Cameroon: The Politics of Decomposition

Innocent Chia

The rot at the Douala International Suffocation Airport… Shoulder-deep potholes housing dust and mud as the dry and rainy seasons alternate… Human-sized rats and other rodents going about their business willy-nilly in broad daylight… A dilapidating Mungo bridge on an endless see-saw break with drivers and other users…

The Mungo Bridge

This shortlist is by far an incomplete playbook that the CPDM Government of President Paul Biya has apparently utilized with great success since the advent of multiparty politics in La Republique du Cameroun.

The results have borne the party its desired fruits as opposition members drone in frustration and change sides of the aisle. Who would not change sides to the party that delivers the goodies – look at the better state of roads in Yaounde and compare to the patches of the mid-century macadam on the roads in Bamenda and Douala, two bastions of opposition politics. Compare the Yaounde-Nsimalen Airport to the humiliation in Douala. Yet Douala is the economic capital of the country, carrying all the main arteries to sustain the nation with the blood that has been oozing from beleaguered Limbe.

Yaounde Administrative Quarters (c) Flickr

How come Yaounde has outdistanced and even completely annihilated Douala in the race for development? How come Limbe is hardly in the race? How come Bamenda is a spectator to the race?
It all boils down to the politics of decomposition that has been unleashed on the people of Cameroun by the government of President Paul Biya. According to its playbook, the politics of decomposition rewards a population of its entitlements when that population votes cronies of the CPDM. Example: That Yaounde has remained in the hands of the CPDM has obviously resulted in the noticeable improvements on its road network and infrastructure.

In the meantime, those cities with an affinity for opposition rhetoric have been deprived of every development opportunity. This dates as far back as 1996 when the SDF party of John Fru NDI surprisingly swept 60 local councils, including all major urban councils like Bafoussam, Kumba, Limbe, Nkongsamba and Yaounde. On the heels of its reverberating defeat at the polls, the CPDM government passed into law a gimmick to steal victory from the electorate. It was the birth of Government Delegates. These CPDM TSARS were appointed to run the major Urban Councils won by the SDF and UNDP of Bello Bouba Maigari.

Indeed, they have foiled development initiatives by the opposition and, at the end of the fiscal year, returned huge sums of money to Yaounde under the pretext that the councilors had no worthwhile projects. In many instances, it is known that the delegates have simply denied funding for projects that were approved by the majority of council members. So, what to do? And what if it true that the councilors are indeed dwarfed by any ideas that can improve the lot of the people?

By political calculation, one man’s loss is another man’s gain. Some call it the zero-sum game because the winner takes it all. In this instance of suffering councils, the abject poverty of the masses speaks volumes against the party in-charge. So, the opposition pays a handsome political price at the polls when the population is suffering from the lack of good roads. The opposition pays a price when neighborhoods have partitioned and sporadic supply of electricity. They pay a price when an airport facility like Douala is run with wanton disdain by CPDM appointees.

In the hope of changing their lot, the people of Limbe switched camps from the SDF and are now paying allegiance to the King, albeit with mixed results as the Government Delegate still managed to secure a vote of “No Confidence” from councilors of his own party in January 2006. A vote of “No Confidence” from the CPDM councilors to its appointed Delegate must not fool any alert observer of the independence of the Council. Rather, it magnifies the degree of difficulty that opposition parties are caught up in. If municipal councilors and the mayor are to be judged by their works, well….

The CPDM appointed Government Delegates have as principal mission to abort progress in opposition strongholds. Unfortunately, the public eye is either blind to these details or is easily exasperated and in need of quick solutions. Also, the opposition cannot afford the media to the extent that the CPDM can. Nor can it afford to squander the taxpayers’ money on the powerful sensitization and corruption campaigns of the CPDM. So, at the next election, the opposition is either deflated in its voting numbers because its supporters lack the oomph to carry it through or, the plotting CPDM manages to get a few people out to the polls. In some other cases, the population may just decide to sanction the local party in power. Mission accomplished?

It depends on whose side you are. Yes, if you are with the CPDM. No if you are on the side of the opposition. As for this commentator, it is an absurdity of untold proportions that at the end of the day the same Government Delegate rides home in the same potholes that he refuses to fix. He flies out from the same eyesore airport in Douala. Receives medical attention from the same understaffed health facilities that suffer erratic electrical cuts as a result of his government’s actions or inactions. If it matters that it be said one more time: Politics of Decomposition is a shame. A shame.

Comments

[Shufai]

Bobe Chia

Thanks for a well thought out piece that pierces through the fabric and deep of political degredation and abandonment in the face of infrastructural and institutional decline. Your take on the handicap nature of City council governments to carry out much needed development due to government delegate interferance is sound and logical; but then I wonder what will be the Excuss of the Kumbo Urban council that has no government delegate and yet the place looks like it came to a standstill 30years ago infrastructurally.

The fact is looking at the politics of decomposition and wanton neglect by the powers that be will blind us to the bigger problem: We have a centralise system of government that believes that "If yaounde breaths then cameroon is alive".

We have a governmnet being run from a credit card issued by the world bank and IMF. I pity those who will pick the monthly payments some 30years from now, when Biya will be turning in his grave grinding the decomposed teeth of his skull bone. The IMF and World bank don't care how their money is spent, especially when more than half ends up in private accounts in Europe and there is no development on the ground to show for. It is regretable when countries like cameroun pass budgets with more than half the income as loans.

The Douala Airport is just what it is: an Airport. Remember a plane crashed 12miles from that airport in the swamps, and was located 36hours after only with french intervention from Gabon. The road network to the airport is only a problem to the guy in a Taxi and has nothing to do with the Government delegate in an SUV.

The best solution to this current trend will be to decentralise the system of government or at best federate it to 8 states of La Republique du Caemroun, that is, after the Southern Cameroons regains its lost independence.

Keep the articles flowing and lets carry on with the kind of conversation that is shun in La Republique as being ofensive or better put from "Ntarikon".

Shufai Mbinglo

[Philip ACHA]

Might Mr CHIA be preparing an apology for Cameroons political opposition, in the event that they lost Municipal and Legislative elections? Cameroon's oppostion failures are imputable to their inactivity.

Who are the players?. Take Fru NDI; he'll never get there till he understands that Democracy must be applied "within" to be effective in aggregate "without". Or say Bello BOUBA, a public service dissident who's greed can only be matched by Chantal Biya's vanity. Frederic Koddock's conscience has trapped him to a state that he has been pillaging since 1974 while Ndam Njoya still thinks politics is CIVICS for adults.

These political rodents reflect the system that created them. No doubt, Fru Ndi leads his party "unchallengeable" since 1990! A five-year mandate short of Biya who is CPDM President-for-life since 1985. (Bello Bouba since 1992) In such a context, moral rectitude is an endangered quality on a collision course for extinction.

Biya neither sought nor seized power. Power happened on him like thunderbolts do unto cattle in Bello Bouba's backyard. With the likes of Biya, Mugabe or ealier on Ceaucescu, you don't negotiate!

Strategic violence and its more generalised variant, WAR, is not a breakdown of politics and dialogue but an extension to it. Biya & Co. must be threatened life-and-limb. Just like Biya divides the opposition, so too must the opposition seek to plunge a wedge in the army. Intentions, in politics, are more efficient than delivered promises. ACT NOW!

[Innocent CHIA]

Sir ACHA,
I couldn't be apologetic about the shortcomings of Cameroon's opposition parties! Rather, it is my understanding that while you are taking down the house from the roof-top, my labor is on the foundation. It is a body of work that we all have to undertake, not in a mutually exclusive manner as much as in a concerted manner.

Your analysis of what is fundamentally wrong with the leadership across the board is unimpeachable. But let those who are at the ground level not think of themselves as innocent by-standers. My write-up was to show that they are not.

It is like writing an article on corruption. You can focus on the President or Ministers. You can pick on teachers and their own corrupt practices. You can decide that the Police is an angle. It would seem that it is easier for an elephant to go through the eye of a needle than to find a cameroonian in an office that is not corrupt.
IC.