Editorial Comment by The Herald Newspaper
Even the greatest fool in the realm now knows that both Cameroonians and their foreign partners are overwhelmingly and vehemently opposed to Paul Biya’s plans to continue in office beyond 2011. Wasn’t that the unequivocal message of last month’s strike? We of this newspaper urge the president not, in his disappointment, to let his regime continue on its path of non-achievement. But to buckle up, change course, and hire a crack team to make the very best of these last three years.
Since the last fortnight there has been continuous talk of another government change that should be due any moment. Until last month’s strike this regular exercise of Paul Biya’s supreme authority through the appointment of friends and allies seemed alright.
But no more so since the strike which now forces the president to undertake a major overhaul of both the substance and methods of his politics in order to avoid a crisis that will compromise the last years of his regime.
The lessons of last month’s strike actually oblige the president to accept, if not embrace, a change of course. It is that change that should help Biya be more realistic in determining his new team.
And, should that be the case, a true and effective government wouldn’t be a matter of appointing to please friends or removing a banana just to put another in its place. This is, unfortunately, what some of the names that have been making the rounds in Yaounde amount to.
One thing is sure. Paul Biya is presently going through the kind of soul searching he has not known since his political career. The problem gnawing him is the prospect that he might not after all continue in office after 2011. Yet that is the stark lesson that last month’s strike brought home to him; twist and turn as he likes.
What is terrible is the fact that the president now stands alone and is going through this all alone. Biya feels a devastating sense of betrayal by his own regime. This feeling is reinforced by the president’s habitual distrust of his own aides.
It seems now certain that Paul Biya knows that those who took advantage of the strike to achieve political ends were not of the opposition but of the ruling CPDM.
The president also now recognises that the strike symbolised popular rejection of his policies, not least of which is the proposed constitutional amendment.
The third and perhaps most painful lesson of the strike was the president’s discovery that disagreement with his plans is widespread within his own regime, particularly among those who benefit from his favours.
Also, the Americans are pressing Biya to live up to a promise he voluntarily made to George Bush during his visit to the White House five years ago to retire in 2011.
No doubt the noose appears to be tightening around Biya and he now feels it. The president was openly sour and accusatory when he met with the government early this month. He was so austere that many believed that the much-awaited change of government had come.
Besides the unnerving feeling of betrayal by his own assistants who would willingly take advantage of some problem to nail him, Biya is now apprehensive of a new and dangerous enemy, ie the spontaneous action of the streets, ‘people power’, as we call it in this newspaper.
It is against this new danger that the president has let loose, hardly justifiably after the recent wave of arrests, an unforgiving military operation over the striking provinces to ‘seek out and deal with’ rioters, looters, etc.
It is regrettable that Biya has become a victim of his own policies and methods. In his 25 years in office, he has not brought economic growth and prosperity to Cameroonians, the overwhelming majority of whom live in abject poverty.
The Biya regime is also disrespectful of basic social justice. Biya favours in a permanent manner some provinces against others in the distribution of public appointments and privileges.
Paul Biya’s record on democratisation and good governance is dismal. Corruption is endemic.
To compound matters, the president is still not much concerned about being decent in his relations with the wide public, his party militants or his collaborators.
Paul Biya is distant and elitist. He does not receive people. He does not travel within the country and makes little contact as such with Cameroon or Cameroonians and how they live.
The president adopts the same attitude towards members of his ruling party. Unjust selection of grassroots leaders and election candidates in recent times turned the base of the party against him and created conflict among the party’s cadres.
Biya has refused to address that situation which will continue to cause him problems such as boycott of elections and instigation to riot during the recent strike, as revealed!
With his immediate assistants, Biya maintains a studied distance and unpredictability. He is difficult to approach, leaving aides to work very often in a vacuum.
The long term damage for Biya is that aides relate to him in fear and subservience rather than in loving loyalty. When they have to express their opinions on some matter, assistants are too cautious to be useful.
What we are saying here is that all taken together Paul Biya has become a huge burden on Cameroonians and his foreign partners. The sooner he goes the better will life be for all. This is what the strike brought home to the president.
It is no more a matter of choice if the president will avoid trouble for himself. This is where we suggest that instead of leaving crestfallen; Biya can still make up for failure by courageously adopting a u-turn in policies and style.
Only then, we believe, a change of government will make sense. Then it will not be a matter of pleasing friends anymore but even going across party lines to look for capable partners who can truly change things.
Paul Biya must fight to make the best of his three years left so he does not have a zero score card after 28 years of office in peacetime.
Those familiar with English history will probably recall the short but catastrophic reign of Queen Mary Tudor (1553 – 1558) which English historians easily believe to be the worst of any English monarchy.
Mary failed in everything she set out for. Not by any means an evil person, she burnt as many as 227 heretics at the stake in less than four years, in a desperate attempt to restore Catholicism that her father Henry VIII had repudiated in quest of a male heir. In the end not even England’s relations with the Vatican did she maintain!
Mary also lost Calais, England’s only remaining symbol of international power. Then she took ill with dropsy and while she was in agony Philip of Spain, her husband, who had never really loved her, left her. It was a marriage she contracted against popular opinion. The separation also affected relations with Spain, the leading world power at the time. Failure after failure was all she knew.
When at last Mary died at the young age of 44, it was the entire realm that heaved a great sigh of relief.
Surely Cameroonians deserve more in 2011 than the English had in Marian England in 155
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