regarded as doing a good job for which they are elected. A high public approval rating confirms that they are doing so and is also a useful indicator that governments can confidently face an election and win.
Governments exist because they win elections. Even where terms are limited to two as in the United States, every administration wants to perform well as to make it easy for their party to win again.The only answer to successful government is good performance, popular policies. Policies that address the needs of the masses make governments popular. Successful economies that open up employment opportunities and general prosperity for the masses have come to symbolize successful government.
One man who went out of his way to identify with the masses is Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. By investing heavily in the welfare of the masses and lifting hundreds of thousands out of poverty, he became the peoples’ leader.
Since becoming president in 1999, Chavez has won ten elections, many of them referendums that were considered to be free and fair. This time he went a little too far in his over brimming self-confidence by proposing to take off term limits from the constitution so he could present himself as often as possible. CONSTITUTION
Quickly and wisely, Venezuelans recognized that the vote was not for Chavez but for the constitution, and he lost. Isn’t it a shame that Cameroonians who, thanks to global media, observe how governments in other countries strive to adopt the policies that make them responsible to their people have difficulty understanding what duty their own government has towards the people?
It was well after the anti-Cameroonian campaign in Equatorial Guinea had gone on for days with desperate calls by victims for Yaounde to come to their rescue that almost a week later there was an announcement of humanitarian aid for them.
All week public media say the crisis has been defused and thousands who took refuge at the embassy and consulate in Malabo and Bata have been returning home and to their businesses. But the political disagreements between the two countries that are the source of the occasional eruptions remain untouched. On two previous occasions the Yaounde authorities did nothing at all to alleviate the anguish of the victims thousands of whom came back home empty-handed, their property having been seized from them. The Yaounde authorities displayed the same lack of concern when hundreds of rural villagers of Bawock, in the Northwest province, were forced to seek refuge in Bamenda after a neighborly conflict destroyed their village. It took one week for someone from the ministry of territorial administration to visit them and to this day, more than one year after, government did noting tangible to help them rehabilitate. Yaounde was still unable to rush to the rescues of Kekem villagers, in the Western province, following a landslide that claimed the homes of ten families and killed one woman. After a few days, CRTV dropped coverage of the disaster. To this day it is not certain what real help the government eventually gave the victims. PITIFUL DISREGARD Paul Biya acted promptly with the Mokolo flash floods disaster which took place in Northern Cameroon, last September, but with what pitiful disregard! He sent 20 million FCFA for 150 victims whose homes and every belonging were swept away! Compare that to the hundreds of millions that the president blew during his one-week trip to Paris where every bit of the money was also lost!
The Yaounde authorities were badly exposed last May when foreign organizations blamed them for their weak and ineffective search of the wreckage of a Kenyan Airways aircraft that fell off the skies in Mbanga-Pongo, Douala. Misfortune and catastrophes are times of emergency. If the government is unable to rush to the rescue of its citizens in distress that can only be the sign of a greater malaise. The Biya regime is thorough-going people unfriendly. High-brow, detached, the government is doubtful of the importance to itself of social projects. Road infrastructure, education and health are routinely neglected. Economic expansion and job creation through a generous credit policy are matters the government is instinctively skeptical about. In any country a government with such a terrible record would lose the next election and be thrown out of power. Not in Cameroon! Paul Biya should since have gone out of power since 1992! By organizing and rigging every election, Biya is the strange case of a president who has managed to silence domestic opposition and ignore the criticism of foreign partners. Sure of himself and of his system, the Cameroonian president now forges ahead to stay in power for life, and to gig all and every election without anyone lifting a finger of opposition. Isn’t that why pleasing the masses and being popular is not his business. Will the world really sit back and watch a power monster destroy Cameroon?
Courtesy-The Herald