Great Misery amid Plenty in Cameroon’s Blocked Political Processes

The wretchedness of much of Cameroon is not in doubt. There is squalor, slum conditions, almost anywhere you care to look. Not far from the Presidency, public offices and squares in the capital city, Yaounde. On the country’s many dirt and few surfaced roads, in towns and villages, out in the country, in and out of living quarters, from invasive dust in dry season to floods and muggy mud when it rains. Blocked or non-existent drains, mosquitoes, foul smells, clatter, preventable injury, disease, ill-health and deaths – despondence in so much physical and mental suffering.

Welcome to Cameroon! Not just that of the post card magnificence of the Presidency of the Republic and other buildings, blue and various shades of nimbus covered skies, fabulous trees, posing well-fed faces, colourful birds that fly about in the country and add to the songs that come from Cameroon’s changing landscape and all its many inhabitants including the sixteen or so million humans with common interests in a Body Politic set up to guarantee individual rights and freedoms.

For many citizens, the government of Cameroon has long stopped listening to them and treats them badly as seen in the extent of wretchedness amid plenty in the country. They, in turn, except when threatened or forced, have stopped bothering to communicate with the government. Their messages, when addressed to the government, tend to focus more on what they imagine or know the government wants to hear and less on their own actual needs and possibilities or plans to clarify and resolve the issues. The government that is denied strong skills and competence and scarcely does things right is so presented as one that works or can somehow work! The State of Cameroon is a long way, clearly, from ensuring the degree of co-operation that would deliver on its mandate.

Beleaguered governments, determined to hold on to power, seek props elsewhere when largely denied at home. The government of Cameroon has not been an exception to this rule. It has relied on strong bilateral hold ups and also, since the mid 1980s, on multilateral support that has been increasing grudgingly. Such are the agreements the government of Cameroon has been negotiating and reaching over the years with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, for example. The rhetoric of the government and some of its partners aside, the people the government appears to fear at home are taken hostage and continue to pay the price in their wretchedness.

Even those with skills and knowledge, health, formal education and money in their pockets to produce and/or pay for public as well as private goods and services in Cameroon, suffer in their numbers.

Who said “money is power!?” or that “knowledge is power!?” or “the customer is king!?” or that “he who pays the piper calls the tune!?” or “health, is wealth, is power!?” or that “power is in numbers!?”

Not so, if citizens as individuals ignore the way their State power is used, shy away from discussing and clarifying the issues in public and do not derive honour in doing things right!

EFFERVESCENCE POLITIQUE

[Story from the Government Bilingual Primary School (GBPS) Kumba-Mbeng III (1999/2000) for EITD Research. Text edited by NANA-EMMANUEL, Head Master, GBPS Kumba-Mbeng]

Une faction de la population, mécontente du régime en place, amorce des troubles pour le déraciner.

Le salaire des functionnaires est diminué, deux fois de suite en espace d’un laps de temps. L’opposition politique recupère cette situation pour asseoir son opinion auprès de toute âme legère qui lui prête oreille. La vie devient maurose. Ça sent du pétrole.

Les profanes sont prêts, à tout prix à débouter le gouvernement, “celui-ci n’est bon à rien, il doit partir”. Sans refléchir, ils ne cherchent pas à connaître ni le commencement, ni l’aboutissement de ce que “les tracs” véhiculent comme information, encore moins “qui fait quoi”. La rumeur circule de bouche à orielle.

Un martin, une fausse alerte émane d’une ville située en hauteur. Elle atteind la population localisée dans une cité aux bas fonds dans la plaine. Rapidement les vandals s’ébranlent. Ils s’orientent vers la prison centrale, libèrent les détenus. Ces derniers grossissent le nombre. En vagues, ils enflamment tour à tour, la maison d’arrêt, les bureaux administratifs et la gendarmerie. Les rencunes et les reglements de compte deviennent monaie courante. Les dégats sont importants. Que de pertes en vie humaine pour ne pas parler du matériel.

Les agresseurs, parce-que le roi supporte le gouvernement, descendent à la chefferie. Le sultan sort et déclare: “Mes fils, c’est pas moi qui ai construit ce palais. Si c’est ma tête que vous voulez, alors la voici”. A ces mots, il se couche, le dos dans la poussière, les yeux levés vers le ciel. Curieusement, toute la bande fléchit et c’est la fin des austilités.

Plustard, on apprend qu’à la ville en hauteur, on avait tout juste brûlé de vieux pneus sur la chaussée et que la fumée s’était considérablement élevée.

Maintenant on regrette, mais pouquoi avoir agi avant de refléchir?

Cameroon’s Clandestine Budgets

As the Constitution mandates, the government of Cameroon presents its State budget proposals every year to the country in Parliament, which is required to scrutinise, amend and/or approve as well as authorise the President of the Republic to sign it into law. The budget numbers generally show anticipated revenues equalling expenditure and give the impression that all revenue and expenditure sources are or have been accounted for. But have/are they?

No! A close look at Cameroon budget numbers and existing regulations reveal many troubling discrepancies. On the revenue side, for example, proceeds from important income sources in the tax code are not at all accounted for in the State budget numbers the government presents to Parliament, every year. These include takings (billions of CFA francs) from sources earmarked, in the tax code, for key central government agencies such as the National Social Insurance Fund (CNPS) that handles pensions, Cameroon Radio and Television Corporation (CRTV) and the Local Government Funding Agency (FEICOM).

Similarly, State budget expenditure figures the government presents to Parliament do not include spending arrangements of the key central government agencies. Boards of the organisations are expected to decide and oversee their budgets. The Boards are scarcely known for meeting regularly, if they meet at all. So, the government agencies often run on the say-so of their managers, and the funds they use are hardly discussed or formally accounted for in public!

These clandestine budgets provide the government huge pots of put away money to allocate and spend as it sees fit. So much so, the government appears in no need to approach Parliament for supplementary budgets at any other time in the financial year, even as consultations between the government and Parliament look continuous. The government has a full-time minister in charge of relations with Parliament. But the substance of the consultations or lack thereof is not entirely public. Partisan political considerations play a big part in the consultations. Government supporters in Parliament rarely complain as much as opposition parliamentarians often do, about government budget consultations or lack thereof with them.

Nevertheless, Cameroon’s clandestine budgets are approved (tacitly at least) by Parliament, which endorses, with little or no scrutiny, the tax code and budget numbers the government presents in November, every year. The guarantee of individual rights and freedoms is so denied much needed transparency, responsiveness and accountability in Cameroon’s budget processes.

You can bring more attention to these problems and contribute to their resolution by raising and discussing them in public.

Another Man Dies In Police Custody!

Mr. Khan Ernest, 22 years old, died March 31, 2006 in Police custody, Kumba. He is said to have “collapsed in the cell and was taken out and abandoned in the corridor, where he died hours later. A forensic expert from Douala has established that the youth died from a severe cranial injury and blood clot in his head, which he attributed to violence”. (See attached letter from Global Conscience Initiative, a Kumba based advocacy group, to Cameroon’s Minister of Justice).

The Legal Department in Kumba is reported to have remanded another detainee who is said to have beaten Mr. Khan in the police cell. Even as official investigations are said to be ongoing, it is far from clear whether they will reveal: what led to the alleged beating of Mr. Khan; conditions in the cell; how Mr. Khan came to be found outside the cell and abandoned in the corridor, where he died hours later, in police custody.

Mr. Khan’s detention appears also to have been arbitrary. He was detained as a suspect in a stolen bicycle case. The owner of the stolen bicycle is reported to have seen it with a certain Mr. Gospel Penn, who said Mr. Khan gave him the bicycle. The bicycle owner took his allegations to the police and Mr. Khan was arrested. The police are still to find Mr. Gospel Penn.

The preventable rough treatment and death of Mr. Khan follows that of another man in Kumba, two years ago, whom a police set “ablaze after having cuffed his hands behind and forced him to drink kerosene. The suspect later on died and the police inspector was found guilty of torture and of assault occasioning death.” (See attached Global Conscience Press Release).

This dire situation of people including detainees in Cameroon is not limited to the police in Kumba. Violations of individual rights and freedoms are widespread in Cameroon State services and society. Some of these have been widely documented and followed-up, with consequences that have been less than comprehensive. (See some of our several reports and also those of the African Union’s Africa Commission Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention, and those of the UN ESCOR Commission on Human Rights).

Nevertheless, and sad as it is, Mr. Khan’s death provides great opportunity to raise individual rights and freedoms issues including those of detainees anew, and seek purposeful clarifications from not just the Minister of Justice in Cameroon, but also from other authorities and society as a whole. The issues include:

(1) The exact circumstances that led to Mr. Khan’s arrest, his detention conditions and subsequent death;

(2) The role of the police and other State services in guaranteeing freedom and security for each individual, including detainees;

(3) Policy guidelines and funding arrangements that were/are in place to enable the police and other State services to meet their responsibilities towards each individual in wider society and in detention;

(4) The extent to which those policy guidelines and funding arrangements were made operational in the particular case of Mr. Khan; and,

(5) What improvements, if any, are now needed to circumvent further individual rights and freedoms abuses in our police and other State services?

We would, therefore, like to invite you and everyone you know, to contribute as much as you can, to ensure:

(a) Adept monitoring and follow-up of the official investigation that is said to be ongoing, and perhaps designing and undertaking other enquiries, so that all facets of Mr. Khan’s arrest, detention and death are addressed adequately;

(b) Broad debate on what the police and other State services can, or what we would like them to, do and be doing so our individual rights and freedoms including those of detainees are guaranteed;

(c) Discussion of specific laws, conventions, executive orders, and other guidelines including budgets and the quality of staff at various levels in our police and related State services;

(d) Systematic investigation and broader discussion of the way(s) existing police and related State services policies and funds allocated to Kumba were put to work or not in the case of Mr. Khan; and,

(e) Discussion and adoption of reforms that may be needed.

Details at the EITD Research Public Policy Forums.

Freedom and Security for Each Individual

Being free and secure in society entails being alive, well and safe, including being at peace with yourself and with the people you come across. These imply a range of positive as well as negative obligations on you and all others that span from, the obligation not to do anything to endanger life, health and safety, to that of taking all appropriate measures to improve quality of same, for each individual in the community and society.

Yet, many issues continue to threaten life, health and safety and escalate conflict(s) in Cameroon. These include hunger (despite our good soils, diverse agriculture and some good harvests) in some parts of our country and among some social groups all over Cameroon. Our hospitals and health centres are far from being places where patients visit at the earliest opportunity and expect cure! Indeed, even in maternity wards where life is expected, as Mrs. Agnes Tong Diffang reports, mothers continue to die of child birth, infants die, babies are born with low birth weight; get cross infection, diarrhoea, etc. Christian Cardinal Tumi highlights ten other dangerous facts of life in Cameroon society: (1) unemployment; (2) rampant petty crime and corruption; (3) racism and tribalism; (4) disease; (5) poisons; (6) traffic accidents; (7) biological manipulation; (8) birth control; (9) weapons sales; and (10) natural catastrophes. The day-to-day experiences of so many people are so blighted by fear and insecurity in Cameroon.

You may very well say, all this is subjective and be right! Your idea(s) of freedom and security may be different from that/those of your neighbour(s) and others in your community and society. For these matters depend so much on the regards and expectations we have of ourselves and others from time to time, and from place to place. And so, there are several standards by which we may hold each other to account for the level of freedom and security we experience in society.

It is important, therefore, to reach agreement, and keep coming up with improvements, on standards with which to hold each other accountable for the level of freedom and security that people experience wherever they may be in Cameroon. For example, what is (or should be) adequate feeding for an individual where you live, work, study and/or visit in Cameroon? How may individuals be helped to acquire the food they need? How should these apply to people in detention? What monitoring arrangements are there where you are or elsewhere? How, when and who should evaluate the arrangements and act on the findings?

Take the responsibility inherent in your right to freedom and security in Cameroon, to present and have your ideas discussed on how not to endanger life, health and safety where you live, work, study and/or visit in the country. Which appropriate measures should people take, and how can/should they be helped, to improve standards of life, health and safety and rid themselves of the much apparent fear and insecurity in Cameroon?

Individual Rights and Freedoms – Hold Citizens and the State of Cameroon to Account

Cameroon is well endowed. Strategically located in the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, Cameroon is blessed with natural resources and, above all, people. These are people you can see and hear from everyday, every hour and second, making efforts to live well with one another and everybody, who have come to like sharing in each other’s culture and cultures from far and wide, as witnessed in the way they talk, write, dress, eat, dance, laugh, play football, … as you know!

The people of Cameroon have drawn-up their Constitution on clear universal principles that stem from the ideals of their authentic cultures. They declare in their Constitution, "that the human person, without distinction as to race, religion, sex or belief, possesses inalienable and sacred rights", and have established the State of Cameroon to "guarantee all citizens of either sex the rights and freedoms set forth in the Preamble of the Constitution".

But, as you can also attest, the citizen rights and freedoms are far from being adequately guaranteed. The State the people of Cameroon established to guarantee citizen rights and freedoms has been less than responsive and accountable!

HISTORY

Even as the modern State of Cameroon is founded on apparent citizen rights and freedoms, the country inherited a social pyramid structure of authority in the pedigree of excluding many people from full participation in governance. Today, post independence Cameroon appears on the threshold of collapse, as colonial Cameroon did some years back, only to regenerate itself with little or no improvements, if not deteriorations, in individual rights and freedoms guarantee. ...

OPPORTUNITY

Hence opportunity to review the language and contents of the rights and freedoms provisions in the Constitution of Cameroon, in the light of day-to-day experiences of people in Cameroon and around the world.

First, the language in which citizen rights and freedoms are expressed in Cameroon’s Constitution. The language embraces understandings that appear both contradictory and complementary. Individual rights and freedoms, as expressed in the Constitution, can be understood as: (a) sacred and inalienable, which no individual may be deprived; and, (b) projected, desires whose achievement may be welcome.

The citizen rights and freedoms, thanks to the language of the Constitution, may thus be interpreted as being situation and context specific, dynamic and/or simply non-existent, regardless of individual and/or collective ability to exercise the rights and freedoms!

Second, the contents of several of the enumerated individual rights and freedoms in the Constitution are subject to conditions determined, or to be fixed, by other laws and/or public policy. This may be construed as authorising other law and public policy agencies to limit or deny constitutionally sanctioned citizen rights and freedoms as they see fit!

It might not surprise, therefore, that despite the growing complexity and sophistication of the State of Cameroon, constitutionally mandated citizen rights and freedoms are abused increasingly, sapping the State’s moral authority and tearing society apart.

CALL OF A NATION

Cameroon today, appears transformed as a country where, for example, access to formal education remains restricted even at the primary level; where inadequate attention is paid to content and quality in education systems, especially with regard to relevance, enrichment and equality; where roads are bad, telephone lines few and access difficult and expensive; where books and other printed materials are difficult to circulate and libraries are few and far between; where people are financially poor and eager to migrate; where corruption is fast becoming the culture for many; where rights are so easily abused and freedom for all remains a far cry!

“Given the rising misery from growing poverty, deprivation and vice in Cameroon”, as e-Citizens Bulletin of January 2005 notes, “there may not be much room left for citizens to live in harmony with their natural resources, traditions and customs that increasingly produce less. Vision and creativity is much in need, in the circumstance, to unlock the prime natural resource of Cameroon – the knowledge base of its people. The people have to be in a position to discuss possible contradictions between belief(s) and (their) effects on the wellbeing of every citizen, and develop understanding in children why and how such ideas became part of culture. Without this, citizens risk carrying on as usual and children risk learning in schools simply to pass exams and keep on acting as it is known outside school.”

New approaches are needed to help citizens of all skill levels, within and across the barriers, to bring about positive development by engaging one another increasingly and continually in efforts to guarantee constitutionally mandated individual rights and freedoms.

To improve individual rights and freedoms security, citizens have to build or renew confidence in their own selves and in one another; find and disseminate information that is relevant to individual rights and freedoms issues; make informed analyses of their own problems and opportunities. Some of the information they need exists in and around them, in their day-to-day experiences. Other knowledge and its operational application skills may, however, be widely dispersed nationally and internationally, needing broad-based collaboration to keep generating virtuous individual rights and freedoms guaranteeing regimes.

EITD RESEARCH PUBLIC POLICY FORUMS

EITD Research Public Policy Forums are designed in response to the foregoing call, as dedicated online meeting platforms where citizens of all skill levels and believes are welcome to discuss individual rights and freedoms issues facing Cameroon and the world. They provide permanent forums for individual rights and freedoms thought that reveals authenticity and/or lack thereof in Cameroon law, public policy development and serve as resource for teachers and students in our various schools, colleges and universities.

It is hoped that this would help clarify: (1) The specific rights and freedoms set forth in the Constitution of Cameroon; (2) Arrangements that were/are in place or being proposed to guarantee the rights and freedoms; (3) How the arrangements have fared, are working or likely to perform or not; and, (4) Reforms that may be needed, when, where, etc. Being clear on these issues will help us all, and future generations.

You are invited to join this endeavour. Explore EITD Research Public Policy Forums. PARTICIPATION IS FREE.

BE SERIOUS ABOUT CORRUPTION IN CAMEROON

The government of Cameroon appears recently, as it may have been before, to be taking the issue of wide spreading corruption seriously! Some high ranking officials alleged to have embezzled public funds continue to be arrested. But their numbers are reported insignificant. What they swindled is also far from being recovered. The public continues at a loss, especially with the knowledge that those under arrest may never be fairly tried and could one day join the many other alleged embezzlers reported free to swim with their associates in the apparent ill-gotten wealth.

To some, the government anti-corruption actions are simply designed to soothe apparent public anger, in view of the unrelenting poverty in the country, and in the process, evade serious continuing scrutiny. Others believe the government is responding to ‘mounting’ international community pressure to ‘do something’ about ‘curbing’ corruption in Cameroon.

Indeed, there is a committee in the capital city, Yaounde, made up of donor nations/organisations represented by their ambassadors or resident missionaries who press for such actions. But their influence on the government has been so-so in view of the government’s considerable income from oil and other revenues. Another international community category that could come under the government’s other revenue sources sector is international financial institutions including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Government relations with these sources have been rocky but profitable to both sides since Cameroon’s political economy crisis started in 1986/87. So many believe the government and financial institutions are at it again to reach another deal, now called ‘completion point’, to get the government more loans and/or debt cancellations.

In the end, it is widely held that corruption would not even be dented. And many in prominent positions at all state and society levels wonder how it should ever be! Why should they be prevented from rubbing the public as others do or have done and are out there, or soon will be, enjoying their harvests? So, notwithstanding government anti-corruption efforts, corruption in Cameroon seems to be business as usual, as many seem to be saying to whoever, “think and do what you may to combat corruption, but we will not co-operate with you to end the practice”!

Press statements of a former minister, Garga Haman, on ongoing corruption within government in Cameroon are telling. He was in charge of a Disciplinary Council for Budget and Accountability commission at State Control, where he identified but was unable to prosecute several (at least 42) public fund embezzlement cases involving one (1) billion or more CFA francs. He claims to have informed President Paul Biya about his findings, but got no go ahead with prosecutions from him even as, he says, the President didn’t refuse to have the people tried. Did he need the President’s endorsement to prosecute? Is the President the law in Cameroon?

Five issues, which government anti-corruption efforts are yet to deal adequately with, standout clearly: (1) The definition of corruption in Cameroon; (2) The scope and thoroughness of investigations of alleged corruption; (3) Free and fair trails for those accused of corruption; (4) Recovery of stolen public funds; and, (5) How the recovered funds are put to use.