Despite much pretence to democracy the Biya regime is an irredeemable despotism

Despite much pretence to democracy the Biya regime is an irredeemable despotism. Yet talk of itself as a democracy manages to attract optimistic partners whose expectations it cannot fulfill because it remains fundamentally undemocratic. That is a huge source of conflict. But the extraordinarily rapid rate of growth of the Soviet Union in the first few decades of socialist rule and the miracle economic growth of SE Asian countries all under heavy-handed authoritarians clearly indicate that even with absolute power Cameroon could still have developed. What went wrong?

As a last-ditch defence of Paul Biya’s postponement of ELECAM, Henry Eyebe Ayissi pleaded with the European diplomats who were openly critical of it to understand that in Cameroon it is the president who guarantees the institutions and not the constitution.
With that declaration the external relations minister hit upon a fundamental truth of the Biya regime that is not always taken into consideration when dealing with it.
There is certainly a conflict between the president’s use of his absolute powers and the power that democratic institutions are supposed to have. The two forms of power are opposed to each other.
The regime itself compounds matters by constantly striving to give the image of itself as a democracy – ‘advanced democracy,’ ‘peaceful democracy.’ Biya himself never misses the opportunity of stating how smooth public institutions function.
So we have an essentially undemocratic regime camouflaging as democratic! The collapse of socialism and its one-party dictatorships in the late 1980s made democracy fashionable. African dictators like Paul Biya quickly learned how practical it would be to appear to belong to the democratic era.
Cameroon switched to multi-party politics. But that is where it ended. Everything else went on as before. The president maintains overwhelming powers; controls parliament and the judiciary. Worse still, elections are not free which makes power alternation almost impossible.
In spite of such a record the regime calls itself democratic, and with that label manages to get the ear of its partners only to turn wolf afterwards. That is what Cameroon’s membership of the Commonwealth is about, unfulfilled promises.

Hugely unpopular

No doubt this double posture of the regime claiming to be democratic but at the same time in reality being a hard-nosed dictatorship is not without a big price to pay. The Biya regime is hugely unpopular.
84% of Cameroonians do not trust Paul Biya. Abroad partners find enormous difficulty dealing with a person that cannot keep his promises. Cameroon receives a tiny trickle of direct foreign investment.
The unfettered control of institutions as is the case with Biya, to be sure, is the very soul of despotism whereas power-sharing among institutions and control of its exercise are the pillars of democracy.
The two concepts of power are as different as east is to west. It may be a good thing to be patient with a repentant despot if he demonstrates the will to change. But Biya’s relationship with The Commonwealth is hardly one of good faith on the part of the president.
It would perhaps be helpful to point out here that neither despotism nor democracy is an end in itself. Both are means to an end, ie to an affluent society with equitable distribution of wealth and with equal opportunity to all.
The long history of human experience in government has nevertheless come to the general conclusion that power should be shared and controlled institutionally to avoid it being abused. That arrangement has come to be called democracy.
But the ancients who first gave the idea of government a deep thought were sometimes afraid of democracy. Plato, for example, fearful that a popular election would give power to the uneducated and ignorant masses, preferred the dictatorship of a ‘philosopher-king’.
Unlike modern education that has been limited to training in intellectual skills, education in Plato’s day had a full and inseparable component in training in moral virtues.
Plato’s philosopher-king was therefore someone with the people’s interest at heart. Every act of his would be in the best interest of the public, a veritable selfless ruler.
Europeans were much influenced by varying degrees of this model of benign despotism. But at last even the most virtuous of humans are frail and often give in to their weaknesses. That led to the chain of revolutions that overturned despotic monarchies in favour of popularly elected governments.

Founding fathers

The American founding fathers having learnt from the problems caused by the abuse of absolute power decided once and for all to adopt as many measures as they found necessary to avoid it.
An American president, for instance, is limited to two terms of four years each; no more. The doctrine of the separation of powers already keeps him off any direct say in the functioning of the judiciary and the legislature.
As we observe the functioning of democratic societies across the world we see that they are more prosperous in every sense. The only explanation for this is that democratic societies are freer and more open which permits the release of creative energies in every respect.
Yet we have observed some of the most rapid economic development taking place but in despotic countries of varying degrees.
The Soviet Union, under socialist dictatorship, following the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, displayed an incredible rate of economic and technological growth as to cast doubt on the much-advertised democratic model of the west.
It took the vision of John F. Kennedy to challenge the American genius to overtake the Soviets who already sent a Yuri Gagarin to space in the Sputnik in 1958 and place a man on the moon in ten years or less.
The Soviet model appeared so attractive that newly independent third world countries, including Africans pandered towards socialism which justified one-party dictatorships.
The argument was that one party dictatorship was more in keeping with the African traditional society with a powerful chief to whom the whole tribe deferred. The second, equally strong, argument was that the in-built constraints and processes of democracy would only slow, if not block, socioeconomic development.
But at last none of this proved true. There was no noticeable development due to one-party rule in Africa. A World Bank study of 1994 concluded that Cameroon had fallen behind on its development by as much as 30 years!
The Yaounde authorities were so cross with that report they could have stoned its presenters! Ministers openly called country office officials pseudo-economists. In 1994 Cameroon was only four years away from one-party rule.
One party rule only created inadaptability or inner resistance to competitive multi-party politics when the time came. The case of Cameroon is a perfect example. Paul Biya is a pure-bred of one-party dictatorship. It would be expecting too much of the Cameroonian president at this twilight of his career to make any important shifts in this.
But what surprises both his admirers and critics is his inability to bring about socioeconomic development, given all the favourable conditions one can imagine - more than two and a half decades of continuous rule in peace - and given a fairly rich country with a well-trained manpower and a vigorous labour force.
The so-called tiger economies of SE Asia which grew at miracle rates are far less endowed than Cameroon. And, for the purpose of the present analysis, they were all operated by dictatorships or heavy-handed rulers similar to Biya.
Lee Kuan Yew who single-handed in only three decades lifted Singapore to a height often better than the best first world countries, proudly expressed the idea that Asian cultures were endowed with an intrinsic capacity for innovativeness and growth.
That thought is fiercely refuted by Chris Patten (now Lord), the last British governor of Hong Kong (1992-1997) in his stewardship memoirs, ‘East and West.’
It may be comforting for an African to agree with Patten that no cultures are condemned by their very nature to inadaptability to development. Doesn’t that leave us wondering what then happened to Cameroon and to Paul Biya?

Courtesy, The Herald