Cameroon To Vet Biya Supporters For Senate

In two weeks, Cameroonians would be awaiting the vetting of 100 people from a horde selected by the leadership of some political parties to stand in a mock election as senators.

Heralded to complete Cameroon's democratic process, the upcoming Senatorial elections will be a confirmation of the lack of democracy in Cameroon and the implantation of Biya's people in the institutions supposed to call for his impeachment when eventually he is elbowed out of power, or passes on naturally.

Biya has put the cart before the horse in the slow and tedious democratic caravan he announced when he framed his own epitaph in the late 1980s as the one who ushered democracy into Cameroon.

Senators are supposed to be [s]elected in Cameroon by municipal councilors. The current councilors in Cameroon had overstayed the mandate they were pretending to have been given by their people by more than 10 months thanks to a presidential decision to prolong their term of office till the election procedure is ready. Regrettably, the [s]election of senators will be impulsive as those to do it, have, for a huge majority, lost the confidence of their constituents. Some of the councilors have died, others are in prison on allegations of embezzling state funds, and some have simply failed to live up to the standards for another mandate. Conclusion, those to [s]elect the senators are democratically incompetent to do so without a renewal of the municipal assemblies.

The President of the Republic of Cameroon arrogates to himself the right to appoint 30 percent of the senators, while 70 percent would be [s]elected by some thousand councilors who owe the last 10 months of their mandate to the political grace of President Paul Biya.

Each region will have 10 senators, making a total of 100 senators in Cameroon. They will join the 180 honorable crooks in the House, making a total of 280 dimwitted-sleepy-handclapping political sycophants.

Randomly considered, most of the candidates presented by the Cameroon Peoples Demolition Movement (CPDM), Social Disaster Front (SDF), Cameroon Dissolution Union (CDU) and their allies have all contributed to the political, social and economic mess we observe in Cameroon today.

Notice that the buzzword, DEMOCRACY has been reworked revealing the hidden agendas of the three leading political parties in Cameroon after the [s]elections and manipulations of the last six years.

The CPDM has metamorphosed into a demolition machine of Cameroon People and is vehemently condemned by President Paul Biya for the perceptible shortcomings of its members who were trusted and given juicy posts. CPDM militants and supporters are languishing in jail after crimes against the people of Cameroon.

Amongst such political sycophants from the highest alleged to have embezzled state funds and resources are former Prime Minister, Chief Inoni Ephraim, Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, Minister of Public Health, Olanguena Awono; Minister of Finance, Polycarpe Abah Abah; Minister of Basic Education, Haman Adama; Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Mouchipou Seydou; Secretary General at the Presidency, Titus Edzoa; Director of Cameroon Shipyard company, Zaccheus Fornjidam etc, etc.

This list of Very Important Prisoners (VIP) is very long and is still growing by the minute to swell up and expose the gangrene menacing the Cameroon body polity. If Cameroonians were not resilient, the last 30 years of Biya conmen would have sent all of them to their early graves or psychiatric asylums.

Yet, we cannot undermine the magnitude of the crimes these Biya boys and girls have committed against the people of Cameroon. Professor Kofele Kale describes these crimes against the people of Cameroon as patrimonicide, being the killing of the fatherland.

Fru Ndi's Social Disaster Front is not exempted from these crimes against the people of Cameroon, as SDFs experiment with Democracy has been a disaster. From its launch on 25 May 1990 in Bamenda, the SDF has claimed many lives through its callous use of Cameroonians as human shields. How have these sacrifices of lives advanced democracy in Cameroon?

Some political jesters will mumble that you cannot have an omelet without breaking eggs. Socially true, but politically wrong when Fru Ndi has graduated from Biya's sparring partner to a real shareholder of the national cake.

Biya and Fru Ndi now meet, dine and wine while millions of Cameroonians wallow in abject poverty. Fru Ndi has become a political window dressing Biya shows his critics around the world as an alibi of functional democracy in Cameroon.

As for Adamu Ndam Njoya, the so-called achievements of unity proposed in his native Foumban have been dissolved by the Cameroon Dissolution Union. CDU makes no secret of its tribal circumspection as all its councilors and parliamentarians are solely from the Noun Division and from the Bamoun ethnic group.

To Ndam Njoya, Cameroon is summarized to mean only the Bamoun Nation. CDU is a real showcase of the true meaning of nationhood, which is, a people living in a given place sharing a common language, history and aspirations.

Unfortunately, the nation Cameroon is a casualty in this CDU experiment and sets a precedence to be interpreted variously by pundits of nationalism on the African continent.

After understanding my transformation of the word DEMOCRACY into demolition in the CPDM, disaster in the SDF and dissolution in the CDU, I will x-ray four candidates who will surely be among the 100 members of the cantankerous sepulcher senate, come 14 April 2013.

Simon Achidi Achu is best remembered as the smiling (la vache qui rire) crisis Prime Minister of Cameroon between 1992 and 1996, who readily received all and doled out money from his inexhaustible caisse-noire.

He was selected from parliament to become a counterfoil for Fru Ndi who had become a political force and still claiming his victory at the October 1992 Presidential elections.

As opposed to his successors who focused solely on their Fako Division of origin and the division of birth of the wife, for the one languishing in pretrial detention at the Kondengui maximum security prison, Achidi Achu easily fraternized with people from all over Cameroon. He could make a very good senator from this superficial and ephemeral consideration.

Unfortunately, Achidi Achu was handed a destructive mission by President Paul Biya, coming out of a Presidential election which he lost. Simple Simon Achidi Achu was charged with the RECONCILIATION and INTEGRATION of Cameroon.

These twin missions were actually code names for divide and rule of Fru Ndi's base or the opposition stronghold. Without prejudice, Simon Achidi Achu is the single Prime Minister who has caused the most division and threatened the much trumpeted national unity in Cameroon.

Under Simon Achidi Achu, Cameroonians learned new words like COME NO GO, Settlers, and Son of the soil. To the helm of the former South West Province, Peter Oben Ashu was appointed as governor. Mr. Governor Peter Oben Ashu openly preached hatred against the majority settler populations from the North West and West Regions.

SAWA marches (political manifestations by South westerners or coastal people against North westerners and the others) were organized on the streets of Douala and Buea.

Journalists came from the PM Simon Achidi Achu's offices in Yaounde to report these SAWA marches, whereas local reporters were ignored, confirming the secret and sacred nature of the marches. Bamenda people (people from the North West Region of Cameroon) became known as COME NO GO.

To conclude the SAWA marches, after the marchers were pumped into a frenzy they shouted “Come no go must go”. Is this not ethnic targeting, a precursor of ethnic cleansing and genocide?

Another casualty of PM Simon Achidi Achu's tenure as Prime Minister is the national languages broadcasts over the regional Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) stations in Buea and Douala. In CRTV Buea for instance, all COME NO GO languages (Meta?, Lamso, Bikom, Wimbum, etc). Speakers of these national languages constituted the bulk of the once attentive audience of CRTV Buea.

The political wisdom of CPDM party think tanks dictated to them that in order to perpetrate the ignorance of the populations and keep them in the dark, they should be deprived of their only means of information in their mother tongue.

Hundreds of thousands of Bamenda people have died from ignorance of the important lessons and tips on HIV/AIDS which they should have had from CRTV Buea in their own mother tongues.

This defers the dream of attaining the Millennium Development Goal of Health for all by the year 2015. CRTV Buea should restart the broadcast of educative programs in the national languages of the North West as was the case before 1990. There should be no fear of Fru Ndi defeating Biya at an election since both are now partners.

Bell Luc Rene, nicknamed Bell Luc 'grenade' in Bamenda is remembered for his chaotic management of the post 1992 Presidential election crises in the North West Province. Thousands of people were tortured, raped, maimed and killed under his administration as Governor of the North West region.

He is to be vetted on 14 April 2013 as senator from the Centre Region. Fon Agwafor III of Mankon will likely be appointed as one of the 30 special people to be selected by President Biya.

He is notorious for witch-hunting and demonization of his Mankon subjects who hold a contrary opinion of him. Thousands of Mankon people are still living as refugees in Esu Wum because they were characterized by Angwafor's palace as threats to the peace and order in the Mankon state.

The SDF candidates are no better. Party functionaries in 2006 cited the top hierarchy of the SDF as the source of the orders to kill Gregoire Deboule of a rival SDF faction. What has become of the case? Has the case been dropped as one of the blackmail baits to get Fru Ndi to toe the line?

Professor Paul Nkwi, as an anthropologists and Rector of the Catholic University of Cameroon, CATUC should have advised the Archbishop of Bamenda, His Grace Esua Fontem Cornelius not to expel over 300 Mbororo people from their houses, farm lands and grazing pastures in Bamenda III, North West Region.

Professor Nkwi watched and actually filmed protesting Mbororo women fighting the Divisional Delegate of Survey for Mezam Division and the Divisional Officer of Bamenda III as they came to share their land among themselves.

Professor Nkwi is complicit of the crime against this indigenous people and should be getting ready for trial by the African Court of Peoples and Human Rights.

Of the 100 senators to be designated, most have committed crimes against the people of Cameroon. The pride that goes with the office of a senator as a legislator for the people cannot be claimed by a bunch of people who have all committed crimes against the very people they are supposed to legislate for. Cameroon will be losing some more billions of taxpayers' money as allowances and gratification for the enemies of the people of Cameroon.

This moment is historic and a rejection of the [s]election will free Cameroonians of the characterization of a docile people. Biya has proven that for 30 years, his greatest problem is choosing the right representatives and officeholders for Cameroon.

The burgeoning number of VIPs in Kondengui prison vindicates everyone who submits that Biya has failed Cameroonians by not appointing the right officeholders and not allowing them to choose their representatives. 90 percent of the proposed candidates for senate should instead be preparing to join their peers in prison.

Fon Christopher Achobang
Department of Linguistics
Faculty of Arts
University of Buea
P.O. Box 63 Buea
(Senior Translator),
English-French-English
Expertise; International Business Translation; Literary Translation,

Medical Translation; Legal Translation, Editing; Proofreading; Translation lecturer.

(Senior Reporter, Social Commentator, Human rights activist)

The Cameroons
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