BY WIFAH JENNYHANS NDE
As preparations for May 20’s celebration intensify, the ruling CPDM party is mobilizing resources, human and financial to ensure massive participation of its militants on National Day. This comes against the backdrop of several political parties announcing that they will be boycotting the event. the main opposition party, Social Democratic Front, SDF of Ni John Fru Ndi, CPP of Edith Kah Walla, MRC of Maurice Kamto, PAP of Ayah Paul and USDP of Prince Ekosso have declared that will not take part in this year’s celebrations because of the ongoing Anglophone crisis.
Through its regional, divisional and local party heads, the CPDM has held meetings with militants to re-echo the importance of May 20th and to encourage them to turn out massively for its celebration this year. This because there are persistent calls from the Diaspora for general boycott of this year’s event in the Northwest and Southwest regions owing to the Anglophone crisis that has been rocking the country for over 6 months now.
The Northwest regional permanent delegation leader, PM Yang held a meeting earlier in the capital city of Northwest, Bamenda with local party leaders and Northwest elite to mobilise militants to massively show up for May 20 celebrations. Similarly, Hon Emilia Lika, Fako’s permanent divisional delegation head held a meeting in Limbe on May 11, 2017 to ascertain the level of preparedness of militants in Fako just like in other parts of the national triangle.
Already, the elite of the Northwest after the PM’s meeting responded through the North West Fon’s Union, NOWEFU, pledging their unflinching support to the head of state and assuring the government that they shall massively mobilize their subjects to turn out for the National Day celebration in that part of the country despite calls for boycott.
According to the SDF in a press release signed by the party’s chairman on May 7, 2017, the party is not just boycotting from May 20 but shall observe the party’s 27th anniversary on May 26 without feasting. ‘We shall celebrate the 27th anniversary of our party without feasting in remembrance of all those who have lost their lives in the Anglophone crisis and in communion with all those unjustly locked-up by judicial system marching to the tune of our corrupt regime’, the press release stated.
‘We have called on the president of the republic on various occasions to engage in genuine and inclusive dialogue in order to settle the so many fundamental problems that plaque our nation. I have had occasions to meet and talk with Cameroonians of high political and social standing for us to truly come together and solve the crisis and problems that our beloved country is suffering and thereby to save it from collapse. Mr Biya has answered our repeated calls with characteristic nonchalance and inertia’, Fru Ndi wrote.
Reacting to this stand taken by the SDF, the National Communication Secretary of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, Prof. Jacques Fame Ndongo described the SDF and every other political party boycotting the National Day as undemocratic. ‘A republic has sacred principles that all republican parties must strictly respect. I don’t think a call to boycott the National day celebration (which is not the celebration of a political regime or the ruling party) is a political pride or achievement activated by whatever party. One needs to just go through the history of nations or political institutions to understand that it is not a glorious act, since the national day belongs to all citizens, including those who decide to boycott celebrations for reasons only known to them’ said Fame Ndongo.
The CPP on her part published a lengthy press release explaining why the party is not celebrating this year’s national day with one of its claims being that the regime has since 2011 systematically eliminated the party from participating on the Nation parade in Yaounde with claims that the party has no representation in parliament. ‘No celebration of National Unity in Exclusion’ is the caption of the release in which the Party’s leader, Edith Kah Walla accuses the regime of ‘injustice, brutality, and the illegal arrest and detention of Cameroonians’. For these reasons, Madam Kah Walla says ‘we cannot commune with a government that systematically violates our freedom of assembly and demonstration! We cannot agree with a government that does not know dialogue, continues to refuse essential electoral reforms and which is, in a reckless rush, driving our country through its governance, towards certain chaos in the future’.
Based on similar claims the Popular Action Party, PAP of detained Justice Ayah Paul Abine in its May 11 press release holds that they shall not participate on this year’s national unity for two major reasons. Signed by the party’s Secretary General, Akoson Raymond, the press release stated that ‘the regime of Paul Biya has vehemently refused to, as per prescription by the international community to unconditionally release all English Cameroonians arrested between October 2016 to present; more so, whereas the conduct of Yaounde exposes a hidden agenda and absolute lack of political will to engage in constructive dialogue as recommended by English Cameroonians and international community namely the AU, UN, UK and the US towards resolving the Anglophone Question’
The release further insinuates that militants of the party shall on May 20 dress in black to mourn all those who have died in the course of the ‘English Cameroon’ emancipation struggle.
The USDP of Prince Ekosso on her part also said they will be boycotting “due to the unwillingness of the Yaounde regime to solve the anglophone problem and to ease the tension which now exist in our nation”. Ther also announced that they shall “on the 26th of May join the SDF, MRD, CPP, PAP to commemorate those who have lost their lives in this our decaying nation.”
“Any political party or citizen of Cameroon who marches on 20 May 2017 must understand that he/she endorses the celebration of a virtual, abstract, imaginary and budgetivore type of unity in Cameroon.” A USDP release reads in parts