The announcement of the incumbent President Paul Biya’s candidacy for the October 12 presidential election last July 13, leaves Cameroon in the unenviable blight of a country that will gnash under the spell of a President-for-life jinx. If Biya wins another 7-year term in October, he would have clocked five long decades in power by the time his mandate ends in 2032.
The declaration of the candidacy for a President who has disappeared from the public eye for a very long time, left a majority of Cameroonians in a state of shock and disappointment. For, many of them had called on the nonagenarian President who has been in power for 43 years to take a well-deserved rest. From every indication, Biya preferred to listen to the self-seeking sycophants who claim that he is the most popular and the re-electable candidate. Their argument does seem to hold water because they are beating the drums for a candidate Cameroonians hardly see in the first place. Even as a campaign strategy, President Biya would have used a local medium to announce his candidacy. The fact that he used social media, buttresses the scorn that he has for the local media.
In a tacit reaction to criticisms that he has failed to make Cameroon a home and haven for Cameroonians in 43 years, Biya says the best is yet to come. Does this mean that he will use his next 7-year mandate to do what he has been unable to do in 43 years? Does this mean that he will no longer rule (or ruin) Cameroon by the “high instructions” proxy?
These questions, which many Cameroonians are asking, are crucial to turn Cameroon away from the direction of the failed state status that it is threatening to acquire. For, a failed state is one that is unable to perform its duties at several levels when the reign of violence, expediency and shifty values cascade into a general predicament. A failed state ushers in a miasma in which the standard of living massively deteriorates. One of its main characteristics is the decay of the infrastructure of ordinary life. For many years now, Cameroonians have been gnashing under the bountiful harvest of degrading road infrastructure, lack of water and electricity, as well as the decline of hygiene all over the country, even in Yaounde and Douala.
Apart from corruption and bad governance that seem to have been the hallmarks of the New Deal Regime for four long decades, what else can explain this cruel paradox that a country that is endowed with enormous natural and human resources is unable to provide basic social amenities to its people? The country is in this agonising state because the greed of those who call the shots overwhelms their responsibility to work for the common good. One does not need to be an expert in good governance to know that the rulers cannot be the trusted friends of the people without checks and balances and general public accountability. Truth be told! The Biya regime has been a whirlwind of a presidency that is accountable only to itself. Cameroon’s leadership charade has been a system of “godfatherism” wherein those who are favoured by the emperor and his aides are seen to have a free rein to loot the treasury with reckless abandon. There has been the cloning of intellectuals into political toys in such a way that they have lost their moral voice and can only condone the profane conduct of those who have been beating the drums of a self-succession agenda.
Cameroonians need change because they are going through a lot of hardship. Statistics from the National Institute of Statistics indicate that over 10 million Cameroonians are under the yoke of extreme poverty. The economic deprivation and corruption that ail the country have produced and exacerbated inequalities such that there is a distant gulf between the extremely rich and the miserably poor. While the purchasing power of the poor keeps plummeting, a nightmarish inflation has been unleashed to further ditch them. Given the reign of oppression, the abuse of human rights, lack of freedom to assemble, and press freedom among democracy-related issues, Cameroon is now being viewed wrongly or rightly as a cesspit of medieval barbarism.
When the President says the best is yet to come, observers wonder if he intends to quickly get rid of these issues and turn things around. Why did he not do this before now, despite the numerous complaints from Cameroonians? Has he been arrested by the Holy Spirit? Maybe! These are some of the questions that would have been posed to Mr. Biya if he were not the candidate who campaigns largely by proxy. If nothing changes, Mr. Biya, who will be 99 years in 2032, will be dispatched to the wrong side of history as someone who took over a country in peace and left it in pieces. He would equally carry the stigma of a leader who inherited a country standing up and running and left it lying helplessly flat on its stomach. He will be one who took a prosperous country and left it when it was poor and miserably indebted. Given the tense moments, it is incumbent for the authorities to ensure that the upcoming election is free, fair, inclusive and transparent. They should ensure that no travesty is passed off for elections this time around.