Gazing the skies in bewilderment

Sometimes, out of the subconscious, I imagine myself gazing the skies, even when there are no visible stars to brighten the night or the twitter of little birds to animate the silent surroundings, that sometimes make me feel as though I have been abandoned in a world of my own, probably in one of those remote islands on the delta of the Mungo river, or someone marooned in some distant shores.

And all of a sudden, as if woken up from a trance, I realise rather lazily, I am actually the person that I am, the only difference being that, my mind yesterday has been transformed by the passing of time from what used to be a society that accommodated the values of probity, to one which has reached the height of dishonesty, even intellectual dishonesty.

For those of us who have attained the prescribed life span of three scores and ten, it is horrifying.

I was fortunate to have lived that period of sane politics where it was the nation first before I. I happened to be part of a system where even as a young journalist then, there was no way ethics could be thrown to the dogs.

And for law makers, it was like working in a garden of Angels, where everything smiled with you because you were upright.

Today, I must have decided to change my style of presenting facts as I have been doing with issues from my diary. The picture I have been trying to paint all along is that I can still remember very well how thrilling parliamentary debates were in the then West Cameroon House of Assembly.

It was a body of twenty six members only, which perhaps, does not even measure up to one committee of the current National Assembly, yet it touched on every aspect of the lives of the people it represented.

Their allowances were so moderate but appreciated so much that you could see patriotism burning in their faces.

Some of them who came all the way from Mamfe, Wum, Nkambe, in-fact from what is now known as the North West Region, you would pity them for the risk they took in such long journeys on bad road. You could see concern in their attitude towards their responsibility.

The traditional rules that govern parliamentary procedures were respected especially the one that gives members ample time and opportunity to study the Bills presented to them.

It did not need that cumbersome process of sending the Bills to any administrative bench for scrutiny before sending them to parliament.

It was a simple procedure in which the various ministers, in concert with the legal department, drafted the Bills, at the end of which they must be deposited on the desk of the clerk of the House at least 15 days before the House meets.

They are then presented to the House for the first, second and third reading at the plenary session where members raise their points.

The difference here was that members put their arguments based on issues that concerned their individual constituencies and not on party line, as is the case in Cameroon today, where it becomes sacrilegious for a member, to deviate from the party line, no matter how anti-people the argument could be.

So, if today government has the courage to take law makers unaware on Bills, especially as the case now faced by parliamentarians in their current session where the Finance Bill reached the Assembly more than two weeks after parliament opened, it gives me restless nights that send me gazing the skies and seeing only dark images of a distorted parliamentary democracy.