Editorial: When impunity reigns supreme

The New Deal government in Cameroon, despite its numerous fallibilities, is often credited with having good laws. The problem has been the ineffectiveness of implementation that has degenerated into impunity.

Take the case of non-degradable plastic bags which the ministry of environment and nature protection made so much fuss about its proscription last April.

For environmentalists, the ban was intended to protect the environment’s fast destruction by an ineffective waste management system especially in major towns. It was a welcomed legislature.

But one needs no research to observe that the environmentally-damaging plastic bags continue to be used in markets and on streets even in the very presence of those expected to enforce the fiat.

The banned plastic bags are being used to hawk commodities like groundnuts, foodstuff on the streets and markets. The bags have even become goldmines for traders in the sector who have increased the price by over 200 percent. Asked why there is such a price hike in a proscribed commodity and the reply is that the importers do bribe law enforcement officials to smuggle in the plastics from neighbouring countries.

It is not only the law against plastics that is violated with overt contempt despite the stern sanctions for culprits. Early this year, the government cracked down on some one thousand “illegal clinics and medical training institutions” in Yaounde and Douala, about 500 medical training centres and about 600 private clinics were shut down for operating without the required licence.

The national health inspector in the ministry of health, Biwole Sida, said the ministry launched the operations to bring order to the medical sector, which has gone out of control, with anybody now able to own a medical institution.

Most of them lack the training, appropriate staff, equipment and infrastructure to operate either a medical training institution or a clinic.

The illegal facilities flourish because of two main reasons: High costs at government hospitals and insufficient trained medical staff. In order to remedy the situation and curb the illegal practice in a crucial field like health, government carried out an evaluation of the ten official medical training institutions, four state and two private universities.

It resulted into the introduction of a national entrance examination for higher institutions under the supervision of the National Medical Council. But that has not stopped the illegality in the medical field which has been wrecked by brain drain and the appointment of doctors into administrative and political positions.

Sources in the ministry of public health estimate that 5,000 Cameroonian medical doctors are currently working abroad, while about 1000 work in administrative positions or lecture in medical schools.

Faced with such debilitating situations and ignorance to sieve the fake medical facilities, patients continue to go to the illegal centres where the operators are more out to make money than save lives.

Even if the physical lives are not protected, it is the same with the spiritual life where illegal churches sprout like August mushrooms with “healing priests” and “prophets”.

Some 34 churches were closed down last year for operating illegally after a child seeking “spiritual treatment” for an ailment a hospital would have handled successfully, died in one of the churches in Bamenda.

The illegal evangelical churches were accused “of disturbing public order with raucous services, extorting the spiritually vulnerable, destabilizing family structure, and practicing unsafe spiritual medicine such as exorcisms, which reportedly led to some deaths.”

Communication minister, Issa Tchiroma Bakary used the banning order to blame the unauthorised churches for encouraging worshippers to seek spiritual medicine in lieu of professional medical assistance.

But the banned churches continue to operate and some claiming to cure diseases like AIDS where medical science is yet to find a solution.

The Cameroon 2013 International Religious Freedom Report notes that the New Deal government has approved just ‘’one religious group in the last 15 years and none since 2010” to make a total of 47 operating legally in the country where numerous are preaching, some just demonic sects using the aegis of religion.

For a church organisation worth the salt to register, it has to have a congregation with a “vocation of divine worship in accordance with a religious doctrine.”

It has to submit an application for authorisation first to the ministry of territorial administration and decentralisation which studies it and send to the presidency for final approval by decree or rejection.

The ministries of education, be it basic, secondary or higher, have not succeeded in closing down illegal schools, despite alarm bells by parents, the media and members of the civil society.

In a society where the majority are people who are gripped by raw state of mental poverty and ignorance, such illegalities are expected to be corrected by administrators who represent the government at local levels.

But when some of them are blatantly violating the law boasting of being untouchables, irritating unanswered questions are imposed. Are some Cameroonians above the law or the security forces cannot enforce the laws. Why promulgate laws that cannot be enforced?

The case in Fako division where the South West governor and Fako SDO are involved in the land-grabbing scandal makes the answer to the questions more argument.

The rule of law is the foundation of any government based on good laws. There is no doubt that there are fine laws intended to keep peace and order in a country advertised as an “island of peace and tranquility in the troubled Central African sub-region”.

But that peace cannot be sustained for long if laws are not respected to the letter. Laws to protect the environment, illicit land-grabbing, health care, registration of religious groups and educational establishment which form the basics of human existence cannot continue to be abused with reckless disregard.

The New Deal regime must step up to the plate and ensure that its laws are fully implemented for the achievement of the public well-being; irrespective of the societal standing of those involved.

“If citizens cannot trust that laws will be enforced,” Dale Carpenter says in Flagrant Abuse, “they cannot be said to live under the rule of law. Instead, they live under the rule of men corrupted by the law”. Such a situation does not guarantee the peace the Biya regime sings as its greatest achievement.