I know one minister who will change portfolios if he will not be sacked outright. That is for another day.
Those saying the election boycott call by Ambazonia separatist forces and MRC’s Maurice Kamto was of no consequence on the February 9 elections are simply consoling themselves. They are on their own. Those who wear the shoe and know where it pinches are not with them.
CPDM deputy Secretary General, Gregoire Owona who wears the big shoe and should want to conceal his embarrassment, acknowledged the impact of the boycott. An SDF outgoing mayor in Douala who should have been embarrassed by the success of their MRC rivals, expressly said the boycott was a massive success. Ruling party officials in different locations lamented the impact of the boycott call. Unprecedented low voter turnout was reported by concordant sources around the country, even in purported CPDM strongholds in Yaounde.
Kamto might have succeeded to use the boycott to prove, by the abstention that if his followers obeyed his call in such fabulous numbers, they likewise obeyed his call for them to vote for him in October 2018 and thus he won the election. Similarly, the Ambazonia movement has by the effectiveness of their lockdown and its impact in disrupting the elections in most parts of the Anglophone regions, proven it had simply been hibernating and changing strategy when Yaounde and Amba detractors sang its requiem. They thus succeeded to show the election did not hold in the territory they claim as their independent Republic of Ambazonia.
On Canal 2’s election night panel, Owona first tried to contest claims of massive voter boycott of the elections but turned around to rather water down its impact. He said even 23 per cent voter turnout was not a disaster. In Douala, the incumbent SDF mayor for Douala III, Job Theophile Kwapnang told reporters outside his polling centre that the boycott call by “a certain party” was massively heeded to.
In the West Region, an incumbent CPDM mayor for Batcham in the Bamboutous Division, Kengne Paul who also supervised voting in five polling centres, told Radio Batcham at about midday that he had only seen a handful of women come out to vote. He speculated that the men might show up much later in the day. Towards the end of voting a Radio Batcham correspondent reported from Bandjoun that there was overwhelming voter abstention.
In the Anglophone regions where members of government and other ruling CPDM officials travelled in armoured cars with paid TV crewsor resorted to amateur footage to demonstrate normalcy in their semblance of campaigns and voting, they only managed to show themselves indoors with a handful of others, supposedly fellow voters, but whom anyone can tell were their own very aides.
The Kamto boycott call and the Ambazonia lockdown were massively successful. The elections are questionable and shameful. Biya’s reference to MRC as a “small party” was obviously an outburst of frustration. It speaks of the how much the boycott and lockdown hurt him.
Mbah Acha: deal to maintain Mbah Ndam?
How come Rose Mbah Acha Fomundam, Supreme State Audit Minister, was so certain CPDM will win the Batibo council but SDF will have the National Assembly seat? Another Santa deal? Speaking to a video camera from a safe closet, the minister made a declaration that curiously suggested her prior knowledge of winners of the elections in her Momo constituency. She said after 20 years of domination by the SDF, the Batibo council will swing CPDM this time around and in collaboration with their parliamentarian, they will develop their area. It suggested she was certain her CPDM will not win the National Assembly (NASS) seat there, implying she knows SDF’s Mbah Ndam will win.
If the declared “withdrawal” of the outgoing mayor from the race due to threats from separatist forces is logical reason for Mbah Acha’s certainty over CPDM victory, what in the truth she knows made her so ungrudgingly conceded the NASS seat to Mbah Ndam even before the vote?
Seeing the reality on the ground imposed by Ambazonia separatists that has affected Batibo perhaps more than other locations, with deserted villages, absent ELECAM and administrative services and threats of reprisals from armed groups, it has been a general guess that with only administrative die-hards and defence and security forces on hand to vote, it was a foregone conclusion the CPDM would sweep the SDF’s North West stronghold, except those in Boyo where CPDM lists were non-starters. That implied that among others, NASS vice speaker Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam from Momo and the rest of the SDF’s seven MPs seeking reelection stood slim chances. Hons. Esther Ngalla and Awudu Mbaya from Donga-Mantung threw in the towel before the race and in Bui, Joseph Banadzem died and Joseph Wirba quit. SDF candidates stood better chances in Wouri in the absence of MRC that would have spelled doom for their three incumbents.
A Batibo parliament/council sharing deal would not be a first. It is believed CPDM and SDF have been doing so in the Santa (SDF parliament and CPDM the council) to give Zacheus Fornjindam a political base. This could also be a way to maintain Mbah Ndam whose NASS presence is understood to be of strategic value to Yaounde. It is uncertain which other SDF North West incumbents would also benefit.
Biya condemns youth delinquency: et Brenda alors?
Nkolbison schoolboy’s knife. Brenda Biya’s knife. What about that?
In his traditional address to the youth on February 10, President Biya frowned at the stabbing to death of a secondary school teacher in Yaounde and blamed it on the “excesses of our modern society”. He was obviously referring to use of drugs, excessive exposure to social media and adoption of the bad habits thereof such as use of weapons. He called on parents to play there role in child upbringing.
Meanwhile, had the President played his own role as a father when his young, beautiful daughter Brenda Anastasies displayed her first outrageous signs of delinquency in social media videos apparently posted by herself some years back, Biya missed a golden opportunity to strike the iron while it was hot.
In recent social media posts by Brenda, seemingly back on the rails, she is seen to be admonishing her peers to embrace good ways. Yet, when she reportedly brandished a knife – a knife like the Lycee de Nkolbison boy who stabbed his teacher to death – had the President openly rebuked his daughter, the message would have resonated with the rest of the youth.
But what did the president do? He enjoyed a good laugh over it like a laissez-faire parent pampering a wayward child. He was understood to have made light of it when he joked about the “Android Generation” in his subsequent address to the youth in a way that sounded like the waywardness was tolerable under the licence of the realities of the generation. There has been no record of the presidential daughter’s classroom insolence but knowing that kids act in accordance with the countenance of their parents, you bet the President’s joke watered down the seriousness of the Brenda misdeed. Our youth took it lightly and here we are today.