Politics
They lived like they'd never die. Yet some died like they never lived. Some have faded away into obscurity, living in foreign lands where they wield ABSOLUTELY no power. Change indeed is the only constant. A constant that takes different forms. My reflection below.
Reflection part 2:
There is a pattern.
A political pattern.
A pattern that followers of political events, especially events in third world “dictocracies” whose electoral systems suffer from ACUTE ELECTILE DYSFUNCTION can use to precisely and concisely predict outcomes of political movements.
Give it any name. On my part, I’d prefer to call it “Dictators’ Gun Powder Cake Theory”.
We begin in the Caribbean. On June 5th 1980, in what the Guinness Book of Records listed as one of the three most expensive weddings, Jean Claude Duvalier AKA Baby Doc got married to Michele Bennett. This was paving a new hopeless trajectory for the Haitian people. Under his rule, remotely controlled by his wife, Baby Doc of Haiti, taking after his father - Papa Doc – who was himself a ruthless dictator, perpetrated medieval-styled savagery. He and his family literally pocketed the national income of the country, asphyxiated or rather sentenced economic growth to death and institutionalized voodooism while the average Haitian could barely afford a pair of shoes, not to mention three square meals a day.
All these were ingredients that constituted a perfect recipe of Baby Doc’s Gun Power Cake which awaited an ignition. The ignition!! A shopping spree by the dictator’s wife in France during which she spent a whopping $1.5 Million on clothes while the country suffered food and fuel shortages amidst corruption and many other ills. Many of such had taken place before but this was the tipping point that put an end to his rule. He fled to France aboard a U.S. air force jet on the 7th of February 1986, leaving behind less than $500,000 in the state treasury.
Next on my list is Idi Amin Dada. The buffoonery perpetrated by this Ugandan blood thirsty dictator was larger than his personality but extraordinarily insignificant when it comes to his brutality. A brute in the making, a sadist compared to none other on the African continent in recent times. His official title.. “His excellency, President for life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beast of the earth and fishes of the sea and conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in particular” was among some of his many theatrics he bamboozled the international community with while his henchmen flooded and choked Ugandan streams and rivers with the blood and bodies of innocent civilians.
Seizing power in a military coup d’état on the 25th of January 1971, it wasn’t long before this tinpot dictator started putting together ingredients for his gun powder cake. But first, he needed a promotion to Field Marshal and that, he accorded himself. And then, his ingredients; Human rights abuses, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption and gross economic mismanagement just to name a few. All of these were enough to build dissent from within and abroad which served as a matchbox. The ignition came when Amin attempted to use his infamous, ragtag army that was specialized in killing unarmed civilians to annex the Kagera Province of Tanzania in 1978. This triggered the Ugandan-Tanzanian war and led to the demise of Amin’s eight-year old regime leading him to flee into exile to Libya and then to Saudi Arabia where he lived until his death on August 16th 2003.
Maybe we take a turn to North Africa. Zine Al Abedine Ben Ali. A somewhat political tactician who became prime minister and later booted out Tunisia’s first post-independence ruler, Habib Bourguiba, in a bloodless coup on grounds that the president was “mentally unfit” to rule. He is credited to have overseen some level of economic growth and praised for his progressive stance on women’s rights and economic reforms. Sounds like he was doing great, right?
Ben Ali’s “gun powder cake” ingredients comprised of rising unemployment among a large section of the youth population and large sections of the Tunisian interior languishing in poverty. In the characteristic of many dictators, he became omnipresent with giant posters of his face in public spaces. He quelled political dissent and was on many occasions accused by human rights groups of unfairly arresting and maltreating critics. Protests were not tolerated and there was rising resentment of the perceived corruption of the elite.
The ignition here isn’t or wasn’t a metaphor but a real one. Mohammed Bouazizi, a young Tunisian graduate had the cart of vegetables he was selling to support his family seized by a police officer. He self-immolated and died later in the hospital. This triggered nation-wide.
Melaine Nsaikila: Fulbright Scholar, Economist and Development Enthusiast.
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He has sent policemen and soldiers to shoot at protesters in the Southwest and Northwest and ordered the arrest of a Supreme Court judge in Yaounde on Saturday night without any warrant of arrest. He has banned protests and curtailed the freedom of association and of speech. He is known for spending months abroad relaxing in luxury hotels while his countrymen struggle at home. He is accountable to no one but himself.
Cameroonian dictator, Paul Biya, who has been in power for 35 years since 1982, has turned his terribly underdeveloped country into another banana republic in Africa.
He has sent policemen and soldiers to shoot at protesters in the Southwest and Northwest and ordered the arrest of a Supreme Court judge in Yaounde on Saturday night without any warrant of arrest. He has banned protests and curtailed the freedom of association and of speech. He is known for spending months abroad relaxing in luxury hotels while his countrymen struggle at home with empty stomachs. He is accountable to no one but himself, and maybe Paris.
At almost 83 years old, Mr. Biya and his cabal have grown increasingly uncomfortable, especially, with developments in Ghana and Gambia, where sitting Presidents were defeated in the last presidential elections and had to go.
In the Northwest and Southwest, where residents are mainly English speakers, protests went on for months by lawyers and lecturers demanding justice and equality in a country where President Biya has spoken French for more than three decades and Anglophones feel left behind in many economic and political areas in Cameroon.
Mr. Biya reacted by sending trucks of policemen and soldiers to shoot at and suppress the protesters. Many were arrested, including students who were bundled into dirty trucks and sent to various tribunals for phony judgments.
If Angophones feel marginalised by the Biya government, the situation is not any better in any part of Cameroon. In the far north where Boko Haram has been bombing, shooting and killing for years, Mr. Biya has not visited to comfort the citizens or encourage soldiers fighting and dying in ambushes. And when the corpses of 38 killed soldiers were brought to Yaounde for burial, Mr. Biya did not even attend the event.
The level of poverty in the north is so appalling that most people are now used to living in squalor and hunger and do not know any other way. It is the same situation in the eastern part of the country where basic infrastructure such as roads, hospitals and electricity are rare to find.
Even in the capital, Yaounde, the underdevelopment and unemployment are palpable everywhere. Dusty roads and scattered houses in an unplanned city can be seen here and there.
The entire country is in a state of chaos where basic laws are not respected and protests are met with excessive force.
The international community should call the despotic leader to order and not allow him go down with the entire country in flames.
TheSimonAtebaNews, Washington DC
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West Cameroon (21 Jan 2017 ) -- A recent release warning some media organs in Cameroon and threatening them with either suspension or outright bans was read Thursday on the state broadcaster, CRTV. The National Communication Council accuses the media outlets in the release of publishing and broadcasting seditious articles that glorify Federalism and or Secession ideologies, thus threatening peace and national unity. Trusted sources et the Ministry of Communication (MINCOM ) and the National Communication Council (NCC) revealed to the Consortium that the release had been prepared by two state politicians ; the Minister in Charge of Special Duties et the Presidency of the Republic , Atanga Paul Nji, and a Senior Official at the Ministry of Communication, Felix Zogo.
The dubious release was taken to the NCC to be rubber stamped.
The NCC boss, Peter Essoka, was threatened to sign it, our sources hinted. The NCC boss reportedly resisted signing the document, "citing procedural violations and the need for a session to be held to examine the issues raised to no avail."
Cameroun imposed control on key internet providers MTN and Orange, through its state-run internet service provider, CAMTEL, citing dubious "security concerns." A recorded phone conversation with MTN South Africa Bureau confirmed that the 34-year regime ordered MTN to stop the supply of its internet services to millions of citizens in West Cameroon. A highly Confidential Mail NO. 006/DG issued by the CAMTEL Boss, David Nkotto Emane, on the 18th of January, 2017 to the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications and leaked out to the Consortium by a reliable source at Minister Libom Likeng Minette's cabinet, explains that MTN and Orange were coerced to deprive the West Cameroon from its access to internet services in a bid to inflict untold sufferings to the citizens.
The Consortium has also been reliably informed that the regime would block WhatsApp nationwide next week because citizens from West Cameroon cross over to neighbouring Bafoussam and Douala which are border towns closest to Bamenda and Tiko respectively, to upload pictures on World Wide Web that report gross violations of human rights, all forms of torture and the use of brute force on civilians, mostly women and children.
Journalists are reporting that the Minister of Communication, Issa Tchiroma Bak, had previously, personally called a few of them working with the private press by telephone and threatened them to stop the coverage of the Anglophone problem or he would ask their bosses to them. A few days later, two audience-pulling TV journalists working for LTM, a Douala-based TV Channel, were sacked without prior notice.
Call for Condemnation
The United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression ; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers".
Several international instruments including the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, ratified by Cameroon forbid such repressive acts against the free speech. It is unacceptable that while other countries in Africa have leaped from autocracies to democracies, Cameroon is left behind despite its millions of citizens who are willing to push forth universal rights and freedoms through dialogue, understanding, and integration of all parties.
Violating basic rights is condemnable and punishable. Citizens must not keep living in fear and tyranny in the 21st cent,. President Paul Biya must stop the ever-increasing violations of the rights of the own people of Cameroon. We .11 on the international community of goodwill to immediately puncture a brewing genocide nursed by President Paul Biya and his supporters of bad faith. The people need dialogue and not deadlock. We remain convinced that current affront on the credible press in Cameroon falls within the realms of what one-time US President Thomas Jefferson said: "No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first objective should, therefore, be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."
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On Friday 20th January 2016, the interim leaders of the consortium warned any groupings having meeting with the government to call off the strike. As announced over CRTV, some remnants of the teachers union leaders had a meeting in Bamenda.
However, senior journalist Franklin Sone Bayen said the Union leaders who attended the meeting said they cannot resume school while their colleagues are arrested.
They also supposedly refused 100 million bribed to call off the strike and some reportedly offered themselves to be arrested.
“WE CAN’T CALL OFF STRIKE WHILE GOV’T IS HUNTING DOWN OUR COLLEAGUES “, TEACHER UNIONISTS TELL GOV’T IN BAMENDA TODAY
Apparently taking advantage of the absence of hardline teachers’ union leaders (CATTU’s Wilfred Tassang and SYNES-UB’s Dr James Abangma both in hiding) and Barrister Agbor Balla Nkongho and Dr Neba Fontem both in detention, the government tried to persuade and armtwist remnants of the resistant block to sign a statement calling for schools resumption next Monday, thinking they were dealing with a diminished group.
Word had circulated in Bamenda that the remaining leaders had received a total sum of 100 million francs as bribe to append their signatures. True or false, the leaders refused to sign. they said a school boycott decision signed by six union leaders cannot be called off by four of them still walking free.
The teachers’ union leaders who thus defied the government today are those of TAC, Catholic, Baptist and Presbyterian teachers.
By Frankline Sone Bayern
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The Executive Secretary General of the Cameroon Teachers' Trade Unions, CATTU- Tassang Wilfred who also holds the position of aDirector of Programs at the Anglophone Consortium has released a statement contrary to government claims that the strike action has been called off.Read below the statement as he puts it in his own words:
"My dear people of West Cameroon, there is a rumour being sponsored by government to the effect that I have escaped because I had already signed to call off the strike; that is not true- the strike must continue relentlessly because victory is close. I am fasting and praying for you all, we must fight right to the logical end! God is with us!"
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Southern Cameroonians be Smart
MTN cannot block services in Southern Cameroons and then turned around to provide a code. There is code going viral for people to use and access Internet in Southern Cameroons. It is fake. If you used that code then know that you just gave the government access to your phone and Facebook. It would be wise you change your Facebook passwords any other passwords in your social media accounts on your phone. The code does not work but allows government to gain access and monitor you. Please share to friends.
Stay vigilant always.
Mark Bareta
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Subcategories
Biya Article Count: 73
# Paul Biya and his regime
Explore the political landscape of Cameroon under the rule of Paul Biya, the longest-serving president in Africa who has been in power since 1982. Our Paul Biya and his regime section examines the policies, actions, and controversies of his government, as well as the opposition movements, civil society groups, and international actors that challenge or support his leadership. You'll also find profiles, interviews, and opinions on the key figures and events that shape the political dynamics of Cameroon.
Southern Cameroons Article Count: 549
.# Southern Cameroons, Ambazonia
Learn more about the history, culture, and politics of Ambazonia, the Anglophone regions of Cameroon that have been seeking self-determination and independence from the Francophone-dominated central government. Our Southern Cameroons section covers the ongoing conflict, the humanitarian crisis, the human rights violations, and the peace efforts in the region. You'll also find stories that highlight the rich and diverse heritage, traditions, and aspirations of the Southern Cameroonian people.
Editorial Article Count: 885
# Opinion
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