Yang fears CPDM defection to SDF, calls for reunion

As the ruling CPDM failed to secure a transparent election of officials into the section presidency of the party, the restlessness of dissatisfied militants foretells great threats of defection to the Social Democratic Front (SDF).

At this crucial moment in the life of the CPDM party, Prime Minister Philemon Yang has called for a motion to heal the wounds left by the party’s reorganization exercise in some areas in the Northwest Region that left many militants disillusioned.

In a meeting the Prime Minister convened in his Yaounde office on December 8, 2015, to evaluate the reorganization exercise in the Northwest, Yang expressed worry that the SDF could exploit the discontent of many CPDM militants and convince them to abandon the party for the opposition.

Yang was out of the country attending the Commonwealth Summit in Malta when many of the elections for new bureaus of CPDM Sections held in the Northwest.

Degrees of hitches and intrigues marred the elections as some Northwest CPDM elite attempted to impose their candidates, which attempts met with stiff resistance and sparked disaffection among militants.

According to a report rendered by the 1st Assistant Rapporteur in the Northwest Regional Commission for the Reorganisation, Patrick Akwa, the most disturbing case occurred in Bafut(Mezam 1V CPDM Section) where the list headed by Emmanuel Shu Ndiforgwa, Fon Abumbi’s candidate for the post of Mezam 1V CPDM Section President, was rejected on the eve of the election.

Akwa is Secretary General in the Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection and was representing the Chief Rapporteur Bernard Nwana, Secretary General at the Chamber of Agriculture, who arrived late for the meeting.

The rejection of Shu Ndiforgwa’s list sparked tension in Bafut leading angry youths to block access to polling stations for most of Election Day, November 29.

In the aftermath of the elections, Yang urged Northwest CPDM elite who were members of the Reorganisation Commission to try to ensure that all the unresolved complaints registered are resolved rapidly, so that the petitioners withdraw their petitions and no petition from the Northwest reaches the Central Committee of the party.

The elites were exhorted to dispatch clean reports to the Central Committee to speak well of the Northwest CPDM.

Yang urged that all should be done to avoid a petition that would cause the Northwest CPDM embarrassment.

He emphasized that all Northwest CPDM elite should quickly embark on healing the wounds left by the CPDM reorganisation exercise.

The Prime Minister, whom the CPDM National Chairman Paul Biya appointed the pioneer Coordinator of the CPDM in the Northwest barely two days after he convened the Yaounde meeting, cautioned that if the healing operation is not done effectively, the SDF may try to exploit the disappointment of CPDM militants and win them over.

The rapporteurs, however, said the bitterness arose because the complaints were dispatched straight to the General Secretariat of the CPDM Central Committee without passing via the Divisional Commissions and the Regional Commission.

Some of the prominent Yaounde-based Northwest CPDM elites whom The Post learnt, attended the meeting included Paul Atanga Nji, Minister of Special Duties at the Presidency, and Fuh Calistus Gentry, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Technological Development, who presented the financial report of the Northwest Elite Forum in Yaounde.