06.11.2009
6 November 1982 - The Static Transformations of The Democratic Sphere
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French Abstract
Regards croisés sur les avancées, discours, et prononcements d’intentions démocratiques aux lendemains du 6 Novembre 1982. L’égalité de tous les citoyens sans différences tribales ou ethniques, la rigueur et la moralisation dans la gestion de la chose publique s’érigent comme fondements du libéralisme communautaire. Il n’est plus nécessaire d’entrer en brousse ou au maquis pour exprimer ses idées. Dès 1983, les élections présidentielles sont constitutionnellement ouvertes à la pluralité de candidatures. Après le Congrès de Bamenda (1985), les primaires sont organisées au niveau des instances de base du parti unique pour désigner les candidats aux législatives et municipales. Il faudra, cependant, attendre le début des années 1990s pour conclure que le système politique monolithique dans son ensemble avait bloqué, depuis longtemps, l’avènement d’une démocratie véritable au Cameroun.
BREAKING WITH THE PAST – JUSTICE, RIGOR, AND MORALIZATION
The earlier days of Cameroon’s Second Republic were initially characterized by the vision of a moral, democratic, and higher modern society. The new model of society was based on Communal Liberalism and the National Charter of Freedoms. The former aimed at addressing socio-economic inequities through the equal redistribution of the national cake to all Cameroonians without discrimination The latter was meant to guarantee all forms of individual and collective freedoms, particularly freedom of thought, expression, equal protection before the law, the secularity of the state, the abolition of nepotism, favoritism, tribal/ethnic discrimination (P. Biya, Pour le Liberalisme Communautaire, 13 – 14, 42-43). Armed with a rival ideology, the newly anointed head of state wanted to mark his imprints on the political and socio-economic spheres.
Freedom of speech and opinion was an intrinsic part of Paul Biya’s New Deal package. Cameroonians, in the wording of their new leader, did not need to hide in the bush, flee the country, take refuge or leave their family to voice their opinions and ideas about the history, development, policies, social transformations, and future of their beloved nation (UNC, Proceedings of the IVth Bamenda Convention, in Le Message du Renouveau, Vol II, 900 – 100). Having said that, Paul Biya unequivocally summarized the human rights foundations of his philosophy during the 21st January 1984 sworn in address:
“We are not claiming any monopoly be it of speech, reason, heart or patriotism… in this era of liberal and democratic liberalization, that are hopefully an intrinsic ingredient of our politics of rigor, moralization, realism, method and responsibility, I formally invite all of you more than anytime before, fellow countrymen, to always and always take conscience of its exigencies: It requires the full and active participation of everyone in the political life, but a participation that is respectful of legality and public order, of state higher interests, of peoples’ opinions and fundamental rights.”
A SUDDEN ACADEMIC REVIVAL
In this new era, intellectuals and political critics formally tasted the yet forbidden fruit of independent political analysis that has been put under heavy surveillance during the Ahidjo years. For legal scholar Maurice Kamto, Cameroon was undergoing a subversion movement from above (Kamto, “Quelques Reflexions sur la Transition vers le Pluralisme Politique au Cameroon,” in G. Conac, L’Afrique en Transition vers le Pluralisme Politique, 209, at 212). It is from the same perspective that we should understand academic regurgitations of the days, namely Pierre Flambeau Ngayap’s Cameroun Qui Gouverne? (Cameroon Who Governs?), Hubert Mono Ndzana’s L’Idée Sociale Chez Paul Biya (The Social Thought of Paul Biya), Charly Gabriel Mbock’s, Cameroun L’Intention Démocratique (Cameroon: The Democratic Intention), and Jacques Fame Ndongo’s Paul Biya ou L’Incarnation de la Rigueur, which all received numerous acclaims.
The New Deal was so convincing in theory that it pushed some reserved individuals to join the CPDM-state party. Praising the depth and transformative vision of Biya’s new ideology, Joël Moullen, former Yaoundé University Chancellor, Secretary General of the Office of the Prime Minister, and later Second Assistant Dean of the Ngoa Ekelle School of Science in the 1990s, has come to make the following overreaching statement: “When President Biya appoints me Deputy Director of Higher Education, and then Director of the Advanced Teachers’ Training College (Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1984), I am not member of any political party. I join the CPDM only after the publication of his book For Communal Liberalism: there was something new and a willingness to move ahead” (“Parcours: Joël Moulen, Les Mathématiques et la Politique,” Le Messager, July 28, 2007).
SYSTEMIC CLOUDS – GENESIS OF THE BROKEN DREAM
Some interlocking elements, however, transformed the rigor and moralization axioms into a socio-democratic emulation difficult to achieve. Among these, we may mention poor presidential and state communication with the grassroots, mounting unemployment, relentless positioning, personal struggles among party elites and self-imposed individuals, which all ran at cross purposes with democratic and social reconstruction ideals. The exclusion of youths, tribalism, nepotism, favoritism, and, more importantly, the institutionalization of corruption and diversion of public funds as models of governance soon drove away dreams and hopes among the forgotten majority.
On several occasions, the post-New Deal years came to be seen as a rival of liberalism, democracy, and economic revival. The system engineered and indirectly designed a safe heaven whereby a small group of corrupt, privileged, and downtrodden oligarchy abused their authority, state resources, state owned corporations, banks, credit unions, and public funds without any constraints, fear or prejudice. On this ground, the early professed rigor and moralization discourse turned out to be the antithesis of modernization, free market, national
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integration, and sustainable economic growth.
THE FALLACY OF THE MULTIPLE CANDIDACIES PROVISIONS
On the constitutional level, new elements provide grounds for the reconsideration of democratic openings and freedom of speech in the political landscape. The November 18, 1983 constitutional amendment, for example, allowed multiple presidential candidacies. The new article 7 required any prospective candidate to submit a petition with 500 signatures (fifty from each of the ten provinces) from important elected or government officials such as legislators, governors, certain traditional authorities, divisional officers, municipal councilors, and/or Central Committee members of the then Cameroon National Union (UNC). In addition, the law required each candidate to have at least five years of continuous residency within the national territory on the date of filing his/her petition to run for election.
The 1983 multiple candidacy project was a dream and fallacious misrepresentation of the political game. In a party-state like Cameroon, all senior officials were appointed and directly accountable to the head of state. Since elected officials were nominated by the Political Bureau on a single national list, the new constitutional dispensation carried the germs of its own destruction and did not advance pluralism in any way. Surprisingly Jean Fouman Akame, Minister of Territorial Administration (18 June 1983 - 7 July 1984), described the decision to open the electoral process to everyone as symbolic of the political maturity of Cameroonians (Africa Research Bulletin, November 1983, 7042).
In spite of the 1983 multiple candidacy provisions, Paul Biya ran unchallenged and scored a virtually 99 percent during the January 1984 and 1988 presidential elections. The head of state advanced the January 14, 1984 presidential elections instead of 1985, the original polling date. The idea was to seek popular anointing, test his popularity and, more importantly, validate the constitutional basis of his power and annihilate for good succession rivalries with Ahmadou Ahidjo.
After the 1984 presidential elections, Paul Biya initiated a series of constitutional amendments that were signed into law the following February 04th. In terms of Article 1, the country’s name changed from “United Republic of Cameroon” to “Republic of Cameroon.” The chief of the executive equated the name change with a sign of political maturity after twenty five years of independence, and also as an indication that Cameroonians had finally overcome divisions caused by decades of foreign colonization. (Communal Liberalism, 6).
ZERO CONCURRENCE: FREEZING THE POSITION OF PRIME MINISTER
New legal dispositions were also taken to freeze succession rivalries and other forms of personal ambitions in the office of the presidency. Article 5 of the fundamental law was amended to abolish the office of the Prime Minister. Likewise, article 7 abrogated statutory dispositions pertaining to presidential successions. Following the February 4, 1984 cabinet reshuffle, Ayang Luc, the Acting Prime Minister since the dismissal and forced exile of Maigari Bello Bouba to Nigreria in mid-1983, lost all cabinet portfolios, including that of Minister of Fisheries, Livestock and Animal Industries. Ayang was then appointed Chairperson of the Economic and Social Council, a position that he has been occupying for the past 25 years.
Cameroon will, therefore, operate without any Prime Minister from February 1984 through the democratic waves of the early 1990s. Regional equilibrium mechanisms, in passing, will shape the redistribution of Senior portfolios. On April 26, 1991 Sadou Hayatou, a Muslim Northerner, former resident director of the sub-regional Central Bank BEAC and General Secretary of the Presidency, became Prime Minister and Head of the Government. By the same time, Fonka S. Lawrence, an English speaker, was sworn in as Speaker of the National Assembly. Later, Simon Achidi Achu, another English speaker from Santa, North West, stepped in as Prime Minister on April 9, 1992; and Cavaye Y. Djibril, a Muslim from the Great North later headed to run the Parliament.
ROLLING BACK LIBERALISM: THE 1990 SOCIAL UPHEAVALS
By the early 1990s, Paul Biya’s New Deal Liberalism stood in the forefront of a potent challenge in the face of evolving liberal and human rights openings in Francophone Africa mainly. In Cameroon, especially, corresponding events attest to the fact that, in spite of the 1982 liberal discourses and subsequent constitutional amendments allowing for plurality of opinions, fundamental guarantees such as freedoms of associations, assembly, press, thought, opinion, and speech were still heavily regulated, administratively curtailed, and, at times, deadly repressed by state organs. We may want to mention: (1) the prosecution and imprisonment of Yondo Black, Anicet Ekane and others; (2) the six deaths of May 26 during the “unofficial” launch of Ni John Fru Ndi’s Social Democratic Front (SDF); (3) the arrest and prosecution of Celestin Monga and Pius Njawe; (4) the massive press seizures and censorships; (5) the physical torture, coupled with rape and sexual coercion during the Yaoundé University Parlement movement; and (6) the 1991 public whipping of opposition and civil society leaders in Douala, what Cameroonian press and street jargon qualified at the times as “fessée nationale souveraine” (national sovereign whipping).
FINAL THOUGHTS
With few exceptions, pejorative thinking characterized perceptions of rigor, moralization and new deal liberalism in the public mindset. Cameroon’s earlier reception and incorporation of such developmental ideals into its vocabulary, which goes deep into its history and formed an invaluable component of its political economy, was an attitude justified by rhetorical considerations that did not ultimately deliver with respect to constitutional, and macro/microeconomic discourse.
Christophe DONGMO
CamerounLink-Expert
chrisdmo23@yahoo.com
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Mr DONGMO Christophe
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Douala : La police saute sur “L’Antecode Biya” 
Le J.T du 30 Aout 2010
