The dirty game of politics and political fishermen

Throughout these 20 runs of Background of Ruin, I have said many things, but simply put, I have said only one thing; that our leading men have conspired with the nature of things and failed to stand in locus parentis to their people.

In these days of internal conspiracy, it is difficult for us to comprehend the incomprehensible and understand the absurd.

One thing has become quite clear; that our idioms of distress mean nothing to these men who have gone on with their political malingering and forensic distortion, making their words seem meaningful, when, in reality, they are meaningless just like our “if clauses of regret” after allowing dupes to lead us, having been manipulated by mere campaign promises.”

It is true that Biya has received his authority from the greatest metaphysical category, God, but it is also true that he has failed to lead the way even though, since 1982, he has been the nation’s touch bearer.

Our country has been consumed by man’s hatred for man and the spirit of corruption has become Cameroon’s greatest shame that has been denying this nation the opportunity to take its true place among the “concert of nations” as Africa in miniature, having the necessary paraphernalia to hit higher heights.

In a way, we have neglected God’s cosmic companionship and this has led to afurtherance of doom.

Telling the truth is something many take seriously. All what I have seen all these years in Cameroon is treason; and we have slowly been plunged into an axiomatic political treachery.

Our President has lied to us more than once before. Yes. Lying is a serious matter. And calling the President of the country a liar is not something I say with any relish or self-satisfaction. I wish, with all my heart that our President was not a liar.

Biya lies about important things like the economy, his operation “chicken-hawk” against corruption, his expensive trips abroad and employment issues.

In fact, most often, CRTV and Cameroon Tribune are only too glad to lie for him. And all the lies, small and large, add up.

It is all about a culture of victimhood, where the real victims are the poor, decent, hardworking down-and-out people of our country.

Today in Cameroon, no one feels any obligation to anybody else and our new found worldview has been designed to comfort the comfortable and further afflict the afflicted.

It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It’s a great way to have your cake and eat it and not bite the finger that feeds you. Biya is well known for rewarding his supporters and throws money to his cronies, while millions of youths are stranded and left behind.

Within the context of his work on rigour and moralisation, he called himself a moral politician. That’s the biggest lie of all.

The Government has a big role to play—to create opportunity, to protect the environment, to provide for the common good. Someone has rightly said that, “We have to fight. But we can’t fight like they do, we cannot fight with arms. They also fight with lies. We can’t do that. We have to fight our lying politicians with the truth.”

Most Reverend father Francis TekeLysinge, who I admire so much, has said many times that until all Cameroonians accept conversion, it will remain impossible for our country to abandon its false ways; and for Cameroonians to move away from pseudo-patriotism to a climax of authenticity.

Every man is holy and sinful at the same time and it is left for each and every one to undergo a radical change of mind, what metaphysicians may call a conversio ad phantasmata and this, indeed, is a sine qua non factor to walk us out of darkness on time before this country sinks beneath the waves.

Change is necessary like the change that brought Tony Blair’s Labour party to power in 1997, but each time we earmark change, we must be conscious of the fact that returning hate for hate multiplies hate; adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of light will certainly not drive out the darkness that has covered the land.

Only light can dispel darkness in the same way that only love dispels hate. Fighting evil with evil in a tit for tat way is not different from trying to outdo adultery with adultery.

As Historian, Charles Beard puts it; evil always has a self-defeating quality. Him whom the gods will destroy, they must first make drunk and mad with power.

The machines of God grind slowly, but surely. It is true that political evil has been perpetrated for a very long time here, extending from a day to 32 years, or so.

Today, our beloved nation staggers on the brink of corrupt annihilation, dangerous passions of pride, man’s wickedness to man and certainly brothers have betrayed brethren like the sacred pages illustrate.

How can one person alone covet nine billion? For me, this is negative greed, hatred and selfishness that has endangered human life in Cameroon from the Shari to the Mungo meanders. Men today have gone on doing reverence for other men; for false gods who are wrongly being seen as the great nation builders.

Before it is too late, it must become clear that we are wrong to allow other blind men to shepherd us; men who are unable to hear the footsteps of the ant, men who will not dance when we sing and who will not weep when we mourn. Biya’s governance has been all about an equivocation of illusiveness shaped by history in infinity of unexplained ways.

Today, in Cameroon light has been pitted in a perennial conflict against darkness and illusion is mistaken for reality. Cameroonians have failed to understand the importance of the apodictic mathematical axiom, “the part is greater than the whole.” We have failed to understand that well done is better than well said – for what are meaningless words when action speaks.

At this time, almost all of our conforming Parliamentarians, Senators, Mayors, Ministers, friends and enemies have failed to understand the adage that to belittle is to be little, they have gone on blindly accepting the opinions of one man, in fear and trembling and following a path of expediency and social approval as mental and physical slaves.

These men have been absorbed by the crowd so much so that they exist and do not exist because their existence is not decisive; their being Cameroonians is useless and not different from that of rocks on Mount Fako.

What James Russell Lowell once said aptly applies to such Cameroonians: “They are slaves who fear to speak for the fallen and the weak, they are slaves who will not choose scoffing, hatred and abuse for the sake of others, rather than in silence shrink and deny the truth.”

This present moment in the history of Cameroon, as BernardFonlon once said, requires that all Cameroonians be converted. It is necessary that majorities do not inconvenience minorities.

Cameroonians must grow together in comprehensiveness and for our present junta, I fear that a time will come when Biya, like Napoleon, will be guarded by four dogs on his bed as he sleeps and a pig too must be hired to taste all his food before he eats it.

As I see it, many Cameroonians’ blood is boiling with rage because many times Biya has ordered that good men be ‘flogged’- and some have been flogged to death.He has starved many of his people for all these years and amused himself by making fellow Cameroonians go against their brothers.

For now, we cannot face the terrible explosions and stinging pellets of Biya’s army and for a while, we shall continue peeping out from chinks and knot-holes in our cracking buildings, while the better things have fallen into enemyhands.

Today, remorseless and bloodthirsty men are all around us; and the existence of Cameroon might, at any moment, be given to the flames and its life to destruction.

Genuine patriotism will greatly benefit Cameroon because public spirit, as seen especially when the Indomitable Lions are in defence of the whole nation, has a valid purpose—it gives a nation's people single-mindedness and rallies them to support national development.

But Patriotism also has its dangers, in fact, it has been understood as motions of support, sing song politics and the whole idea seems to have stimulated a poisonous nationalism that prevents fruitful policy debates in Parliament, and slowly directing this nation into self-destruction, pain and sorrow.

Politicians have subverted genuine patriotism with slogans, simplifications, falsifications and "calls to patriotism" that disguise faulty strategies and mask tendencies that create crises as policies are now being finalised only after limited discussion. We must know that patriotism is not only a ‘football’ condition. It ought to be a permanent condition in a nation's life.

But surprisingly, those who are expected to perform the highest patriotism replace patriotism with personal greed. They defend the nation with false allegiances and co-opt the symbols of patriotism for personal benefit.

Malevolent actions are repeated again and again and, ironically, history shows that the public continues to be guided by the same old symbols and continues to be trapped by the same false allegiances in what seems to be now an eternal recurrence. As many political thinkers have taught, obedience to a Government certainly is not a form of patriotism.

Governments are the instruments to achieve certain ends. And if the Government goes against those ends; if the Government is not defending our liberties, but is diminishing our liberties, well, then, the Government is not following the principles of caring about life and is rebelling against its own people, who are justified to civilly disobey it.

For me, there are certain self-evident truths that many Cameroonians have forgotten or ignored; that God created all people equally and has no favourites, that we are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The words of our ancestors, KuvaLikenye, Chief Asonganyi, Nyoube, Ouandie, Takala, Wambo and others still ring loud and true today.

“Take action, if necessary, to maintain our values. Do not let anybody make you feel afraid or inferior. If you allow this to happen, you let them imprison you and take your freedom from you.”

Patriotism is having a desire for peace on earth, but realising that there are those on this earth who would do harm to us and we must defend ourselves from them.