CPDM and the triumph of machiavellian politics

Since the Cameroon National Union, CNU, metamorphosed to the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM on March 24, 1985, the party has remained a master of the power game.

The party, paradoxically, was lunched in Bamenda which gave birth to the most radical opposition party, five years later.

When multiparty politics was reborn in 1990, the CPDM almost kissed the dust. The most challenging moment for the party was in 1992 when it was unable to have a majority in Parliament. The UPC, NUDP and MDR, had won close to a hundred seats in that year’s Parliamentary election. The situation kept the CPDM in the minority until the MDR, led by Dakole Daissala, rescued the party by forming an alliance with it his six seats.

Another embarrassment for the ruling party was in the 1992 Presidential election, widely believed to have been wonby the candidate of the opposition coalition, Ni John Fru Ndi. Yet, the Supreme Court declared the CPDM candidate, President Biya, winner.

From then, the CPDM consolidated its strategies to win every election. Some observers put it very bluntly, that the party later devised more sophisticated rigging strategies to keep the opposition at safe distance away from power.

This explains why the opposition has continued to have dwindling fortunes in national elections over the years.

The logic of Machiavellian politics reigned within the ruling party. Party barons sounded the trumpet all over the country that the main objective of the party was to win all elections. Thus, the end justifiedwhatever fowl means the party used to win elections. It even justified the meanness of election rigging in Cameroon.

The CPDM demonstrated that rigging culture during the reorganisation of its basic organs that ended recently. By that token, the ruling party has re-conquered its lost territory,thereby daring the opposition in its backyard.

From every indication, the CPDM regime has made the electoral terrain a veritable jungle. Here, the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest is in vogue,despite calls for free, fair and balance elections.

The party has often taken undue advantage over the opposition. Since the party barons are State officials, they have oftenconducted public affairs in such a way that it is only a blurred twilight that separates the outfit from the State.

Critics hold that, untilrecently when the anti-corruption drive, the Operation Sparrow Hawk, began hunting down embezzlers of public funds, some officials behaved as if the CPDM and the State have the same wallet. Yet, it remains an open secret that the CPDM uses State paraphernalia and personnel during electoral campaigns.

Under the CPDM, the virtue of the spirit of the separation of powers as advocated by the French Philosopher, Montesquieu, is absent. The judiciary, the egislative and the executive are just the three persons in one CPDM “god”.

Thus, the three powers constitute only an unholy trinity that is too impotent to ensure the necessary checks and balances in Government.

The CPDM propaganda officer, Prof. Jacques Fame Ndongo, holds that the party’s victories in elections are a reflection that the Cameroon people finally understand that the opposition has nothing to offer.

To him, it is the main reason why the masses voted overwhelmingly for the CPDM in the Council, Parliamentary and Presidential elections in recent years.

But, an opposition MP, Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam, says that the obese majority that the CPDM has in Councils, National Assembly and the Senate is the fruit of sophisticated rigging during elections.

The inner workings of the party bespeak some positive mutations, even though conservative forces have remained stronger. Those who have called for radicalreforms over the years within the party have been crushed in the blow-out between lovers of the status-quo.

Despite his sit-tight prosperity, the CPDM party Chair, PaulBiya, is one of those who carried the insignia of change in the party.

When a group CPDM self-seeking individuals took to the streets in 1990 denouncing multi-party politics as “imported political models”,Biya simply told them to be prepared for competition.

Biya is still the one that warned the CPDM barons to stop lording it over elected local officials in their constituencies.

To him, the CPDM derives its powers from the basic organs. It is Biya who said corrupt CPDM officials would no longer be allowed to embezzle State funds and use the party as a shield to escape the wrath of the law.

Even if he was just playing to the gallery, it is on record that Biya tolerated party baron, Rene ZeNguele, to challenge him during the last congress of the party in Yaounde.

The obese presence of the CPDM in all State institutions has reduced the opposition to a whimpering dwarf. Cameroon’s opposition, that is expected to bray at government’s excesses, cuts the pathetic picture of a small dog barking in front ofan omnipresent elephant. The oppositionhas no teeth to bite, also because it is dispersed ranks

That’s why journalist, Magnus Braga of Emergence Newspaper, puts it very bluntly that; “not even God can win the CPDM in any elections in such a situation.”(forgive the journalist for that blasphemous statement). Yet, his hyperbole was intended to show how desperate the opposition is in front of the giant CPDM.

CPDM Oye!