BY SIMON NDIVE KALLA
Eight months after a planned SDF march in Douala was aborted due to a government ban, Cameroon’s leading opposition party suffered a similar faith last Saturday, October 21.
The Deido neighborhood and most other major arteries of the city were in a total lockdown as government deployed troops with heavy military armada to block the SDF regional executive and militants from even stepping out of their houses to carry on with the peace march.
The march, according to the Littoral regional chairman of SDF, Hon. Jean Michel Nintcheu, was to sensitise SDF militants and Cameroonians at large on federalism as an option for the form of state. The SDF has enshrined it in various manifestoes during past elections.
Secondly, the SDF authorities say the march was in solidarity with “their Anglophone brothers” who have been “massacred” and arrested during the demonstrations of September 22 and October 1, 2017 respectively.
The administrative authorities of Douala I initially issued an authorisation for the march to go ahead but on a sudden twist banned the march on Thursday October 19, barely two days to the event. The authorities said that they had information that the SDF authorities had other motives for the march.
The authorities also said they had intelligence that secessionists were planning to infiltrate the SDF march. An allegation which the SDF authorities rebuffed and insisted that they will go ahead with the march.
Hon. Nintcheu was later arrested and forcibly taken to his residence before the march could even start.
A few members of the organization, Stand Up Cameroon, led by Edith Kah Wallah braved the odds to march but were suddenly muffled by the security forces.
Around the Deido neighbourhoods and infront of the omnisport stadium, cars and pedestrians were blocked forcing even shop owners to close their shops. Two persons were allegedly arrested infront of Quiferou Diedo.
Two journalists working with a local TV station were equally arrested and their cameras and phones seized, they were later released and their property returned to them.
Government’s ban of the SDF march attracted a flurry of condemnation by other political parties, civil society and civil society activists.
They accused the government of playing double standards in its treatment of political parties.
While the government accuses the SDF of inserting other parties who were not initially mentioned in the original authorization like the CPP of Kah Wallah and UPC, observers were quick to note that on October 1, authorities gave permission to the ruling CPDM party to march, a march which later saw the involvement of other parties of the presidential majority like the UNDP, UDC, National Salvation Front.