Anniversary celebration or provocation

Only a foolish man would go to sleep when his neighbour’s house is being ravaged by fire - worse still -only a madman would be celebrating, whatsoever, when his neighbours house is on fire.

As we speak, with all what is happening in Burkina Faso that is keeping other countries on tenterhooks, President Biya’s regime and apologists are celebrating the day he came to power some 32 years ago.

While the Cameroonian people are concerned about the fact that Burkina Faso people sent their President packing when he tried to tinker with the Constitution, in a bid to stay in power after 27 years of rule; the regime in the Cameroons is celebrating 32 years in power - five years after it fiddled with the Constitution to continue to stay in power.

The nexus between the situations in Burkina and the Cameroons is in the figure ‘27’. After 27 years of rule, plus an attempt to tamper with the Constitution, the Burkina people have chased Compaore away. When the Biya regime corrupted the Constitution, it had been in power for 27 years; but the Cameroonian people did not succeed to stop him, not to talk of chasing him away. Today, five years after, the regime is rather making merry.

And as we speak, the likes of Professors Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, Fame Ndongo and other ‘singers for supper’ are girding their loins and folding their sleeves to get to work; collect the motions of support that would be sent to Biya on this his 32nd anniversary in power, ready for the national printing press to run other editions of “The People’s Call.”

That is to prepare for 2018, when another sham election is expected, except something happens to Cameroonians overnight, before then, and transforms them into the kind of metal of which the people of Tunisia, Egypt, and now Burkina are made – or some kind of mental adjustment tsunami hits the Cameroonian collective and sweeps them into the streets also.

If the international community has condemned what has happened in Burkina, that should not be misinterpreted to mean they want Compaore back; it means that the army should hand-over to civilian rule. No person of goodwill, in their honest and right frame of mind, would condemn the Burkinabe for the chasing away of Compaore. Why would one person rule a country, a republic, for 27 years? Does it mean that there are no other people imbued with presidential brawn in Burkina Faso?

Only French President, Francois Hollande, during his visit to Canada, disclosed that France was instrumental in negotiating Compaore’s refuge in Ivory Coast. Hollande, by this statement, inadvertently, revealed France’s interest in Compaore. And if we may ask; for what quid pro quo? For Compaore’s submission to France or for funding Hollande’s run for the presidency, as most dictatorial regimes in former French colonies usually do with French presidential candidates?

Well, democracy is the choice and voice of the people and the people of Burkina Faso have spoken.

Compaore’s sympathisers should not forget that he came to power through a coup. He has remained and ruled like a military man, no matter how much he has tried to transform himself into a civilian through sham elections.

However, the Burkina military should hand-over to civilian rule, within the deadline given them. The fact that the military did not overthrow Compaore, in spite of all his crimes against the people, shows that they were in consonance with him. It is the people that took to the streets and virtually overthrew Compaore. The military should, theretofore, hand-over the power back to the people.

The President of Burkinabe Parliament, who resigned because he did not like the idea of Compaore manipulating the Constitution, was, thus, on the side of the people.

The fact that he, as well as Government Ministers, could resign, and their intellectuals did not take sides with the powers-that-be, but engaged debates which informed the Burkinabe, shows that, though under a dictatorship, Burkina Faso has more free and democratic intellectual minds.

While intellectuals in Burkina engaged debates that informed the people’s action for a bloodless overthrow of Compaore, Cameroons’ intellectuals only act when it concerns their personal interest as against collective interest. For instance, look at the way university lecturers have currently mobilised themselves in their demand for the payment of their research allowances.

Other intellectuals like the ones mentioned earlier are rather busy in the devil’s workshop as system sustenance engineers, SSEs, organising anniversary celebrations, compiling motions of support for “The People’s Call.”

Again, lest it be said that it was not said, the way the authorities here are going, is a glaring indication that they are not committed to their new-found mantra of ‘Vision 2035’. Countries that veritably want to emerge, would not expend sorely-needed funds for development on trivial like celebrations of anniversaries of coming to power, with the attendant lazy syndrome of long weekends after such celebrations.

Teachers, principals, nurses, medical doctors and other civil servants whose work touch the Cameroonian masses, especially those who got the job by donning the CPDM ‘ashuabi’ or T-shirt and after shouting “oye ye ye oye!” have put themselves off duty from this Thursday, November 6 and might only show up for work on Monday, November 10. The time and money direly needed for development and emergence, thus squandered. And no one will be sanctioned even for a minute for abandoning work for two whole working days, but the GCE Board would sanction examiners for three years for dinning with another political party leader after working hours.

This is telling the people, without mincing words; “Go to hell!!!”

Are We Together?