Why Fru Ndi is not stepping down soon as SDF Chairman

Two weeks ago we brought you part one of our exclusive interview with Cameroon’s Economist and educationist John Fodje.

In this second part of the interview, we focus on Cameroon politics. Considering his position as Secretary of SDF’s Reconciliation Committee, we asked him some of the common questions most Cameroonian proponents of the opposition have been asking – that is, why Cameroon opposition leaders sit-tight and won’t relinquish leadership to the next generation.

We narrowed it down to why SDF’s Chairman, John Fru Ndi isn’t willing to relinquish power.

While Fodje thinks changing power is the right thing to do at the helm of every party, he was rather unrelenting that change at the helm of the state is what is most necessary, not change at the party level. As per the SDF, he argued that Fru Ndi is still at the helm only because, so far, there hasn’t been any one militants of the party have trusted enough to hand power to. The interview was conducted by Chris Anu, EXCERPTS:

Twenty-five years after, the SDF hasn’t been able to win an election in Cameroon – let me use the word important election because it has actually won some council elections. But as far as Parliamentary and Presidential elections, they have not been able to win any. I like you to address specifically the 1992 parliamentary elections which the SDF boycotted. Most people are of the opinion that had the SDF gone in for the elections they would have won by a landslide margin. Do you see any regrets within the party for boycotting that election?

JF: Let me just correct something; you said they have not been able to win Parliamentary and Presidential elections. No, they have been winning parliamentary elections.

They have not legally won any presidential elections. You know that until you have been declared winner you cannot say that you won. A mere claim of winning will not be accepted internationally. But they have been wining parliamentary elections. The first time they went in for Parliamentary elections they won seats.

In 1997, they went in and won 44 parliamentary seats – they won most of the seats in the Northwest, Southwest, Littoral and West regions. The next time they went in again, they won 22 seats and now they have 18 seats.

Which means they’ve been wining parliamentary elections, they have been winning council elections. The number of councils is dwindling and we know why.

But let me talk about that 1992 elections. In 1992, there were so many dynamics at play and unless you were inside and knew what was taking place you won’t be able to appreciate it. There was no way the SDF was going to win by landslide if they went in because I knew what was happening.

That was the first election after the declaration of multipartyism and the SDF was the target. If you are talking about winning in terms of people voting the party, yes, I can tell you that they would have won nearly all the seats. But that was not the case, it is not the case with Cameroonian elections. It is not what people vote that comes out as the result.

But the argument many people have presented is that then, being the first multiparty election in the country, Biya wasn’t as smart in rigging elections as the expert he became after that.

JF: No, let me tell you – what happened in the Presidential elections would have happened during the parliamentary. But this is the point – had the SDF gone in, the CPDM was going to rig it in a way that the SDF was not even going to have up to twenty seats because the SDF was the party they were fighting.

Even the French, using former minister Le Pen, came to Cameroon and held so many meetings in which they said the SDF should go in and it will be proven to be of no consequence. There were rigging machineries put in place just to deny the SDF the victory. But the SDF refused to go in.

The regime realized that there was no other party that could win, they didn’t think the UNDP was capable of winning, but they were surprised that the UNDP from the onset of the declaration of the results was winning so many seats.

Gov’t’s calculation was; Bouba Bello has just come back from Nigeria and seized the party from Samuel Eboa and people are so disgruntled they will not even vote for him. With this mind set, they didn’t put in their rigging machinery against the UNDP, – to proof that the SDF made a mistake by not coming in.

That’s what the gov’t wanted to proof. But Biya was surprised to find out that as the results were being declared, before the second day, the UNDP had come out already with 68 seats.

Getting nervous, they stopped declaring the results and applied their rigging, declared the Northwest for the CPDM even though it was actually won by the UNDP because voters in the Northwest voted for the UNDP since the SDF wasn’t participating.

They declared the rest of the national results for the CPDM because they realized that had they continued declaring the true results, the CPDM wasn’t going to win.

So in my heart of hearts, I know that had the SDF gone in for that election, with the rigging that was there, the CPDM would have won all the seats. They had not put in place rigging machinery, but they could have quickly put something in place to rig and declare the results in their favor as they did when they found out that the UNDP was about winning.

And that even happened during the presidential elections. People everywhere know that in the Presidential elections, the candidate who won was Fru Ndi, but they gave it to the CPDM.

So when people begin to say if they went in they could have won, I say no, because the regime could have still rigged the results. The plan wasn’t just to rig but seizure of the results. Even nowadays, the CPDM does not win those results they say the win.

Of course, honest Cameroonians know that the CPDM hasn’t won a single election in Cameroon. Most people agree that in that 1992 elections the chances were really high for an SDF victory in the parliamentary elections… But let's talk about one other thing that I have heard again and again from both Cameroonians at home and in the Diaspora. They want change – young blood at the helm of all these political parties. You look at the UNDP from inception, it’s been Bello forever, CDU is Ndam Njoya forever, SDF is Fru Ndi forever, and CPDM is Paul Biya forever. Cameroonians want a change, that is, young blood at the helm of these parties. It is obvious that the CPDM doesn’t want change. But why can’t the Cameroon opposition hand power to a new generation? They can’t be talking about change and yet continue to perpetuate themselves in power.

JF: Well, you know there is a difference between power at the helm of the state and power at the helm of a party. I think that distinction ought to be made very clear to everyone before we make a statement about that.

In the UK, when a gov’t is defeated, the leader of the party steps down and hands over to another person. That happens in the U.S too. I don’t know whether leaders of the Democratic Party still become head of state or whatever. But you know the political organisations in these countries are a lot different from political organisations in Africa.

In Africa, it’s usually the founder of the party or somebody who has inherited him from the ancient regime. What is happening in Cameroon is virtually the same thing happening all over Africa.

It’s a little bit different in Nigeria though. In Nigeria you have political groups that choose party heads and the party leader in the opposition is never the Presidential candidate.

JF: But I believe that is a development that will come to Cameroon eventually. For now, I want to make a distinction between leadership in the party and leadership at the helm of the state. I don’t think the problem with the CPDM is that it has one permanent leader.

The helm of state belongs to everybody – all the parties, all the citizens. Those who belong to a party and those who do not. Alternance at the helm is therefore desired by everybody, it doesn’t matter what party you belong to. The head of state is the head of all the citizens of the country.

While I agree that it will be more matured if leaders in opposition parties or ruling party also change at the helm of their parties, that will be ideal.

But there is a distinction between change in the leadership of the country, because take for instance, Ndam Njoya remains in his party, Bouba Bello remains in his party, Fru Ndi remains at his party, Paul Biya in his party, and during a presidential election, Paul Biya is voted out in his party, he goes and remains with his party, Ndam Njoya’s party comes up, Ndam Njoya becomes the head of state and if he doesn’t perform after five years or ten or fourteen years, assuming we’re talking about a two-term election, then you go out and another party comes in.

So the point is if your party doesn’t perform very well and another party comes in, it is at the helm of state that alternance is taking place.

Alternance at the level of the party is the problem of each party. If the constitution of the party says that anybody can remain there and is voted out when they want and they keep voting him in, that is their problem. That is the problem of the party. I don’t know whether you see the distinction I’m trying to make.

Yes, I get the point. But don’t you think…

I am not against alternance within the party. But if the party chooses to keep voting the same leadership, well, that’s the party’s constitution.

The problem with that is, when you have a party leader who says I will still be standing for chairmanship, he’s simply saying ‘listen, no one else challenges me,’ and he does everything foul or fair to win. Lets use Fru Ndi, the main opposition leader in the country. What’s wrong with him saying ‘I have been on top of this thing for so long, I think I should step down, stay in the background and play the rule of a mentor, a statesman and have the party choose someone else to be chairman?’

JF: Yeah, that’s a good thing. But if the constitution doesn’t give room for that kind of thing he shouldn’t voluntarily do it so that somebody else can come in. But I know it will certainly happen.

People like you who are very close to him, I mean, he has advisers. Why can’t they just say to him you have been at the helm of this thing for too long, it’s time to pass it over to the next generation?

JF: Let me tell you an experience that I had with him. I will not call names because I am the Secretary of the Reconciliation committee. Dr. Mal Forbi came to Cameroon once and wanted to have a meeting with the Chairman and one other militant who had issues with him. The chairman invited me to the meeting with some other people.

And one of the persons asked why is it that you and the Chairman cannot reconcile and then work together in the interest of the party? The Chairman said he had no problem with the guy and then the guy said if Fru Ndi says he is a democrat, he should step down and hand over the party to him. He said Fru Ndi cannot be criticizing Biya and yet continue to hang in for too long at the helm of the party.

Then Fru Ndi said, you said if I am a democrat I should step down and hand it to you? Is that how democracy works? Democracy doesn’t work that way, democracy works through elections. I will put in my candidature and you put in yours and if you are voted, I will bow and I will submit. If I am voted both of us work together. It isn’t right for you to say I should handover to you as if you are my son.

And the guy said – have you seen? He is criticizing Biya, Biya has been there forever and he wants to be here forever too. He doesn’t want to step down from the helm of the party.

What I’m saying is that it’s the constitution to determine leadership at party level. I was in New York and met a group of Cameroonians who asked me this same question you have asked. I asked them, who is that guy that you want us to put at the helm of the SDF? Then they said if I, Fodje, accepted to become the leader they will support me.

I said for now, I’m not ready to be chairman of the party and I don’t see the guy you are talking of who is ready now. They said what of Jua? That Jua wanted to lead but Fru Ndi pushed him out. And I told them that if they were in Cameroon and happen to know what went on they will not say what they are saying.

You cannot stay so far away and point at somebody and say that is the right person. I don’t want to go deep into this, but as I have said, it is good that new blood come into the leadership of those political parties, but that time will come.

But many people will say that as far as Fru Ndi remains the chairman of the party, that there isn’t any way that person you are looking for will emerge. Don’t you think the day he steps down the SDF will just so easily get another leader?

JF: They will certainly get it, and that is what I was saying. The time will come when such a thing will happen. For now, the party still thinks that he should be. The SDF is the only party that holds 6-9 Centre committee meetings a year. And if you have ever attended any of those meetings then you will know that members of the party are not afraid of Fru Ndi. And one of the things you should know is that it doesn’t matter how good you are, you will have people pointing to certain weaknesses. If Fru Ndi resigns, who takes over from him?

Well, people think that if Fru Ndi isn’t resigning, he’s not giving the go ahead for anybody to aspire for the position.

JF: No, I DON’T think that is the case. I don’t think it is the reason why people are not aspiring for the position. People have been aspiring – those who do, come up but those who are voting find them wanting. Voters say no, comparing him to Fru Ndi, we prefer to keep Fru Ndi.

There are always people who campaign vigorously against him each time there is an election and they speak fearlessly and nothing happens to them. He is not a juju, he doesn’t have a prison where he can put anybody.

If you read social networks, you realize that people are very itchy that Fru Ndi continues to sit-tight at the helm of the SDF especially after these 25 years.

JF: I have been reading that. But the problem is that people write in social networks without any good information as to what goes on. Fru Ndi is a grass-root politician who has won the hearts and minds of the majority of ordinary Cameroonians – the people who actually feel the pains of bad governance in Cameroon; the people who actually vote but whose vote never counts because they are simply ignored by the powers that be.

He has done so, simply by going to the people, listening to their day to day problems, seeing what they are experiencing with his own eyes; etc. He is the ONLY political leader that has toured the whole of Cameroon from North to South and from East to West very many times. He has gone to the cities and villages, he has talked to the people and the people actually know Fru Ndi personally because he has come to them over and over to talk politics.

One of the things you must note is that a vast majority of these Cameroonians do not read the social media, very many do not even read newspapers or watch the television and so whatever these media are saying about Fru Ndi have no impact on them.

For these reasons, the people will vote Fru Ndi over and over again irrespective of the noises that are being made against him. Remove Fru Ndi from the political scene of the SDF at this time and you have removed the motivation for the people to support the SDF.

With time, if some dynamic, younger person makes his mark on the minds of Ordinary Cameroonians as Fru Ndi has done so far, he could well replace Fru Ndi. The question is, “how?” The answer is “go round as Fru Ndi has been doing, maybe together with Fru Ndi. Show resilience and toughness the way Fru Ndi has been doing.

Exercise endurance as he has done and be as bold and fearless as he has been, even in the face of all types of intimidation; exhibit foresight! These are the rare stuff of which Fru Ndi is made.

For now we are still searching for someone who will possess a good number of these qualities. Once the SDF finds one, it will be the time to let him or her take the mantle from Chairman Fru Ndi.

Point well taken. However, those who see Fru Ndi as a sit-tight leader will say that the person with the qualities you have described will never emerge in the SDF so long as Mr. Ndi remains at the helm. They will say he should step down and let the party give someone else the chance and let the chairman play the role of a mentor. And besides, after 25 years a visionary leader would have groomed a possible successor. What are your thoughts here?

JF: We can argue this point back and forth. Those who say so, may be erroneously thinking that when Fru Ndi steps down, their dream young and talented candidate will begin to win elections that Fru Ndi never won.

That would be a lack of the knowledge of the political problems of Cameroon. However, Chris, I do not want to drag this to an endless argument because I think the points I have raised handle the issue.