-EFFECTS OF ELECTIONS
BOYCOTT BY ENGLISH SPEAKING CAMEROONIANS ON THEIR FUTURE IN CAMEROON.
This
debate was sparked off by a write up that was written by Seraphine Bessong, a
hitherto unknown name (at least on the media landscape). The heat that was
generated by this write up began from the confusion over its authorship because
of the way it was titled. “An
interesting write-up by Eric Chinje, a Shesan.” (SHESAN- Sacred Heart Ex-Students
Association) Eric Chinje is a house hold name in Cameroon dating far back in his
time at CRTV Cameroon Radio Television where alongside Charles Ndongo, the
present General Manager they called the shots as far as interviews with the
Head of State Paul Biya were concerned. When Eric Chinje quit CRTV for reasons
which do not concern us here, his wings carried strange lands “underneath
fairer skies” and his name has since remained a house hold name. It therefore
came as no surprise that when the authorship of a write-up was mistakenly
attributed to him, it went viral on Social Media. This confirmed the
impossibility for the informed public to stay indifferent to what was presumed
to have been authored by him.
Excerpt;
THE AMBAZONIA BOYCOTT AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR
THE PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN CAMEROONS
There
are 3 major political blunders in the history of Cameroon that have
significantly altered the destiny of Cameroon. I mention these just because
decisions of great consequence only get fully understood with the passage of
time. And within our current context, we need to appropriately situate the
consequences of the decision of many to boycott the 2018 election.
My
hope is that you will read this message, gain some benefit from it and use it
to clarify your thinking in this moment of great confusion and pain for our
people. Most of the decisions made today are done by individuals who I can
criticize. However, the only active player I will mention is Biya - because he
is the one we should be focused on replacing.
Let
us go to the beginning...
1.
THE UPC BOYCOTT In 1955, the UPC decided to boycott the coalition
proposed by Soppo Priso because they wanted France to leave Cameroon and grant
immediate independence. Pierre Messmer, the French Governor cut a deal
with Ahidjo that created the Mbida-Ahidjo government. This boycott resulted in
the North-South alliance that has dominated politics in Cameroon for 57 years.
2.
THE SDF BOYCOTT - In March 1992, John Fru Ndi decided to boycott the first
multiparty parliamentary election. Despite the boycott, the opposition
comprised 51% of the parliament, which weakened the control of the Executive.
From 1992 to 1997, many progressive events took place - AAC conferences, calls
for a Constitutional Conference, the Tripartite talks and the 1996
constitution. This progressive trend only started failing after the return to
parliament in 1997. Since 1997, the SDF has consistently lost seats in
parliament and today controls 9% of the 180 seats. The insistence by Fru Ndi to
remain opposition leader regardless of the series of successive defeats and the
SDF’s inability to adapt into a true coalition remains the central contributor
to the long-term impotence of the opposition.
3.THE
AMBAZONIAN BOYCOTT -On October 7, 2018, there will be a Presidential election
in Cameroon. Paul Biya is at his weakest and the world is watching like never
before. For the first time, there are credible opposition candidates and with
advances in technology, it is increasingly difficult to rig an election where
the opposition decides to compete. While many expect it to be a close election,
the only way to get Biya out and contemplate a new political future for
Southern Cameroonians is to bring the 800,000+ Southern Cameroonian votes into
the coalition. This is the final option to resolve this crisis politically. If
we boycott, the only option is a military solution.
DECISION
POINT
With
record by numbers of Southern Cameroonians fleeing, even to LRC, it is time for
the Southern Cameroonians intellectuals to seriously weigh the options -
particularly members of the Diaspora. Today, they cannot pretend that the
problem does not exist. Most families have either lost relatives or know of
others who are refugees or internally displaced.
There
are many legitimate grievances we can lay claim to. However, any objective
observer will agree that the amateurism of the people who claim to speak for
all Southern Cameroonians has resulted in a loss of every opportunity to defeat
Biya internationally and created a culture of violence and reprisals at home.
By insisting that all Southern Cameroonians should tow the independence line,
they have stifled the most fundamental of all freedoms - the freedom of
thought, and have prevented the integration of majority of progressives who can
add value to the range of options that must be employed to hold the Biya regime
accountable in the court of international public opinion.
The
fact that we have been rebranded from a peaceful non-resistance movement to a
secessionist (and terrorist to some) organization is a testament to the failure
of imagination and leadership of those who claim the right to speak for
millions of Southern Cameroonians.
The
time has come to put an end to this. It is not enough to think we must be
monochromatic in our thinking because we are all Southern Cameroonians. Right
is right and wrong is wrong regardless of the fact that we are all Southern
Cameroonians. A government that raises 2 million dollars to create a 200
million+ dollars problem that is borne solely by the victims it claims to
represent has failed. PERIOD!
We
should stop deceiving ourselves that this interim government has the answers.
We should stop deceiving ourselves that Biya is a regime propped up by
France. The cooperation accords with France expired in 2010 and Biya did
not renew them. The oil we keep saying is exploited by France is now owned
primarily by the British, Chinese and the Russians. So how does our IG alienate
France, ignore the British, Chinese and Russian interests and claim it is doing
any work, let alone think? Does the IG realize that this fight has not started
and all Biya has been doing is provoking a situation that will suppress
opposition votes in the NW and SW, secure a mandate and then accelerate the
disintegration of Southern Cameroons? Are the warlords on the internet going to
come back to Cameroon to secure territory and fight?
My
fellow Southern Cameroonians - we are heading in the wrong direction. And if
any leader - whether a Facebook warrior or member of the IG disagrees with what
I am saying, they should go online and state so publicly. I insist on them
doing so publicly because the record should indicate after October 8th that
they took the position. This stupidity by people who are thousands of miles
away has got to stop.
The
only plan Biya has after October 7 is to use his mandate (derived largely from
the Southern Cameroonian boycott) and embark on a pacification program similar
to what was done with the UPC in the 1960s. With arms from China, the best we
can realistically hope for is an intensification of hostilities and eradication
of nationalism from Southern Cameroons.
We
can avoid this. War and Peace are choices. Victory and Defeat are choices.
But
we all have to realize the clock is ticking fast. And if you care about this,
start calling your friends and relatives to tell them things are going to get
serious and we need to take action immediately. We lose nothing by voting but
everything by refusing to vote.
The
time has come to ask the IG to make a u-turn to the ballot box. If not, let the
record indicate that we had the opportunity to avoid crashing into an abyss - and
our leaders insisted that we should maintain the course, play into Biya's hands
and accelerate the deconstruction of Southern Cameroons.
If
we stay silent and do nothing, history judge our decision to boycott not as
another act of popular resistance, but as the biggest strategic blunder in the
difficult history of Southern Cameroons. It will be a blunder orchestrated at a
time when there are Southern Cameroonians around the world in positions of
power and privilege, we have access to the corridors of power and technology
AND Biya is 85 years old and at his weakest. We will fail not because our cause
is unjust, but because we have allowed a team of people bereft of imagination
and moral clarity to assume the mantle of leadership.
We
have to stop this circus of listening to an IG that does not have a command and
control structure on the ground and a growing band of militias who keep saying
that they are relying on instructions from the IG. This struggle is now a ship
without a captain and we are about to reach a point of no return. We are not
seeing the number of victims grow exponentially while the agenda is
increasingly controlled by a small team of narcissists who know that true
democracy will deprive them of their claims of leadership.
The
time has come for the Diaspora to rethink the extent to which it has been
manipulated. The time has come for the people on the ground to know that the
small group of extreme voices who control the social media narrative are more
interested in holding onto power and will never come to Cameroon to fight for
them. The progress we have made so far has been in spite of the poor leadership
of Biya and the IG. We are on our own and we better start thinking of what is
best for us as individuals and for our people. And when we do, we should make
sure we give the right advice to our friends and relatives at home who rely on
our counsel.
We
can beat Biya and secure a Federation in 2019 that meets the aspiration of our
people. We can change course on October 7, and let the political process and a
new President address our grievances. However, if we say no, the IG better
start telling people to start buying coffins, preparing for airstrikes on
our towns and villages and the probability of fighting against the Russians and
the Chinese.
That
may very well be when we will start realizing how stupid we have been all
along.
IGNORANCE
WILL NOT BE AN EXCUSE AFTER OCTOBER 7, 2018. STOP ALLOWING GHOSTS TO DETERMINE
YOUR DESTINY UNLESS YOU WANT TO BECOME A GHOST. THINK FOR YOURSELF. YOUR VOTING
CARD IS STRONGER THAN ANY AMBA BULLET.
Below a rejoinder by
Duchess Samira Edi-Mesumbe
OK,
Here's my take
Interesting
reactions from friends, with a gamut of opinions to the write-up, which was
incorrectly attributed to Mr Eric Chinje.
While
some have lauded the courage of the writers,(Seraphine Besong & co) for
speaking up, backed by the depth of salient facts therein, others labelled
their thinking as “delusional” in the face of an on-going “war”.
Certain
persons are resigned to their faith, preferring to lay the Anglophone problems
in the realm of superstition, because in their opinions “only god” is the
medicament to rescue the country from its current predicament.
Most
think that the elections have already been rigged anyway, hence their apathy.
No wonder many suffer from compassion fatigue; after being bombarded with an
avalanche of propaganda in audio and video, they've become emotionally numb and
disengaged from the issues.
The
diversity of the views, however attests to the strength of feelings evoked by
the unprecedented crises in Anglophone Cameroon.
“Now
here's my take.”
For
once, the “Amba warriors” have given legitimacy to Biya's electoral
dictatorship to cling to power for another 7 yrs, doing what he's been doing in
the last 36.
Thanks
to the “pseudo-revolutionaries” who mount an unflinching challenge to the laws
of logic, the long-suffering Anglophones, who were only dealing with
marginalization, now have to cope with a new test: persecution from their
ancestral lands on an industrial scale, the bi-product of which is automatic “disenfranchisement”
from our country's democratic process.
This,persons
who claim to be fighting for their freedoms but are instead carving out their
little fiefdom of power for themselves, while handily offering Biya another 7
years of dictatorship is galling.
Here's
a fact:
Southern
Cameroons cannot defeat Biya through armed resistance.
1.
He has the full juggernaut of the state machinery at his disposal to crush any
opposition. He has the stone cold insouciance to function without any worries
over the problems bedeviling the Anglophone regions. He is tone deaf to
criticisms and impervious to suggestions.
2.
Yaoundé exists in situ of Biya's needs, with not a hair's breadth of a ripple
to agitate him. He is bien comblé and
encased in a bubble of security and self-sufficiency.
3.
Oil revenue flows from the South West Province into Biya's and his British and
Chinese friends' unencumbered.
In
the meantime,
4.
China with whom Africa "enjoys" an unprecedented frisson continues to
pay homage to and to prop up Biya's tyrannical regime with a tokenistic CFA 209
billion loan to buy Russian and Serbian-made arms while exploiting the
country's resources, making Cameroon Africa's 5th importer of heavy weaponry, arms.
Guess who gets killed?
5.
France still calls Yaoundé a friend, while Britain is too preoccupied with its
own self-inflicted Brexit problems, to bother about a strip of colonial Anglophone
territory, now a wasteland of frightening murders. The US State Department
gives a nod to the regime, recently updating their website by advising its
citizens to stay clear of the terrorist afflicted Anglophone regions of
Cameroon.
6.
While Human Rights activists post ineffective tweets and Facebook Posts about
the Anglophone problems, only a handful of Cameroon Anglophones pay heed to
them. It looks eerily like we've been left to our own devices with no adult
supervision.
What
does that mean?
7.
Biya's perennial opposition has done his job clinically for him; crushed his
enemies in a brutal manner that even he never envisaged. His strongest critics
sit in the comfort of other people's countries abroad and incite violence in
their own regions, resulting in the greatest dystopian destabilization
Anglophone Cameroon has ever known. They have therefore lost even the flimsy voice
of integrity they once had-the moral high ground.
For
once, there was an authentic chance for credible opposition to defeat Biya
through the ballot box, but that opportunity has been well scuppered by the
sheer greed, power-hungry deceptiveness and incompetence of inept ingénues
passing for revolutionaries, but who’s sanguinary MO have resulted in a daily
ritual of grieving families.
Wata
na wata, no be so?
How trite; the emptiness of that phrase
sounds. Any revolution which does not build a momentum to carry the people
forward with it, while uniting under a single ideology is bound to fail. Like
this one.
The
structural weaknesses of the Anglophone experiment began when the intellectual
minds which had conceived of the idea; The Lawyers, were joined by the soi-disant teachers who brought with
them a bunch of rabble rousing disruptors with little grasp of what they were
fighting for and instantly, the cause was irreversibly gazumped, as it
descended into factions of self-serving natives, all speaking at cross purposes
in a babble of cacophonic tongues with no meeting of minds ever.
Now
it is out of control and in the hands of unconscionable pretenders, playing
catch and kill with Biya's forces, while both wreak havoc on the lives of
innocent Anglophones, sometimes with just the lure of the filthy lucre as the
motivating factor.
Their
own lives are too precious for self-sacrifice, but they have the cajones to send herds of gullible
factotums to the battle for gratuitous slaughter by Biya's ruthless forces.
Then
they go on social media to brag about their atrocities, relishing in their notoriety,
while living like comfortably like Red-wine Rebels and Beer-guzzling grievance-merchants
your regular limousine louts.
What
for? For the sake of cheap "likes," and comments on social media,
Anglophones are paying a heavy price in blood, as their traitors share their
blood booty with glee.
Anybody
claiming to be fighting a revolution for self-actualization or independence in
Southern Cameroon at this point, is engaged in an exercise in grand deception.
The
flight of Anglophones from their natural habitats into parts known and unknown
in Francophone regions is a scathing testament to the abject failure of the
armed separatists. You cannot terrorize the same people you claim to be
fighting for, in the same mindless barbarity and senseless savagery as the
forces of the government. It is unconscionable and as wrong as hitting your own
grandma with a stick.
Ms.
Besong's write up sums up the hapless futility of the struggling Anglophones every
pun intended.
For
the prayer warriors here's my question: when have prayers ever worked? Please
come down from the divine abode of fantasy and face the solid reality on Ground
Zero staring at you in plain sight. We need right-thinking heads to come up
with practical solutions, not snake oil charlatans.
Last
point: It takes spine and spunk to leave the comfort and safety abroad and go
to Cameroon to cast a vote against a tyrannical regime. Instead of making angry
faces at the gargoyle from a safe distance, especially in the diasporas, why
don't you? In that aspect, some of us can hold our heads high. Go figure!
Introduction by Francis Ekongang Nzante (The Social Media Post have been published unedited)
Edev Newspaper: Email: edevnewspaper@gmail.com/ francoeko@gmail.com/Tel: +237696896001/ +237678401408/ +237667169106/+237696594138
