One of the most significant recommendations of the “Major National Dialogue” (MND) is for the removal of Government Delegates in City Councils. The Government Delegates of Limbe, Kumba and Bamenda (Andrew Motanga Monjimba, Victor Nkelle and Vincent Ndumu respectively) are all our Anglophone brothers. In maintaining DOs, SDOs and Governors who are in overwhelming majority Franchophones, we see they are keeping their own and throwing away ours.
This may sound a childish joke. It is, as much as it is not. Inasmuch as appointed Government Delegates were a nuisance to elected Mayors, they were less an impediment to local development than SDOs and Governors. They play the same spoiling role the Federal Inspector appointed by Yaounde played in curtailing the powers of the elected Prime Ministers of the autonomous federated state of West Cameroon during the 1961-1972 Federation.
Mayors: big winners
Among the big winners of the MND are mayors. If the Government’s decentralization blueprint and emergency funds for post-war reconstruction will be implemented to any significant measure, mayors will be among the major beneficiaries. Revenue to municipal councils would be significantly augmented. It could be a windfall!
The Decentralization and Local Development Committee recommends thus:
– The disbursement of special allocation to each of the Councils in the North West and South West to facilitate the effective resumption to certain agglomerations;
– In view of the reinforcement of the financial autonomy of local authorities, the committee recommended the:
– A- effective implementation of Section 32 sub 2 of the law on the orientation of Decentralization which stipulates the finance law will determine, on the proposal of the government, the proportion of the State revenue dedicated to the Common Decentralization Fund. IN this connection, the participants proposed that a margin of 10-15% of the State budget be allocated to the Councils
– B- The waiver of the principle on the single treasury account which delays the effective transfer of funds to local authorities.
Add to that the recommendation for the removal of Government Delegates from City Councils and the “substantial reduction of the powers of the supervisory authority” and you understand why mayors enthusiastically took part in the deliberations. More funds, freer hand to manage their affairs. They must be licking their lips – those sure to maintain their seats.
That status: how special?
They say “Special Status” means a federation is on the way for the North West and South West regions under whatever name. I say the one most significant thing that should have suggested any form of real autonomy for the South West and North West, that is election of Governors as proposed by the Decentralization and Local Development committee of the “Major National Dialogue” was deleted from the final recommendations. That is telling.
Nevertheless, Professor Mathias Eric Owona Nguini, law and political science expert, but also son of Professor Joseph Owona who drafted the 1996 Constitution that provided for Decentralization, told me the Special Status plan is for the Northwest and Southwest regions to have Regional Executive Councils, besides the Regional Councils. This is hard to believe, seeing that the recommendation in the Decentralization Committee for Governors or Regional chief executive officers to be elected not appointed, was dropped from the final recommendations.
In other parts of the world, Hong Kong in China, Quebec in Canada and Scotland in England are examples of regions with “special status”. However, in Hong Kong where the Chief Executive is an appointee of Beijing, the current unrest there protesting against Beijing’s stranglehold is telling. They view their Chief Executive the way West Cameroonians viewed the Federal Inspector and how elected mayors view their supervisory authority, especially SDOs.
In Scotland, though they came close to voting to leave the United Kingdom in 2014, they operate conveniently within the UK. Though they have members in the UK House of Commons, they have an elected First Minister who is like a Prime Minister, not appointed by London.
Local or native examples of special status are like Bakweri Town in Buea where natives retreat to protect their special status as indigenes and protect their specificities. The Bantustans in apartheid South Africa and the Native Reserves for Native Americans or American Indians or Red Indians are also examples of territories with special status.
How Yaounde will recognize and demonstrate its recognition of Anglophones’ special status is to wait and see.
AAC III urgently, and end the strike
My post on Facebook on January 24, 2017, weeks after President Paul Biya first mentioned dialogue over this crisis in his 2016 end of year address
1.) PICK OUR DELEGATES: As it stands, President Biya may want to pick whoever he chooses to his dialogue table. It would be in our interest to get together now and choose our delegates to the talks and leave the world and us to judge Biya on this test of his good faith to honour our choice. Let us go back now to Mount Mary, that legendary and highly symbolic venue. Biya may ambush us any time with his own pick. If we mean to talk, ever, if secession isn’t our only option (show me your guns for the war of independence).. (EDITOR’S NOTE: this was way before the armed struggle started), we ought to find a way to make the talks work, until they fail and the world would have born us witness for our good faith.
2.) VERITABLE FOUMBAN II: As it stands, the framework proposed by Biya for this dialogue is grossly watered down from our great expectations of a two-party “Foumban II” framework. It is a dupe, a mirage, but dialogue of any kind being an endeavour to seek common ground, there should be room for agreeing to recast Biya’s proposed framework to an acceptable dimension. It is ours to push for. That can be done as preliminaries to the talks. We need our designated delegates to do even that. We would neither do that from the streets nor from social media; neither shall that be done by multiple, uncoordinated voices, each king of their own corner of the jungle. We should not be a hydra-headed monster (EDITOR’S NOTE: we have become), even if unanimity may be a pipe-dream.
3.) RELEASE OUR POWs: We won’t go to the table to speak with an adversary who, sitting at the table with us, has his arrogant feet in rugged boots, resting on the captured heads of our “prisoners of war” (POWs). As pre-condition for our participation in talks, we must obtain the immediate and unconditional release of Justice Hon. Ayah Paul Abine, Barrister Agbor Balla Nkongho Felix, Dr Neba Fontem, Mancho Bibixy and our other unnamed detainees held in strange jail houses. (EDITOR’S NOTE: This was about a year before the arrest and extradition of Nera10.)
4.) FEDERALISM: We shall go to the table with our federalism agenda. It won’t be a taboo subject around the table. If calls for secession would be ruled as subversive or seditious, calls for a federation that we already enjoyed in this country cannot be so. Should federalism be considered as divisive, then even Yaounde’s touted decentralization would be too. (EDITOR’S NOTE: This was way before Restoration became the “official” position of the struggle.)
5.) CALL OFF THE STRIKE: Opinions may vary over the need to persist in the strike now after the signal from Yaounde. There may be two strategic options: (a) to carry on and arm-twist Yaounde further and maintain the heat even through the talks, or (b) having made our point, to call off the strike and allow schools to resume, while leaving the world to bear witness to our good faith and judge Yaounde on theirs. Wars are concluded around a table, whatever the talks are called. Even our “zero option” for restoration of our independence which for many is non-negotiable, can only be achieved after negotiations on the terms of its application. We may all feel good seeing us punish Yaounde so bad. There must be great satisfaction seeing us – a neglected people – bring the monster to its knees – he only withholding an open apology out of shame. But we must not forget that we set out to do this to achieve something and that can only be achieved sitting around a dialogue table. We must go to the table, whatever the case may be. We shall never obtain any of them via social media nor through ghost towns and school boycott alone.
As effective as they have been, they only have their limited effect of sending signals of our resolve and creating public and international awareness. Our people must be hailed for demonstrating our resolve that shows the depth of our pain, but having done that and made our point, let us not banalize it into an irrelevant monotony. Let us rather hold it sacred and keep it handy like our joker (a permanent blackmail) to use as a future bargaining weapon even during the talks, if and when we feel short-changed.
Protesting and dialoguing are not mutually exclusive, are they? If we won’t talk, then let’s prepare for war. Which battalion are you leading? In which forest or which street corner? (EDITOR’S NOTE: this was way before the armed struggle started.)
Biblical Israelites were that clever faced with attacks from hostile neighbours while they built the wall of Jerusalem. They were advised to hold the trowel in one hand and a weapon in the other. Nehemiah 4:17 (New International Version): “Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other”. You may read the entire chapter 4; it speaks to us.
6. REPRESENTATIVE DELEGATES: In choosing our delegates, we must source from deep down the history of our struggle, bearing in mind that this round of battle might have taken us to the threshold, but there has been a prolonged war with other battles fought in many forms and fronts across the decades of our tribulations and that there may be more battles to fight (we hope not)… (EDITOR’S NOTE: war and battle were used then only literarily as there was no armed struggle yet.)
7.) GOOD FAITH IN AD HOC COMMITTEE REFORMS: As a show of good faith to reassure us that anything good can come out of talking with Yaounde and that resolutions (not recommendations) of the national dialogue committee will be implemented to the letter, let us first see the outcome of the ad hoc committees addressing Anglophone technical issues. We thus challenge Yaounde to implement, point by point, agreements reached in the teachers’ Ad Hoc Committee and Yaounde’s unilateral promise to address lawyers’ outlined grievances, despite the breakdown of talks.
I make this call and these proposals, bearing in mind the pain we have endured as a people across the decades. I bear in mind Yaounde’s manifest bad faith at different occasions if not always. I do this believing that Yaounde, having seen our resolve to this unprecedented measure, has learned its lesson to dare us no more. I do this believing that with any good faith from both sides, Cameroon can still work. Else, both sides know what awaits us if we miss this golden opportunity.