I attended the Press Conference of candidate Joshua Osih and came out completely enlightened. Osih presented his program in English and French and answered three series of questions.
What to take away from this is that Osih has developed a solid and structured programme, based on a patient collection of data in the field, participatory consultations, economic and sociological analyses, and financial simulations to assess its operational feasibility.
After presenting a bleak picture of the political, economic, and social situation in Cameroon, the Honorable Osih attributed these multiple crises to a defective institutional model that has concentrated all powers and resources in the hands of a single individual and strangled the nation’s productive capacities.
Clearly, relentlessly, and fiercely, candidate Osih has identified unitary power as the main culprit for Cameroon’s blockage, the main source of misery, unemployment, and political violence.
Faced with this failed model that the CPDM of Paul Biya and his opposants-Ministres want to perpetuate, Osih proposes a new social contract based on the appropriation of development by sub-state entities, starting with the Commune. It is the Commune that must initiate everything, and it is only when the Commune is too small in relation to the domain that the missions are transferred to the Regions, based on the principle of subsidiarity.
And iteratively between the Regions and the central State.
Two main questions concerned federalism. The first concerned the administrative decentralisation adopted by the current regime. The Honorable Osih noted that administrative decentralisation was a political will of the central power to subcontract certain tasks that it had chosen itself, in an opportunistic manner and particularly manipulable by its decrees and its management of the calendar. This emptied the autonomy of the sub-state entities of all its substance.
In contrast, Federalism was based on constitutional provisions that were binding on all, including the sharing of powers and resources.
The second concerned the commonplace that federalism was abolished in Cameroon in 1972 because it had shown its limits. The Honorable Osih denounced this gross historical imposture, because, he said, all the relevant economic indicators of this period clearly show that it was during this period that Cameroon experienced its best growth. Which is also true because despite the war against the UPCistes, and despite unfavorable factors such as the low intellectual level and the failure of transport networks, growth there averaged 7%. A rate that has never been found since.
In fact, federalism was abolished under pressure from France, which intended by this fact to control all of Cameroon through a single individual, because precisely, unitary power is the main means by which colonial powers control former colonies; it is easier and less costly…
Another fundamental question concerned the Currency and in particular, leaving the CFA. Candidate Osih recalled that this was a major concern of his programme, but he placed himself rather on a reform perspective where the CFA becomes a purely African currency, freed from foreign influence and having its own exchange rate. This masterful approach allows safeguarding the achievements that are the community nature of the CFA and better rigor in its management. The Honorable Osih proposes an addendum to his monetary policy through binarization on the national territory.
Osih’s programme addresses a large number of other more operational issues relating to governance, social policies, unemployment, and infrastructure. It emphasises emergencies such as the cycle of violence in the NOSO and insecurity in the Far North, to which rapid solutions must be found.
These emergencies overlap with the concerns of all Cameroonians and all political parties, starting with the CPDM. But what distinguishes Osih from others is in the approach: Osih poses the problems as objectives that public policies must solve and not accidents to which singular responses must be opposed.
HE STARTS FROM THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE THAT FEDERALISM HAS A RESTRUCTURING AND ABOVE ALL THERAPEUTIC CHARACTER.
In other words, federalism itself mechanically provides solutions to a large number of problems or allows them to be posed with a significantly reduced acuity. Hence their resolution at an infinitely lower cost than in the current model.
This is a qualitative break in the approach to strategic governance of the State.
Finally, the Honorable Osih was not afraid to address this famous story of coalitions. He does not oppose it, but he insisted on the need for ideological and programmatic coherence, denouncing the opportunistic postures and coteries based on the ethno-regional mathematics of people who hope to capture the State to make a renewed Biya.
As for the control of voting in the polling stations and the Electoral Commissions, the Honorable Osih presented the work done for many years, indicating that his party already covers 90% of the needs, and that a significant effort is currently being deployed to reach all the constituencies.
MY OBSERVATION
Osih’s Programme is currently and until further notice, the only viable and credible alternative to that of Biya’s CPDM.
The CPDM programme is contained in its strategic framework which includes the Vision of an Emerging Cameroon in the year 2035, divided into decades including the DSCE and since 2021, the SND30, as well as its sectoral strategies.
These are enormous documents, formidably structured, with in-depth and robust analyses, and a constellation of solutions to all the problems identified in Cameroon.
There is no problem in Cameroon that does not have a solution in the Priority Action Plans of the Sectoral Strategies developed by the Government of Biya!
None!
But as a result, this programme has missed all its targets, including a growth rate projected at over 6% while it is now stagnating at 3%, just above the vegetative growth of the population. It has left only a country bloodless, exhausted by a debt on which it has become totally dependent and which it can no longer pay.
The other programmes that have been presented to me are only extracts or copies of this monumental CPDM programme that has failed.
Osih’s genius is to have understood that the evil was not external to the institutional system that could therefore fight it. The evil was in the system itself, of which it was the logical consequence.
And that is fundamentally what makes the big difference between the Federalists and the Unitarians, the absolute demarcation that makes any collaboration impossible.
Dieudonné Essomba