According to the Constitution of Cameroon (CC) it’s the President who shall ensure safety and the conditions necessary to the development of the citizens of Cameroon. Given the present situation we notice like the most of the people of Cameroon the failure of the Politics of the Nation that has been advocated by the Head of State for forty years and implemented by the government according to article 11 par. 1 and article 5 par. 2 CC.
I. CRITICAL ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL SITUATION IN CAMEROON
To illustrate this in some figures - since President Paul Biya seized the power in 1982 – the Cameroon is confronted with a reduction of its income resulting from the exploitation of raw materials. The latter include oil and other like cacao, cotton or coffee. This reduction – estimated at about 329 billion francs CFA – amounts to 8,2% of the GDP (Republic of Cameroon, 2013). The national poverty has practically not diminished (39,9% today compared with 40,2% in 2001). The employment rate has diminished by 10% and the unemployment comes to 17%. This level of unemployment hides however the underemployment the rate of which is 75,8%. This situation has developed accompanied by an important growth of the informal sector which employs about 90% of the active population (HRI/CORE/CMR/2013, par. 23-31).
The public supply of basic social services is still insufficient: According to the World Bank (2015) 46,3% of the population has no access to electricity. As far as water is concerned, the AFD (2013) indicates that the rate of access to it amounts to 26% (in comparison in Senegal 78% and in the Ivory Coast 62%). The BAD (2012) emphasizes that the country has an inadequate transportation network given its size and its volume of activities. The roads sector is the principal means of transportation and ensures 85% of the volume of exchanges and it adds up to 50’000 km of which 24% are in a god condition and less than 10% are asphalted. The roads in the countryside represent 25% of the network which means that several zones of the country are landlocked. The most important access roads that interconnect the urban centers are often saturated and dangerous. The railways sector is the second means of transportation used mostly for the transportation of goods. It’s length is of 1’245 km, it’s over 40 years old and hasn’t been renovated.
II. SAFETY AND POLITICAL FAILURES
In spite of the degrading social and economic situation underlined above and the development priorities of Cameroon defined in the DRSP, on the instruction of the President of the Republic Paul Biya the Government of Cameroon sought China a financing at the concession rate of the amount 550 billion francs CFA for the construction of stadiums that would host the CAN of 2016 and 2019 ( female football ACN 2016 in Cameroon from 19 November 2016 to 03 December 2016, 33rd edition of the football ACN 2019 from 19 January 2019 to 10 February 2019). The football competitions to take place in Cameroon are regarded as “ideological curtain behind which the real disaster is concentrating” (Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, quoted by Gras, 2004, p.17). As an illustration on the safety level, Modestine Carole Tchatchouang Yonzou, a human rights defender who is very active on the social media Facebook and has over 20’000 “friends”, published on 24 October 2016 on his wall following the Eséka tragedy a very interesting article that highlights what she calls “ BLOOD PACT BETWEEN BIYA AND LUCIFER OR APOCALYPSE IN THE UM-NYOBE SINCE BIYAS COMING TO POWER?”. According to this author “Cameroon vibrates to the rhythm of tragedies with a genocidal balance-sheet. In all 57’682 died for the most part in total impunity. Among the raised facts the killed on the occasion of the coup of April 1984, those of dead cities in 1990, the catastrophe of lac Nyoss in Bamenda in 1988, the catastrophe of Nsam in 1998, the dead of the operational commandment in 2000, the dead from cholera, the recurring dead in car, train and airplane accidents… And the terrorist nebulous of Boko Haram since 2013 that follows the recurring phenomenon of the road cutters in the extreme north of the country. And more recently the victims of the Eséka tragedy of 21 October 2016 in Cameroon. The author concludes her article underlying that these macabre facts “prove clearly that the establishment of the death certificate of Cameroon is not far… And we shall all take care otherwise all of us will die.”
As far as the politics are concerned the term in office of the present President of the Republic expires in 2018 the probable year of presidential, parliament, and municipal elections. In this respect the organization of the ACN in football will be high jacked in order to “broadcast a chimerical effect “of the dictatorial power in front of the failure of the political program of the latter announced on the occasion of the elections of 2011 founded on big achievements. According to Gras (2004) “the football spectacle, offered as a model, doesn’t give the individual anything else but the solution to identify in an illusory manner when the liberal modernity doesn’t allow to do it in a democratic way and according to the progressive and citizen aspirations” (Gras, 2004, p. 17). In order to finish this thought as far as politics is concerned, Gras (2004) makes an interesting parallel between the prison seen as an institution and the sports in a dictatorial context and shows clearly how their functioning and their organizational modes have similarities.
Indeed, the Machiavellian plan of Paul Biya stressed by the money lenders to stabilize the management of public affairs consists in diabolizing a number of his political friends from the RDPC party the objective of which was to ensure a transition of power on the occasion of the elections in 2011 in Cameroon. He also does not accept the revision of the constitution of -2008 putting limits to the Presidential mandate. Undercover of “Operation Sparrow hawk” an important part of the political elite of his party – with in the very beginning of the list the Prime minister Ephraim Inoni and the former President’s Secretary General Marafat Ahmidou Yaya – was sued and arrested on the grounds of misappropriation of public money . Therefore – in the same manner as the football distract the masses’ attention from political struggles by neutralizing the claims and by helping to preserve the established order, the never-ending trials and aerostations have allowed to discard a big part of potential candidates to the succession of the President in his own party and this was to keep his dictatorial power on the inside of his political power the RPDC. In Gras’ opinion (2004, p. 17), the football competitions have the function to “annihilate the tensions by diverting the bodily commitment towards a playful activity by putting the participants in the precisely delimited spaces (stadium, training hall, stand, armchairs …)”. The detentions have the function to cope with the political spill-overs by excluding the potential political adversaries by qualifying them criminals and economical offenders by enlocking them. In this respect, concludes Gras (2004, p. 17) the football and the prison “are the tool in the service of the” dictatorial “power used to cope with the spill-overs that would challenge” the perpetuation of the dictatorial power.
III. CALL FOR SIGNATURES
In the light of the above facts and argumentation The CRED launches a call for signatures to ask the President of the Republic, Paul Biya to resign and the Government to resign as well – and to ask for the compensation of the victims of the tragedies mentioned in part (II).
Geneva, 22 October 2016
For the Circle for Research on the rights and duties of the human person (CRED), the President of the CRED and Coordinator of the National Anti-Discrimination Program in Cameroon (NADP)
Hilaire BELL
… The persons who wish to sign the petition on a paper sheet have the possibility to ask for it through e-mail : credong@yahoo.fr