Yet another smoke-screen anticorruption charade designed by Paul Biya solely to deceive western diplomats and the Cameroon people

After a long history of failed promises to improve on governance, the latest promise to accelerate anti-corruption arrests was not nearly so inspiring

By Ndien Eric in Yaounde

In a surprise move the government summoned diplomats from Western countries and multilateral institutions to announce its decision to accelerate its anti-corruption campaign. The campaign of arrests of senior public officials believed to have embezzled public funds has so far been on a stop-and-go basis to the utter disappointment of Western diplomats

The government used the meeting chaired by Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni to flatter the diplomats by giving the impression that the new accelerated programme was based on a programme proposed one year ago by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
and that they were all partners in its anti-corruption campaign. The programme goes by the ear-catching name of CHOC, “change habits, oppose corruption.”

Commentators are unanimous in believing that the government had used the opportunity to try to warm up its relationship with Western diplomats after the unpopular amendment of the constitution which was opposed by Western countries. They further observed that the UNDP anti-corruption programme was proposed since a year ago and the government had only turned to
it now to give the impression that it was responding to Western concerns on corruption.

But many Western diplomats who attended Wednesday’s meeting did not appear to be much impressed by this new development. Television cameras showed many countenances in doubt and in a wait-and-see mood.

The relationship between Western diplomats and the Biya regime is distinctly one of love-lost because the government has a history of reluctance in adopting good governance reforms.

A year ago, the government summoned a similar meeting of Western diplomats and vowed that for once it would conduct transparent and credible elections. But it failed to do so. The legislative elections of last year turned out to be such a horrible mess that Western embassies who had been promised a change issued a statement to denounce the exercise as a missed opportunity for democratic advance in Cameroon.

President Paul Biya has not shown a strong political will to punish culprits and discourage corruption in Cameroon. Instead, the president has used corruption arrests more as a political expedient.

In February 2006 he held and imprisoned a handful of senior public officials to strengthen the government’s application for debt cancellation under the HIPC initiative. He since resisted public clamour to continue with more arrests. He resumed the arrests, which usually spark public enthusiasm, last March just prior to the highly controversial and unpopular amendment of the constitution.

After that, the president has been interrogating more suspects to change the public mood after the unpopular constitutional amendment. And also, it is believed, to prepare the public for what is believed to be important dismissals in the much- expected government change.
It is, in fact, believed that there will be more interrogations and arrests in the days ahead, but it
is not known if the campaign will be sustained.

The president’s uncertain and unsystematic handling of the war against corruption has been so disappointing to Western diplomats that Sophie de Caen, the UN system representative who left Cameroon a few months ago, became inhabitually cynical. The UN diplomat who was otherwise principled and respectful openly dismissed existing public anti-corruption structures as being non-efficacious. She expressed the view that without a political will, the multiplication of structures will not solve the problem of corruption in Cameroon.

It is difficult for anybody to tell what the president is up to with the announcement of a change of gears. That is why Western diplomats as much as the wide public remain sceptical.

Food price inflation in Cameroon

Importers blame resistance to price cuts on customs procedures and sabotage by some local companies

By Ntaryike Divine, Jr. in Douala

The Cameroon Chamber of Commerce, Indus-tries, Mines and Craft has warned that current waves of food price hikes across local markets will persist if the government fails to urgently enact motivating agricultural policies.

The Chamber, an interface between the government and business people, met in Douala recently to evaluate relief measures to cushion food price inflation in the country. Attendees, including importers, bankers and traders also sought to identify reasons for resistance to new prices homologated following consultations between the government and business people last March.

Christophe Eken, president of the Chamber, in a presentation, explained that galloping food prices was a global phenomenon. He said the situation was not heading for any perceivable change in the near future. According to him, the government needs to quickly elaborate new agricultural policies taking into consideration subsidies, slashed tariffs on imported farm input and equipment, and the development of farm-to-market roads, inter alia.

Participants at the meeting were unanimous that the price cuts instructions, contained in a presidential ordinance of 7 March, were still not felt at the level of local markets. They pinned blame on some customs-related procedures which implied that import duty exonerations on some products were not effective, obliging importers to maintain old rates. Others said bank loan rates remained high [22 percent], rendering the search for profit to reimburse loaned money primordial.

André Sohaing, an importer, said the fault was not theirs. He said world supplies in food and other products were on a continuous downturn. Another importer taking part in the meeting blamed what he called sabotage regarding the importation of products like cement. Without directly saying it, he gave the impression that the lone cement producer, CIMENCAM,
was staging a hold-up and frustrating strides by competitors at bringing cement into the country. The worries of the economic operators were compiled in a document which Francoise Foning, president of the industries section of the Chamber said she would personally hand to President Paul Biya

Ozone depleting substances still abundant in Cameroon

But ozone office officials say Cameroon is allowing in prescribed quantities of CFC-containing items and would eradicate their influx by 2010

By Ntaryike Divine, Jr. in Douala

Despite the many workshops and seminars on completely phasing out Ozone Depleting Substances, ODS, in the country by the end of this decade, the bulging influx of used refrigerators, inter alia, still leaves much to worry about.

But officials of the National Ozone Office are confident. They say Cameroon is only letting in the
allowed margin of 25 metric tons. “You head the minister’s declaration; by 2010 no ODS will be allowed to enter Cameroon ,” Enow Peter Ayuk, coordinator of the National Ozone Office said here Tuesday. He spoke on the sidelines of yet another ozone-related workshop grouping stakeholders from 13 Francophone African countries.

Helle Pierre, Environment and Nature Protection minister, who flagged off the 5-day deliberations
Monday, lauded results obtained by Cameroon in the CFC eradication program. He, however, said more investments were needed to readapt and correct shortfalls in refrigeration equipment and the foams manufacturing industry.

The workshop, which wraps up this Friday, 15 May, sought to examine modalities for regional information exchange, networking, capacity building, inter alia towards the complete eradication of ODS by a 2010 deadline prescribed by a 1999 Montreal agreement ratified by Cameroon. According to Peter Ayuk, considerable investments had been pumped into the ODS
phase-out program.

But used fridges, with dreary CFC [Chlorofluorocarbons] amounts from the West, have
continued to be shipped to Africa and Cameroon in particular with ostensibly little or no restrictions whatsoever. The dangerous trend is clearly illustrated by the ever-increasing number of shops in Douala’s streets dealing in second-hand household equipment from Europe and America . Elsewhere petroleum and foam manufacturing companies, and fetilizers brought into
the country also contain CFCs.

“We do not submit the fridges to any form of inspection even at the level of customs. Whether they carry stickers or not, they pass through and I have never had a fridge seized. What they ask for is their money, and once that is paid, we collect the goods without further complications. CFCs? I don’t know what that means, let alone the ozone layer,” Fidelis, a dealer in used imported fridges in Akwa, told The Herald Tuesday despite claims by experts that a communications and sensitization commission was meeting desired goals.

Under the terms of the Montreal Protocol, Cameroon was expected to have phased out 50% of ODS by 2005 and 85% by the end of 2007. Refrigeration appliances are known to contain the bulk of ODS. While CFCs have been discarded in refrigeration equipment in the West in
preference for more environmentally-friendly gases, African countries have become a waste basket for the perilous fridges.

The Intrigues of Privatisation and the Stalemate at CAMAIR

By Nfamewih Aseh*

The law of neo-liberalism states that “government is a bad manager”; that business men and women were more transparent and accountable and were thus better able to manage corporate business within the framework of the private corporate sector than the state; that this business men and women should either be white or have a white backing. Most importantly, that the white control of the corporate private sector is the foundation for “good governance”, hence the need for privatisation.

Neo-liberalism by definition would refer to that period in Africa, in the late 1980s, when the white man countries returned to reclaim the economy, towards the end of the cold war, and after the end of the independent struggles of the 1940s and 1950s. And one way of achieving that goal was by making sure that the structure of the state “adjusted” to accommodate the private corporate capital; by taking away the corporate sector from the state and handing it over to the private business men and women, in this case whites whose economic activities would bring about “good governance”. It thus became imperative for the United Nations to commission its specialised organs such as the World Bank and the IMF to come up with a strategy of achieving that goal.

They did and that strategy was embodied in the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which had privatisation and liberalisation as main items on the grand agenda and targeted thirty seven African countries including Cameroon. Like any other agenda
that is set by the West destined for Africa, the announcement for the coming of SAP in June 1987 raised the hopes of Cameroonians who believed in the daydream of private business coming to rescue Cameroon’s economy from the state, the “bad manager”, and bring
to about “good governance”.

All the noise about liberalisation, democratisation, and privatisation as antidotes for an economy in crisis; as pre-conditions for “good governance”, turned out to be a doom, an eyewash, a cover-up; a butterfly chase that kept Cameroonians dreaming of a
pie in the sky. Even the political liberalisation only successfully liberalised the political sphere achieving only the creation of “opposition” political parties whose duty has only been to check the
mismanagement antics of the state, also turned out to be hogwash. Before long, even the “Good Governance” singsong went into a tail spin while the white man, acting through local allies, were all over the place buying up everything under SAP with the state told to
hands off the provision of social services.

In Zimbabwe, the imposition of ESAP (Economic Structural Adjustment Programme) in 1989 by the very Bretton Woods twins (World Bank/IMF), being the Zimbabwean version of SAP, brought back the descendants of the Rhodesian rump capital from
Johannesburg with a mission to wrest power from the state on behalf of Britain and the USA. It also selected from among the urban “jobless” elite Morgan Tsvangirai to, in collaboration with the white
business class, fight Mugabe on the ticket of Britain and the USA whose political agenda was to wring power from Mugabe and reclaim the economy of Zimbabwe and overrun the entire Southern African sub-region. Unlike the case of Zimbabwe which is a revolutionary state under a nationalist president, the state in Cameroon is rather a contrivance for political cover-up for economic crimes under a collaborating stratum over which is a President.

The role of this collaborating stratum is to prove as much as possible that, truly, the state is a “bad manager” to ensure the successful implementation of SAP; to ensure that SAP reaches its “completion point”. In that case, both the numerous opposition
political parties that sprouted in Cameroon in the 1990s following the wind of liberalisation that was blowing from the East, the state bureaucrats and managers of state corporations were struggling to
achieve the same goal: to prove as much as possible that the neo-colonial state is a “bad manager”. While the hardcore opposition political parties were busy counting the failures of the state, state bureaucrats and managers of state para-statals, for their part,
were busy “mismanaging” state affairs, all of which brought ample evidence against the state as a “bad manager” and validated the neo-liberal law of which corruption and embezzlement can be understood in that light.

For example, before CamPost was sold to a Canadian firm, Tescult International Ltd, on February 26, 2007, over FCFA 50 billion of Cameroonian’s savings were deliberately stolen from that corporation which was then used as good reason to sell it to a white man’s corporation on the grounds that the black man cannot manage a corporation; that “the neo-colonial state is a bad manager”, which is actually what prompted the IMF/World Bank joint delegation to Cameroon in September 2007, whose intention was to hasten up the privatisation process; to quickly reclaim the economic
sector from a “bad manager”. And almost all the para-statals that have been privatised in Cameroon have gone through this experience.

The case of the Cameroon Electricity Corporation (SONEL) offers another perspective of understanding the neo-liberal law in which “government is a bad manager”. After the sale of that corporation to a USA company, AES-SIROCO, in 2002, the country was immediately plunged into fits of incessant darkness with the idea being to prove that the Americans had inherited a corporation in a very bad state from a “bad manager” and so was putting in “expert” knowledge to revive it. That was also a public relation stunt
for AES-SONEL, which was intended to win the confidence of the Cameroonian public into believing that the Americans were bringing magical solutions to Cameroon’s electricity problems; to do what the “bad manager” could not do. The case of Cameroon Airlines,
which also shows how government officials deliberately swindle funds from state para-statals to justify the idea that “government is a bad manager” so as to justify the sales of such outfits to white man companies, is another case in point.

Although the headaches of the Cameroon Airline company, as a purely indigenous airline company, created by former President Ahmadou Ahidjo who jolted out of the French controlled Air Afrique and created CAMAIR on July 26, 1971 with government owning over 96 % shares in it and which made its inaugural flight on
November 1, 1971 from Douala to Yaoundé, was initially that of victimisation by the French civil aviation authority, which on September 16, 2005 on all CAMAIR flights to France for an indefinite period on grounds that the company did not meet several international as well as transportation norms, leading to serious
revenue losses for the airline company whose activities were finally grounded in March 2008, there was also the problem of negligence on the part of government appointees in the management of the affairs of CAMAIR whose intention was to validate the
neo-liberal law that “government is a bad manager”.

Between 2001 and 2006, the state of Cameroon spent over FCFA 200 billion, in the form of subvention, on CAMAIR but before the end of 2006 CAMAIR was in deep crisis, unable to pay its workers. Even the 433 workers that were retrenched could not be paid their dues, leading to protestations and sit in strikes by
the ex-workers. Before the Belgian consortium was called in to resurrect CAMAIR, the sum of about FCFA 8 billion, being the salary of the 433 ex-workers of CAMAIR, disbursed for payment by the then Minister of Economy and Finance, Polycarpe Abah Abah, by
Ministerial Decision N0 1/D/MINEFI/DGB/PC/BR of October 17, 2006, paid into the CAMAIR account number 2015421-R at CBC Bank Douala, could not be found one year afterwards and the 433 protesting ex-workers had not yet received their pay. Yet accounts showed that they have actually been paid.

Yet still, CAMAIR, in the course of 2006 and 2007, realised FCFA 52 billion plus state subvention of about FCFA 65 billion, making a total of FCFA 117 billion in two years, but was still unable to pay
workers’ salaries. Compounded by the ban by the French civil aviation authority, the crisis of CAMAIR deepened and in conformity with the neo-liberal law in which white man companies are expert managers, SN Airholding, the parent company of SN Brussels
Airlines, was called in to restart CAMAIR to no avail, leading to its grounding in March 2008. Unfortunately for CAMAIR, government being a “bad manager” could not manage it and as an indigenous company, created and run by a “bad manager”, it was not worthy to be bought by a white man company, which could explain why the
attempt to privatise CAMAIR resulted in a stalemate.

Besides, the entire privatisation process, including that of CAMAIR, has remained a shady (“black market”) deal between the state and foreign companies whose only mission is to take total control of all the strategic economic sectors of Cameroon while the
state, the “bad manager”, should content itself with the “fight against poverty”. And that has been the intrigues of the white man against Africans, against Black people, for the last 500 years, since July 1472 in the case of Cameroon. And the fault is with us that, for all these years, we have not yet realised the wickedness of the white man against us; we still see the white man, who operates through proxies, as God.

World Bank `Destroyed Basic Grains' in Honduras By Alison Fitzgerald, Jason Gale and Helen Murphy

May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Fidencio Alvarez abandoned his bean and corn farm in southern Honduras because of the rising cost of seeds, fuel and food. After months of one meal a day, he hiked with his wife and six children to find work in the city.

``We would wake up with empty stomachs and go to bed with empty stomachs,'' said Alvarez, 37, who sought help from the Mission Lazarus aid group in Choluteca in January. ``We couldn't afford the seeds to plant food or the bus fare to buy the food.''

Honduran farmers like Alvarez can't compete in a global marketplace where the costs of fuel and
fertilizer soared and rice prices doubled in the past year. The former breadbasket of Central America now imports 83 percent of the rice it consumes - -a dependency triggered almost two decades ago when it adopted free-market policies pushed by the World Bank and other lenders.

The country was $3.6 billion in debt in 1990. In return for loans from the World Bank, Honduras became one of dozens of developing nations that abandoned policies designed to protect farmers and citizens from volatile food prices. The U.S. House Financial Services Committee in Washington today explored the causes of the global food crisis and possible solutions.

The committee examined whether policies advocated by the bank and the International Monetary Fund
contributed to the situation. Governments from Ghana to the Philippines were pressured to cut protective tariffs and farm supports and to grow more high-value crops for export, reports by the Washington-based World Bank show.

Haiti Pressure

The IMF pressed Haiti, as a condition of a 1994 loan, to open its economy to trade, Raj Patel, a scholar at the Center for African Studies in the University of California at Berkeley told the committee. When trade barriers fell, imports of subsidized rice from the U.S. surged, devastating the local rice farmers, Patel said.

``That is very odd,'' said committee chair Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. ``For anyone to have looked at Haiti at that time and thought that it was a functioning economy is a sign I think of ideology going rampant.''

``Of course they got it wrong,'' said Robert S. Zeigler, director-general at the International Rice
Research Institute, southeast of Manila. ``It will work if you're an extremely wealthy country and you
can import rice at any price. But if you're not an extremely wealthy country, I think that's very poor
advice.''

`Command and Control'

The bank's strategy -- summed up in a 1989 article by its chief economist for South Asia, John Williamson --became known as ``The Washington Consensus.''

``The focus of the liberalization was on lowering domestic food prices,'' said Mark Plant, the IMF's
deputy director of policy development in Washington. Governments' ``command and control'' policies
increased consumer costs and cut farmer income, he said.

Williamson, now affiliated with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in a May 9 interview that the ideas are still sound, though they may have been pushed too hard by the World Bank.

``My own view is that all those things are good for countries,'' he said. ``But I'm not terribly
sympathetic with the World Bank going in and laying down a list of things countries have to do.''

Highest Tariffs

Honduran agriculture stagnated through the 1980s because of subsidies and market controls, prompting
the bank to recommend economic changes, said Adrian Fozzard, the institution's manager for Honduras.

Rice farmers in Honduras were protected by the highest import tariffs in Central America when former
president Rafael Callejas took office in 1990 with the economy stalled. The trade barriers that helped the country meet more than 90 percent of domestic demand were dismantled under an agreement for a World Bank loan in September that year, allowing cheaper imports to flood the market.

The requirements for the loan included eliminating import restrictions and surcharges and reorganizing
the agricultural finance system, according to Eurodad, a network of 54 European non-governmental
organizations that was granted access to the World Bank's loan database to monitor loan conditions.

Prices Plunge

Prices paid to farmers fell by 13 percent in 1991 and 30 percent more in 1992, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

In August 1993, the World Bank advised Honduras to adopt a second round of economic changes as part of another loan, according to Eurodad. Those conditions included eliminating all price controls and cutting tariffs further.

``Remaining trade and price controls should be eliminated,'' bank officials said in a 1994 internal
report. ``The program of privatization of state silos should be completed; and the use of a grain reserve
for price stabilization should not be reinstated.''

The report's author, Daniel Cotlear, now a World Bank economist for Latin American and the Caribbean, declined to comment for this story.

The bank pushed the policies because food prices fell in real terms for at least two decades, and few
economists expected that to change, said Mark Cackler, manager of its Agriculture and Rural Development Department. Free trade and open markets remain the best path to competitiveness, he said.

``There are actually opportunities to reduce protectionism that have a beneficial impact,'' Cackler
said.

Tegucigalpa Rally

There now are 1,300 rice farmers in Honduras, compared with more than 20,000 in 1989, according to human rights group FIAN.

``The international lending agencies have destroyed the basic grains industry in Honduras,'' said Gilberto Rios, executive secretary of FIAN Honduras. ``The best land now produces things like African palms, which are not for consumption.''

Last month, thousands of activists, students and farmers blocked highways and rallied in the capital,
Tegucigalpa, to protest food prices and policies that made their country the most open to free trade in
Latin America -- and one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

Per capita income rose by 0.5 percent a year from 1990 to 2004, one of the slowest growth rates in Latin America, a January report by the International Food Policy Research Institute found.

Not `a Boon'

``Trade liberalization does not appear to have been much of a boon to the Honduran economy,'' the
Washington-based institute said in the report.

In the Philippines, the World Bank encouraged the country, the world's biggest importer of rice, to stop
striving for self- sufficiency and instead to diversify into crops like tropical fruits which have
greater export value.

It approved a $60 million loan in 2004 to help the Philippines' Department of Agriculture become more
market- oriented, diversify crops and stimulate private investment.

A World Bank Group technical working paper in June 2007 said the government shouldn't stockpile grain to stabilize prices. Rather, it should keep enough on hand for disasters and social welfare programs. It also advocated opening the domestic market to competition by cutting tariffs.

Philippines Reverses Course

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo now says the country has to change course toward being able to feed itself.

``We must move toward more self-sufficiency, not necessarily 100 percent, but more self-sufficiency,
less import dependence on rice,'' she said last month.


African nations including Ghana and Mali similarly followed World Bank advice. In 1992, the bank required Ghana to cut tariffs on rice to 20 percent from 100 percent, leading to a tripling of cheap rice imports, Patel said.

In 2004, the bank advised Ethiopia to stop providing fertilizer and credit to small farmers as part of a
debt relief package, and it persuaded Indonesia to dismantle its rice marketing board, according to
Elizabeth Stuart in Washington, who is the head of relations with the World Bank and IMF for Oxfam
International, the U.K.-based alliance fighting poverty.

Now farmers are asking the Honduran government to reverse policy and provide cheap, long-term loans to buy the seeds and fertilizers they need to survive.

The government of Honduras yesterday asked the IMF to send a team to the country to examine how the rising food and fuel prices are affecting the economy and whether they should reconsider some aspects of a current economic program, the IMF said in a press release.

``We haven't seen the worst of it yet; that's to come,'' said Jarrod Brown, president of the Mission
Lazarus. ``They need help now.''

For Alvarez and his family, help can't come quickly enough.

``We want to go back to our land, it's all we have,'' he said.

Western Diplomats must Review their attitude toward the Biya Regime!

Source;The Herald Cameroon

Western diplomats in Yaounde surely disagree with the manoeuvring of the regime. They once issued a strong statement indicting the government. What is surprising is how they could so easily and comfortably resume business as usual with the same regime. This is a contradiction difficult to explain. Far from criticising our western friends, this essay is an appeal to them to review their posture. If they find they cannot summon the bravery it takes to challenge the regime, let them give up all talk about good governance and focus on giving Cameroon more economic
aid. China and Japan are good examples for them to follow.

In the long and troubled quest for democracy in Cameroon there once was a time when opposition leaders sincerely believed that powerful western governments could simply descend upon Yaounde and literally dethrone Paul Biya.

To keep that hope alive opposition leaders courted Yaounde diplomats desperately. There was such high traffic to western chancelleries that government spokesmen referred cynically to as “opposition embassies.”

It since came home rather painfully disappointingly that the opposition had been naïve. They made many more mistakes and squandered their huge early advantage.

Paul Biya has grown from strength to strength. Now his appetite for power is seemingly insatiable. To feed and sustain it, Biya is now poised to drag Cameroon to ruin.

Cameroonians are in shock, and their political heart is bleeding. Alvin Toffler, the sociological futurist, and author of the 1970 best-seller Future Shock, predicted the coming shock of humanity due to the many unexpected social changes he foresaw. That book could easily have referred to Cameroon, seeing the horrible man-made changes taking place here since some time.

This shock is partly due to the absence of any force that can stop Biya in his steps. The opposition is irretrievably compromised; the civil society is weak, and the intellectual class is non-existent. The church that once spoke up for the people is now more of an ally of the government.

Foreign partners

This is the context in which, in their helplessness, Cameroonians often count on the support of their foreign partners, who they believe have the lever to influence things for the better.

Diplomats are their accredited liaison officials. Imbued with first hand knowledge of developments in Cameroon, diplomats can be powerful instruments of good responsible government, especially so if their countries give themselves that objective, as we know western countries do.

We beg to observe, regrettably, that western embassies in Yaounde have not always played that role well enough. Once a long, long while there emerges a man or woman of character who rattles the Yaounde establishment or a statement is issued that causes the government to tremble in self-doubt.

But occasional threats, powerful though, have not gone far enough to discourage the Yaounde autocrats. In the meantime the country is gathering momentum on its descent into the abyss.

Would western diplomats rather wait until the damage is all done? How would they explain it to their consciences, their home governments and peoples that they watched it all happen, and lacked the guts to challenge it?

These thoughts are not, of course, addressed to non-western diplomats. The Chinese, everyone knows, are unconcerned with good governance issues in their relations with African countries which they keep strictly to economic matters. The Japanese also limit themselves to socioeconomic aid. Africans are totally out of consideration - for obvious reasons.

In their ongoing concern for good governance in Cameroon, three western missions jointly issued a strong statement last year dismissing the July legislative election as a missed opportunity for
democratic advance. The statement was a devastating indictment of the regime that put the government on the defensive.

It received much public applause and instantly raised expectation of a follow-up. Then there was a let-down. The assembly for which the electoral farce was organised has since been constituted, and also since voted the constitutional amendment authorizing Biya to reverse the course of democracy in Cameroon.

Business as usual

What is surprising is the ease and comfort with which the same western chancelleries since returned to business as usual with the same government as if nothing had happened at all.

However it is explained, this posture of contradiction is profoundly disturbing to Cameroonians, to say the very least. And, with due respect to our western friends, that sermonising on corruption, human rights or press freedom which is, ab initio, of no consequence to the government, only highlights this contradiction.

Let us admit, none of that can ever make up for diplomats’ inability to face up to the regime. What it takes is a sense of purpose and character.

Where are the Cooks and the Marquardts? Where are the Edwin Snows, the British diplomat who in recent years put the Kenyan government on the defensive over corruption? Must we conclude that Yaounde is short of diplomats of enterprise to rise up to the situation that Yaounde presents?

Yet, apart from the military, diplomacy is that other public career with vast opportunities for initiative and bravery in service to humanity since the diplomat in his different assignment faces ever new, unforeseen and constantly changing challenges.

Two years ago a ceremony took place in Washington to mark the release of postage stamps honouring six extraordinary diplomats. In her citation, Condoleezza Rice said the six diplomats “made their mark on history as trailblazers, as strategic thinkers, as peacemakers and humanitarians.”

One remarkable case was Hiram Bingham who served as vice-consul at the US consulate in Marseilles, France, during World War II. Bingham did the unusual. He violated US policy by issuing visas that saved the lives of more than 2000 Jews and other refugees. He was honoured for “constructive dissent.”

Many diplomats have shaped their government’s policies by advising different, more adapted approaches to the problems they encounter.

Marshall Plan

Isn’t it a great credit to diplomats that the huge and very influential post-war European Recovery Programme is better known as the Marshall Plan after its originator, George Marshall?

Henry Kissinger, the man who raised shuttle diplomacy to its height, formulated and implemented US policy in-between flights. A recent book has drawn attention to the terrible conflicts and mutual suspicions that existed between him and Richard Nixon because of the diplomat’s unilateral policy initiatives.

Nixon enjoyed a strong foreign policy much of which was the work of Kissinger. So he couldn’t afford to send off the creative and enterprising diplomat.

Going by these standards it is difficult to understand the indifference of the diplomats of Yaounde before the challenge they live with. Yes, there are risks; but what truly worthy endeavour is risk-free.

After the well-known position of Washington, the EU, Britain and France, on Cameroon, would the queen of the fortress of Rosa Parks Avenue still consider it so dangerous a risk to face up to the arrogance of Yaounde?

Is that what also explains the timidity of the men of Churchill Avenue, and others? Don’t they know that the Yaounde regime also acts in fear? The cowardliness of its adversaries only strengthens and furthers it!

We sincerely urge our western friends to review their attitude. But if after a sincere review they cannot bring themselves to challenge the regime in a more meaningful way, we would understand them. In that case we suggest two things.

There should be no more reason for western diplomats to make advocacy speeches for good governance, human rights, corruption and the rest which is all hogwash anyway.

Secondly, if politics is too risky and life-threatening, our western friends must then consider giving us a lot more bilateral economic aid which so far comes in trickles. Cameroon is awfully
wanting in socioeconomic infrastructure.

China and Japan are good examples to follow. They give big, meaningfully, and with surprisingly less noise to go with all that. Journalism and other seminars by our western friends are welcome but they are better quieter.

Again, this essay must not be taken in the spirit of criticism, but rather as an expression of the bleeding political soul of Cameroonians calling out to western diplomats to break free of their lethargy and help. And, we know they can.

Here’s why Cameroon and others got to the recent commodity price explosion, and how governments are making it worse!

By Hinsley Njila (contributor)

Pretty much every developing country (Cameroon included), no matter whether they have democratic or totalitarian political systems, heavily tax farmers in order to subsidize their urban populations, while developed nations like France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan and others heavily subsidize their farmers, no matter how small the agricultural sectors. In fact, some countries in Europe subsidize farmers more generously than the United States which has a slightly larger farm sector than most in Europe. On the surface, this universal tendency for rich countries to subsidize farming, no matter how different are the details of their political systems, is a paradox. For since only a small fraction of the populations of these countries work in agriculture, farmers cannot contribute much to any majority voting coalition.

Taxing of farmers in developing countries is as true of India as of China, Cameroon as well as Peru, Libya as well as South Africa, and similarly for the other poorer nations. In all these countries, farmers are a significant fraction of their populations, and they form a majority in many, such as Cameroon, India and China.

Make no mistake that the recent strikes in Cameroon, South Africa, and other developing countries about the global explosion in the prices of commodities is a direct result of these differences in the ways farmers are treated. The United States and European Union have been subsidizing biofuels which is an important factor behind the rise in food prices, for these subsidies directly raised the price of corn to consumers, and indirectly raised the prices of other grains. Riots broke out in many cities around the world in protest against the increases in the prices of bread and other food stables.

Well here’s the interesting part about all these. People like Paul Biya and others decided to either reduce the prices of commodities or restrict exports as a way of quelling the riots and increase supply. Of course you don’t have to be an economist to realize that this obviously reduced the incomes of farmers (which are already low), and denied them the ability to trade on Global markets were prices are higher.
This response to rising food prices by third world governments is clear evidence that they have no idea how to fight poverty in their countries. Farmers in countries like Cameroon are on average vastly poorer than their city residents, and reducing their incomes in such a manner fuels migration, less interest in farming and continuing high prices because fewer crops will be grown, on top of the already poor investment in farm technology.

So by reducing the prices of commodities in the case of Paul Biya, or restricting exports in the case of China and others, developing countries are not only making their economies less efficient, but also they are adding to the overall incidence of poverty among their populations. The gap between the incomes of rural and urban families is much smaller in developed countries that subsidize rather than tax farmers.
It may seem very simple, but with high prices of commodities like cereal and other foods, subsidized farmers are getting far richer than city residents, while taxed farmers are getting poorer as the taxes have increased on those situations to accommodate city living.

In the last few months, everyone from the UK minister of Agriculture to the chief of the UN world food program have been warning of a looming global food crisis, but the only ones who do not seem to be bothered by such an alarm are the developing nations who incidentally are the most under-prepared to deal with it.

The solution to this crisis is not as simple as just subsiding the developing farmers, for this would require imposing high per capita taxes on their relatively small urban populations since farmers are a rather large proportion of the total population in these countries. Instead, the same political pressures as in developed countries lead poorer countries, regardless of the nature of their political systems, to subsidize the smaller urban populations at the expense of the larger farm populations.

People far smarter than me have shown that a common approach to the political process based on interest group pressures can explain both the taxing of poor farmers in developing nations, and the subsidies to well off farmers in richer nations. Whatever the case may be, unless actions are urgently taken to help poor farmers in developing countries and the agriculture sector as a whole, we are in for a period of unavoidable violence resulting from massive global food shortages.

Mbanga Pongo crash: Kenya Airways anxious to know crash cause

Airliner officials have begun urging the Kenyan and US governments to mount
pressure on Yaounde authorities to release a report on the cause of the crash

By Ntaryike Divine, Jr. in Douala

Almost a year since a Kenya Airways plane hurtled into jungle marshes at Mbanga Pongo seconds after take-off from the Douala airport, protracting information blackout on the exact cause of the crash has compelled the airliner to direct pressure on Cameroon authorities.

Kenya Airways CEO, Titus Naikuni, said earlier this week that his company was seeking the intervention of the Kenyan and US governments to oblige Yaounde authorities to release the report. All 114 passengers and crew members aboard perished when KQ flight 507
nosed-dived amidst violent nocturnal storms last 5 May.

A flurry of aviation experts from within and without Cameroon attempted hypothetical explanations on the cause of the crash in the weeks that followed. Some blamed Cameroon for her blatant lack of flight control radars that stalled a search and rescue operation for over 48 hours. Others pinned blame for the disaster on violent night storms.

At term, the wrecked craft’s black boxes were retrieved from the marshy crash site after days of a
daunting search and ferried to Canada for analyses. Cameroon authorities announced amidst sweeping grief at home and abroad that the crash cause report would be available in a year. In the interlude, Kenya Airways began paying indemnities to kin of deceased passengers, as DNA tests conducted at a Bosnian laboratory enabled the identification and restitution of corpses [mostly as body parts] to relatives.

Kenya Airways officials have said the crash significantly burdened the national carrier which has
been grappling to regain its once enviable poise in air transport in Africa. Speaking recently at the
carrier’s headquarters in Embakasi , Kenya , CEO Titus Naikuni said Kenya Airways is facing huge challenges in the aftermath of the disaster. He named shortage of aircraft following the loss of the Boeing 767-800 in the Douala crash and the ongoing unparalleled hikes in fuel prices as major sources of concern.

He however said Kenya Airways is acquiring more planes to inter alia, fill the shortfall from the Douala crash, but also noted that the delivery of new craft had been delayed by Boeing manufacturers for reasons he did not state. He even hinted that the airliner may be obliged to raise fares in two months time, in order to cater for unprecedented increase in fuel prices and
the continued weakening of the dollar that has continued to eat into its profits.

86bn French debt relief funds lying fallow at BEAC!

The funds accruing from debt relief granted Cameroon in 2006 by the French government, following the attainment of the HIPC completion point, are intended to finance development projects in the country

By Ojong Steven Ayuk in Yaounde

The funds already accruing from debt relief following Cameroons attainment of the completion point of the HIPC initiative are quite enormous and are destined for the financing of urgent development projects in the country.

But in spite of the market under-development of the country and the abject poverty to which the masses have been subjected over the past two decades, government still seems short of ideas as to what viable projects could consume the money and better the lives of Cameroonians.

And because of this, over 86 billion FCFA of the nearly 160 billion FCFA so far deposited in accounts at the Central Bank, BEAC, thanks to debt relief granted Cameroon by the French government following a contract signed between the two countries on 22 June 2006, is still waiting to be used, and this until the government presents viable projects.

So far the government has only been able to withdraw close to 80 billion FCFA to finance mostly
rehabilitation works in Yaounde and Douala, and a smaller part to pay salaries of contract teachers. In fact, over 11 billion FCFA (8 billion in 2007 and 3 billion in the first half of 2008) has been used for payment of contract teachers’ salaries.

Following the 2006 contract for debt relief with the French government, money intended for servicing of debts owed France is deposited in two accounts at BEAC. This money is ploughed back into the economy to finance development projects under the HIPC-C2D programme.
At a press briefing here on 15 April, the Director of the French Development Agency, Pascal Collange, said that by the end of the first part of the C2D programme that ends in 2011, Cameroon would have benefited some 352 billion FCFA from France.

Pascal Collange said Cameroon has so far respected deadlines for the servicing of her debts, to the tune of 70 billion FCFA a year.

He said through an agreement between the two governments, the civil society has been brought in to contribute in the follow-up of the execution of projects under the C2D programme. This to ensure adequate use of the funds and proper execution of projects.

According to Marc Bikoko, president of the syndicate of public servants (CSP), the role of the civil
society is to identify problems with the execution of the projects and ensure that corrective measures are taken.

'The Nation's' Transparency Awards honors politicians and government managers in Cameroon!

By - Harry Ndienla Yemti

Professor Vincent P.K .Titanji, Vice-Chancellor (VC) of University of Buea (UB), otherwise known as “The Place to be”, and managers of some state corporations have been honored for their stringent and transparent management by 'The Nation', a Yaoundé Based News magazine, through its program, dubbed, “The Nation Transparency Awards”. Other winners of the award include: Henry Njalla Quan, general manger of Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), Sama Ignatius, general manager of Cameroon Civil Aviation (CCAA) Obi Optun Wanobi Osang, general manager of PAMOL Plantations Plc; Richard Tita Fombon,Mayor of Tiko ; Daniel Matute,Mayor of Limbe 1 and Barrister Ntumfor Nico Halle,Northwest Representative at the National Elections Observatory (NEO).

Speaking during the award ceremony which took place last 4th April, 2008, at the Fakoship Plaza, in Buea, and chaired by Barrister Dang Alias, the initiator of the award, Asong Ndifor, who doubles as Editor of The Nation Magazine, made it clear that the yearly event is intended to encourage stringent management and
transparency in Cameroon, a country which has been ranked at least twice as the most corrupt nation in the world by Transparency International, a Berlin-based good governance watchdog.

Though the government of Cameroon has in the past few years been involved fighting corruption through arrests and jailing of some corrupt officials, Asong Ndifor belives “fighting corruption is not only prosecuting the culprits but also recognizing those who are promoting integrity and transparent management in the organizations they manage”. On this score, he made it clear that winners were selected from many nominations by a committee of people of integrity, based on objective criteria.

In his keynote address on the theme: “Transparency”, Ntumfor Nico Halle, himself a laureate, underscored the fact that "Transparency is instituted as a means of holding people in public offices or institutions accountable and it is also a big tool to fight corruption”. To him transparency equally ensures that; state action, budget and financial statements may be open and reviewed by everyone, and that enactment,
rules and decisions are open to discussions

While noting that transparency help to promote good governance and that good governance is not an end in itself, but a means to an end, the learned Barrister says Transparency ought to be the affaire of every Cameroonian. Though Cameroon is widely believe to be a very rich nation in both natural and human resources, Ntumfor Nico Halle expressed regret that the country is still plague by poverty, unemployment, underdevelopment, HIV/AIDS, crime wave and banditry among many social ills just because some Cameroonians continue to loot, plunder, pillage, and pilfer the nation’s patrimony. While commending government in the fight against corruption, the Ntumfor call on all Cameroonians to join in the fight to make it more effective.

Concerning the award, Ntumfor emphasized that awards in themselves are good as they encourage hard work but that they would be meaningless if they were negotiated or done in anticipation for money and material consideration. “I opine that it is owing to the integrity of The Nation Magazine which it has built for itself over the years, that has moved this large crowd of celebrated personalities to this hall”.
He also used the occasion to laud the Cameroonian press for its continued fight against corruption and embezzlement as well as the struggle for the strengthening of democracy in the country. “Though not a journalist, I know that the press is a formidable force to reckon with”, Ntumfor told the crowd.

On his part the chairman of the occasion, Barrister Dang, congratulated the laureates and urged them to continue to be management models, so that others can learn from them.

Meanwhile, On April 17, Christopher Ambe Shu, publisher of The Recorder Newspaper and special envoy of the award organizers led a two-man delegation that included Harry McYemti Ndienla(journalist of The Guardian Post) to the University of Buea to hand the Transparency Award to the Vice-chancellor who was conspicuously absent on the 4th April, 2008, due to other state matters out of the province.

Warmly received by the vice-chancellor, Christopher Ambe Shu then briefed Professor Titanji on the relevance of the award, handed it and urged him to keep up the spirit.

In response, the Vice –Chancellor said, "I feel greatly honored and I accept this award with all humility, knowing that the work of human beings can always be improved on. I will do my best to live up to the ideals of this award" The Vice-Chancellor appealed to other holders of public offices to be patriotic and put the common interest first in discharging their various duties. "I think it is very easy to work in the public sector because the rules and regulations are very clearly written down. All we need to do is, follow them intelligently and you have little or no problem"

Professor Titanji, who has been Vice-chancellor of University of Buea for less than two years, is one of few managers of public and private institutions in Cameroon identified by The Nation as laureates of The Nation 2007 Transparency Award.

CAMAIR excluded from air transport association

The image-tarnishing ejection has been tagged to the ailing company’s lengthening failure to step up
security and allow independent operations auditing

By Ntaryike Divine, Jr. in Douala

Barely a month after new managers were designated at the befuddled national carrier CAMAIR, the company
that is yet to resume flights has been dealt a damaging blow. The International Air Transport Association, IATA, has excluded CAMAIR from its list of members.

Reasons for the image-tarnishing ejection pronounced last week have been hinged on prolonged security
lapses and other pitfalls in the administrative management of the ailing company. Concretely, IATA
blamed CAMAIR for the inexistence of viable accounts and reluctance to conduct an independent audit of its
operations over the last four years.

It also expressed worry over maintenance and the ageing nature of craft used by the company. The IATA
decision indicates the association is keen on shedding blame in the event of an accident suffered by CAMAIR.
The association advocates meticulous respect of air transport standards. Statistics hold that while air
transport in Africa represents a meagre 4 percent of worldwide figures, the continent.

In 2006, CAMAIR appeared on a blacklist of 92 airliners barred from European skies. Thanks to
vigorous negotiations, the government overturned the ban. But observers say last week’s ejection of CAMAIR
from the IATA membership list reiterates the lack of real political will to overhaul the carrier whose
planned privatization has snail-paced endlessly.

On the back of an IMF mission to Cameroon last month, CAMAIR’s three-year-serving provisional ambassador,
Paul Ngamo Hamani was fired in a terse presidential decree. The company activities were grounded for over
a week and upon his appointment as director-delegate, Adolphe Sammet Bell announced resumption of operations beginning with domestic flights two days later. But CAMAIR planes are yet to take to the air since
mid-March.

The IATA decision thus adds to customers’ waning confidence in the 37-year-old airliner drenched in
debts valued at over 70-billion-FCFA. The company that costs the state some 3 billion FCFA monthly to manage
also lacks craft of its own. It has still not cleared outstanding fuel debts valued at some 2 billion FCFA.
Only last February, Total Cameroun and Shell fuel suppliers refused to serve the company from unpaid
bills obliging the grounding of craft for several days.