Never in the history of this country since reunification, more than half a century now, has the country experienced such a terrifying movement of people and goods from one part of the country to the other, for the fear of their dear lives.
It is however not a strange phenomenon because it is all about war and the rumours of war. If it did appear to us at the very beginning simply as a distant sound that hardly disturbs, the reality is that we are in a state of war. A war which we have always believed was emotionally declared at a time when the nation had in hand, a serious problem to resolve. Peace therefore eluded us.
As if this was not enough to direct our wisdom towards selecting our priorities, we put the presidential elections at the forefront, as if the nation will come to a standstill if the elections were postponed instead of suing for the much preferred option of dialogue and peace. In these circumstances, we are certain that a postponement would have been acclaimed by all good wishers because it would have certainly opened up for an enabling environment for wounds to be healed and the nation given a new sense of direction as well as a new assurance for a better future.
At the moment it seems to us that all the noise about election campaigns which are usually a prelude to the elections proper, has simply exposed us to one big irony that a nation is going into an election in the heat of a gruesome crisis shrouded in insecurity involving two of the ten regions of the country. That people, of-course prospective voters are fleeing from one part of the country that seems to bear the brunt of insecurity to the other part of the country that seems to enjoy relative peace is a development difficult to explain.
The story is not a difficult one to tell, but rather a pathetic one, that for close to two years since the current crisis erupted, hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced, some now living in bushes, others fleeing to neighbouring towns and villages or even neighbouring countries. Yet this does not seem to remind the organisers of the elections that these people are already being disenfranchised and that the face value of the results of the elections will not be as convincing as the organisers will want to believe it will be. It is certainly going to be an election without electors in the two Anglophone regions of the North West and South West.
So the question to ask here is whether whoever wins will be justified to claim that he was also elected by a reasonable percentage of the people of these two regions? We would still insist that the timing of the presidential elections does not provide the necessary factors of convenience to guarantee a free, fair and credible election. We certainly appreciate the election organising body, Elections Cameroon – ELECAM, as well as the administrations of the two regions for the assurances that have been offered that there should be no cause for alarm. This assurance states that everything is being put in place to guarantee the security of people and property. But this does not seem to hold much water.
On the contrary, even as we write, people are still being seen evacuating towns in both the North West and South West regions to other towns and villages in the other regions of the country. This, we believe has been compounded by the recent call by the South Elite Forum for more troops to be deployed to the South West region.
This we think is not consoling at all for a people who have had enough bad experience from the presence of the military around them. We shall, however, not stop ringing the bell for a meaningful and an inclusive dialogue.
The population of these regions have been scared enough to trust mere words void of meaningful action. We stand for the dialogue option for peace, not a military solution.