“Don’t quit because quitters are never winners.” This saying is true and false in ambivalent terms, depending on one’s ideological provenance. It is a sort of elastic mores that also makes sense even when it is turned the other way round.
On this premise, quitters are winners because sometimes the patient dog eats no bone and could starve to death. On this measure, quitters are winners.That is why the recent upsurge of calls on President Biya not to quit the stage is sardonic and remains an affront of the most primitive type to the democratic virtue of power change.
After South Region elite intoned the swan song, it is now common political import to call on Biya to be a candidate for the 2018 Presidential election. Of late, the political elite from the various areas have been scrambling to outdo each other in the “patriotic” call.
While some of the calls may be genuine, many remain a mere manifestation of sheer greed by self-seeking schemers who would want to hang on eternally to their juicy positions. Given that the octogenarian has been at the helm of the state for 34 years, those who are attempting to stampede the President to grab another mandate may just be wicked mercenaries. The avarice-inspired bid is akin to riding a willing horse to death.
For one thing, President Biya told radio Monte Carlo in France that he would want to be remembered as the one who brought democracy to Cameroon. In a true democratic spirit, this would also mean quitting the stage before he starts mistaking any group of violent demonstrators for a motion of support caravan.
So, those who are pretending to love the president more than his wife may just be in a vicious conspiracy to rob the man of a good place in history.
Otherwise, would it not be better for Mr President, who wants to leave a legacy as the one who brought democracy to Cameroon, to quit the stage in a democratic manner when there is still standing ovation in order to avoid the macabre of an anti-climax?
Some Machiavellian soap boxers who think and reason only with their stomachs hold that the president must bow to the cosmetic calls from the people. But the president can also listen to his body language and quit in order to make his name for posterity.
The legendary Nelson Mandela defied a violent wave of calls for him to take a second mandate at the helm of the South African state. Even as he is dead, he is still being applauded for liberating himself from the grip of power at the peak of his popularity.
Since hypocrisy has become a virtuous commodity in our national policy, it is likely that many of those who are calling on the president to hang on to power, are the very ones who will get into rhapsodies and roll out the drums to celebrate if he quits Etoudi. Some of them will not hesitate to stab him in his sleep like Macbeth of Shakespeare’s imagination did to King Duncan the Meek.
Let us mount the horse of memory to recall that many of those who are calling on the president not to quit are the very ones who wept and wailed in all pretence in 1982, begging President AhmadouAhidjo not to resign.
But when he ignored their crocodile tears and eventually resigned, they welcomed the change with all excitement and hailed the new president as the Messiah. Mind you, the same scenario is likely to be replayed if President Biya leaves power today.
The rumble and tumble of our politics cuts a grotesque posture of a jungle wherein the penchant for standing reason on its head is the crux of the normative pattern. Such adversity to decency makes Cameroon to look like a theatre of the absurd and anextensive psychiatric asylum in the eyes of those who are still normal and have respect for moral injunctions.
That is why those who contributed in making one a corpse, are likely to be seen weeping the loudest at the funeral. It is on the premise of this logic, that the president must consume “the people’s call” with caution because it may just be a poisoned gift. Political scientists hold that motions of support make up part of the greatest king killers in Third World countries.
They create a yawning gap that keeps the king thousands of miles away from reality. They are deceitful in character because they harbour a tricky mutuality between fact and fiction.
Like a patriotic son of this great country, Mr.President, I must tell you in very unequivocal terms that quitters are most often winners and that power change is a democratic virtue that Cameroon needs to keep for posterity. Mr. President, quitters are winners. After all, there is still good life after power.
