Gov’t Bans Debate On Cameroon After Biya

By Yerima Kini Nsom| 13 April2010 | The Post|

Government has tacitly banned discussions on what will happen when the incumbent President Paul Biya eventually quits the scene. Last week, the Senior Divisional Officer, SDO, for the Mbam and Inoubou Division in the Centre Region, Mamadou Balla, led security forces and stopped the launching of a book on the post-President Paul Biya era.

The 255-page publication titled the Orange Offer for Alternance in Cameroon” paints a controversial scenario as to what may happen if Biya leaves power in 2011. Human rights activist, Hilaire Kamga, is the author of the book that equally condemns the endemic nature of the embezzlement of public funds and corruption in Cameroon as a trademark of the Biya regime.

Kamga had duly obtained authorisation from the competent administrative authorities for the book launch. But no sooner did some three dozen people gather for the occasion than the administrative officials accompanied by gendarmes stormed the conference centre and put and end to it. The Divisional Officer for Bafia, Francois Manga, had issued an authorisation for the book launch without any complication. But the SDO gave a dramatic twist to it by slamming a ban on the occasion.

While stopping the meeting, the administrator told Kamga that he was given an authorisation to talk about human rights and not to launch a book that condemns corruption and virtually wishes the death of the current regime. Kamga regretted such an act in an interview with the press. The human rights activist said the book makes valuable proposals as to how the embezzlers of public funds and other thieving government officials could be reconciled with the Cameroonian people who have been robbed of their God-given resources.

At almost 75, Kamga says Biya is too tired to effectively rule. He proposes a three-year transitional period in Cameroon during which Biya will quit the scene in the spirit of national reconciliation and appeasement wherein a transparent electoral system would be put in place.
Such a period, he says, should be a time for leaders to examine themselves in the mirror and try to incise the goose pimples on their faces.

As Kamga was ushered out of the Mbam Inn, The Post leant that local CPDM authorities put pressure on the SDO to ban the ceremony, arguing that it would have been an insult to allow the launching of such a book to take place in the political constituency of the Secretary General of CPDM Central Committee, Rene Emmanuel Sadi.

The ban on the Bafia meeting was not an isolated incident in government’s hostilities to discussions on the change of power in Cameroon. Recently, a newly created political party, the Popular Socialist Party (PSP), was banned from holding a conference at the Djeuga Palace Hotel in Yaounde. According to officials of the party, administrative officials botched their conference when security reports indicated to them that the meeting was expected to bring together actors to debate about mutation at the helm of the state.

A few years back, the then publisher of the French language daily, Mutations, Haman Mana, was arrested and detained at the Gendarmerie headquarters in Yaounde for publishing an article on the post-Biya era captioned “Les scenarios de l’aprés Biya” (the Post-Biya Scenario)
It was also in tandem with this line of behaviour that the ruling party is in shambles following an ‘April Fool’ report in which Mutations quoted Rene Emmanuel as declaring that he would challenge Biya in the upcoming presidential elections in 2011.

Though that article might have been an “April 1″ joke, Sadi’s detractors have taken it seriously and have branded him a traitor. What the government seems to be comfortable with is the plethora of motions of support from the CPDM, traditional rulers and some elites. But the CPDM MP for Akwaya, Hon. Paul Ayah Abine, has condemned such motions of support as a clear demonstration of hypocrisy by greedy individuals.