EDITORIAL

SDF 2015 agenda: Long in sound bite but hollow in content

  

The SDF at its last executive meeting in Bamenda resolved to organize the Burkina Faso-type demonstration next year to force a return to a single term presidential mandate renewable once as it was in 2008. The Guardian Post supports a constitutional amendment in which a president rules for five years renewable once but we are diametrically opposed to the proposed means by the SDF. It will fail.

The Cameroon opposition, fractured into some 300 miniature parties, for egocentric purposes by every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to be called a “leader”, is impossible to unite. The “leading” opposition SDF has also lost the charm of the glorious days of the Union for Change.

Chairman John Fru Ndi no longer has the verve  to pull the crowds of the 90s while his SDF, though still incontrovertibly the main opposition party in the country, continues to decline as its minute  minority  in the legislature and councils depicts.

So how is the chairman going to assemble a teeming mob for a peaceful “revolution” with an Achilles' heel?  At the NEC meeting last week, it was reported that the party vowed to paralyse the Biya regime in 2015. A strategic team under the leadership of Fru Ndi who was given the power to appoint more members was created to effect the needed change next year.

It is not the first time Chairman Fru Ndi and his party have come out with intrepid decisions long in screaming sound bite and hollow in short content.

In 1999 when Fru Ndi was at the apex of his popularity, he yelled that the ballot box had failed to bring change to Cameroon politics. He then promised that the party would mobilise the opposition into a formidable force to change the regime in 2000.

Articulate pundits at the time argued that if the ballot had failed, the next option was either the bullet or mass demonstration. There is no body in the SDF or other peace-loving Cameroonians who will opt for the bullet. As for mass demonstrations, the prospects for mobilization are bleak.

Fru Ndi is no longer the crowd puller of the 90s. The SDF has shrunk even to the point of losing grounds to the CPDM in its once dominant North West fief. With that kind of followership, the chairman must admit that his fire-spitting oratory that lured multitudes of militants has gone dim.

The SDF also needs change after decades of stay put leadership to come out with innovative and pragmatic decisions, not fanciful rhetoric just to attract headlines.

What for instance, has the shadow cabinet which was appointed over a decade ago and remains unreshuffled done or said since members were in office? What was the party’s position when the fuel subsidies were removed? Where does the SDF economic position stand towards 2035 emergence? Can the SDF vouch it is more democratic than the CPDM given, for instance the Tubah and Kumba council scandals the party dictated that incumbent mayors crushed in  free and fair electoral college elections should  be retained? Aren’t those signs that the SDF can no longer pull the masses to the streets?

The inability of the SDF to unite the opposition has been Fru Ndi’s insistence of being the leader rather than the king-maker who himself cannot be king.

The opposition once came close to getting a deal to challenge incumbent Paul Biya. Ndam Njoya was elected among the opposition leaders to stand as a unique candidate. Fru Ndi stormed out and his electoral performance since then has been below 10 per cent? Cameroon does not have the same scenario like the case in Burkina Faso which the SDF wants to copy.

The Burkinabe opposition was united to block a change in the constitution that would have permitted Blaise Compaore take another term after 27 years in office. Their opposition leaders had the capability to rally the youths while the security forces took side with the people. Can it be the same in Cameroon?  If the SDF had the guts there would have done that when the constitution was being change? They did not and even in a timid demonstration, they were mocked as 'apprentis sorciers'.

President Biya is more comfortable with the SDF than the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC. Unlike in the past when Fru Ndi vowed he could talk with Biya only in the presence of a third party, the chairman long gave up that bluff.

He met with the president in Bamenda at the 50^th anniversary celebration of the army without a third person. Since then, he has never failed to honour any presidential invitation; be it at the Unity Palace or at the Ebolowa agro-pastoral show. Can’t he use such audiences to convince Biya to present a bill in parliament to return the presidential mandate to two terms?

Just fresh from celebrating the 32^nd anniversary of the president on the throne, CPDM lackeys are already calling for the president to run again in 2018.

In as much as The Guardian Post is opposed to the president taking another term in 2018, we however disagree with the SDF position to attempt to organise a demonstration. It will not work. If they truly want to rattle the regime, why don’t they ask their senators, parliamentarians and mayors to resign? Wouldn’t that embarrass the president who is deputy patron of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association to make some concessions?

Is the SDF sure it can defeat the CPDM even if Biya decides to step aside? What is the economic programme of the SDF which can be used to tackle the problems of mass unemployment, corruption, embezzlement and deficit in balance of trade?

It must be said that the SDF policies, if policies there are, gyrates on “change”. Biya once asked them what they want to change. We admit the ballot failed in 1992 to put Fru Ndi on the throne of Unity Palace. Since, then his political fortunes have fizzled out with changing times while key members of the party who try to raise a finger against Fru Ndi’s dictatorial powers have been flushed out using SDF’s obnoxious Article 8.2.

With the creation of ELECAM, Cameroonians are beginning to build confidence in the power of the ballot. It would be an up-stream task for Fru Ndi to succeed even to bring the main opposition leaders to buy their “revolutionary” action.

NUDP national chairman, Bouba Bello and Ndam Njoya of the UDC and Garga Haman of ADD, to say the least have become increasingly-suspicious of Fru Ndi. Ayah Paul who seems more to be titling towards the leadership of the SCNC and Kah Walla, a former executive member of the SDF will surely not give a hood to Fru Ndi’s dream “revolution”.

The only revolution in the Cameroon opposition scene, we believe, is for the chairman and his sit-tight antiquated members of NEC who have ran out of new ideas to change their spot with dynamic members rather than continue to make self-ridiculing pronouncements that will not work.