Power of Strike! Shaken, Paul Biya sues for peace! Yet rising people power threatens him

Courtesy - Harry Ndienla Yemti

Last month’s strike, for the first time ever in the long history of confrontation between the people and the government, revealed the balance of power in favour of the people. People power is a thing to beware of. That is why Paul Biya nervously hastened to make concession to fight rising peace; the first time he ever took a major decision to help the masses. Now unless he is willing to go all the way and work hard towards economical development and genuine democratization his regime will be doomed. He will face the wrath of the people.

Paul Biya certainly had a quieter weekend after he adopted important measures on Friday to fight a galloping inflation. The President truly deserved the applause that followed the announcement of the measures. It was the first time ever in his 25years in office that he made such a policy gesture in favour of the masses. Only a week before the president, who is by no means popular suffered more public opprobrium than anyone remembers in a long time. In a speech to the nation, Biya portrayed a shocking lack of touch with Cameroonians just when his understanding was much expected to end a strike that had sufficiently served its purpose in expressing the people’s grievances against the government. Biya’s disappointing outing only compound the damage done to the government by the strike whose success demonstrated a new sense of self-confidence among the masses.

The measures adopted on Friday were no doubt much welcome by the wide public, long resigned to economic hardships. What is interesting to note about the president’s gesture is that he acted out of fear of the ‘nightmare’ he experienced of the strike, which is why he hastened to ‘sue for peace’ The very fact that Paul Biya has never made any important concession to the masses-political, economic or social make the president’s sudden sense of weakness vis-à-vis the public something really to think about.

To face the fact, no one who observed the strike missed the new sense of self-confidence that the public demonstrated. When it ended everyone was satisfied the government had been taught a lesson. Indeed there began talk immediately that another strike was in preparation- sure evidence of this newfound power and the people’s eagerness to face the government. For the holder of absolute power that Paul Biya is, this must have been a truly worrisome development.
Not even the most predatory autocrat is comfortable about people power. In Romania in 1986, it was again the streets that seized power that crushed that country’s oppressive regime after the usually trigger-happy police for once disobey their supreme master Nicola Ceausescu. In the Philippines in 1986, it was again the streets that seized power from Ferdinand Marcos who, as incumbent, had claimed it after rigging an election as usual, all with Ronald Reagan’s approval.
Of the many factors that explain the coming rise of people power in Cameroon, two stand out, viz: the decline of the dissuasive power of the bullet and a corresponding sense of despair and a diminished self-worth among youth.

Long years of penury and unemployment among youth erode any sense of worth, leaving instead hopelessness about life, which easily gives way to acts of desperation. It is variants of this inner condition that inspire suicide, suicide bombers, acts of terror, and the willingness by economic migrants to undertake perilous sea voyages. And to that sense of despair the ready recourse to naked coercive force by the Biya regime.

Death resulting from gun-fire has become commonplace in Cameroon such that it is fast losing its sting. How else does one explain the fact that every successive ant-government demonstrated draws a bigger attendance when that of the previous week claimed lives- friends, colleagues and even relation? It is this new generation of youths who have nothing to live for and who don’t care about Biya’s bullets, that is at the base of the rising confidence of street power. With them taking the bullets, any anti-government movement will work. That is the new power that Paul Biya must reckon with. It was respect for it that the president hastened to make the anti-inflationary concessions of last weekend.

If the president will deal successfully with this new threatening power he will have to reverse much of these policies of the last twenty-five years that have been remarkably anti- people and elitist. It will be helpful for Biya not to wait until the people start demanding what they believe is their right. People power is not only potent, it is also unpredicted. The more he takes the public into confidence in dealing with them the more he will find it easy to control people power.
The history of decolonization in Africa which involved long years of struggling between the indigenous/ nationalist elite and their colonial rulers offers a useful lesson here. Each time the colonial rulers granted a concession, considering it something great, that only prepared the way for the nationalist fighters to demand more. That in turn only lengthened the struggle that often got really bitter and murderous.

The accounts of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana or of Nigerian nationalists as Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolow or of Herbert Macauley etc or of Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia, all teach the same broad lesson. At the height of economic measures in favour of the masses will be job creation hot by expanding the public sector but by the infusion of credit, for small and micro businesses. The goal should be to lift millions out of poverty and generate prosperity in as short a time as possible.

If Biya sincerely wants to turn public policy towards poverty alleviation much that is visible must happen to convince the public. Much money can be saved for that purpose from a considerable reduction in the size of the government and also of Cameroon’s sprawling diplomatic apparatus.

The daily operation of the government is also scandalously wasteful. Government processes are too much of a labyrinth and time consuming to support the implementation of the coming reforms. All good leadership is by example. Paul Biya’s lifestyle does not at all reflect the government’s flagship policy of poverty alleviation.

With more than three quarters of Cameroonians living on a dollar a day it is irreconcilable to know that Biya travels by a hired inter-continental jumbo jet at about one billion fcfa per journey at the taxpayer’s expense. In their powerlessness people say nothing until their opportunity comes. It is politics that will pose a much greater problem because of ego Investment. Paul Biya must drop his mischievous intention to continue in office beyond 2011 and prepare the nation for a free and fair election whereby Cameroonians will choose their next president.

If he is pro-active and takes leadership in enacting these reforms he will be surprised how easily he is forgiven his otherwise unpardonable political sins. In that way, unless Paul Biya willingly returns to the people what he has withheld from them for so long, i.e. genuine institutionalized democracy and a solid foundation for economic growth, he will face people power. That is better imagined than described.Courtecy, The Herald