The Campaign Trail

Chapter Four

15 Chapter Four resident Utum Tar loved power and knew all the tricks in the world to keep it. The state was his personal firm that had to be protected at all cost. Threats to political stability were like threats to the President’s own health and had to be dealt with accordingly. For this reason, he put in place all available mechanisms to check any ambition which verged on destabilisation. The first and most important instrument to keep his power intact was the army. Structurally, he was the head of the armed forces, though he did not know where or how to pull a trigger. He could appoint or sack anyone in the army, from General to soldier of the rank and file. But the army was not only held in control through high-handedness. He also knew that he had to pamper his “BOYS” with good salaries. No one knew from where he had his inspirations, for as a mission school teacher he had never known a luxurious salary. With a very meagre earning, he had spent his life measuring every financial undertaking with a ruler and teaspoon. That was life in the past. Now he was Head of State and lived in abundance. His world view had changed, and so he understood why every army officer needed to live well. He thus made it possible for the youngest officer to be able to ride a Renault 12 car, the cheapest at the time. He provided them with loan facilities for the purpose.. Yet most soldiers spent this money on drinking and never bought a car. Some knew very well that buying the car was one problem but running it was a greater one. Those who really bought the cars used them for clandestine transportation during their idle moments. There were many such moments because there was peace in the country. The daily routine of a soldier was P 16 simple: rise up early, go to morning assembly, execute some brisk orders from command in military jargon, march around, do some jogging and close for the day. With this straightjacket routine, most of the army officers easily grew out of shape and lost the physical fitness required by the profession. Some of the elderly ones, who had taken to drinking heavily, had developed pot bellies as indicators of affluence. Such ‘pregnancies’ were a common sight amongst most state workers in general because, with the growth of brewery industries in independent Kutuma, drinking was embraced by the indigenous culture. The famous prestige beer known as Gold Harp was heavily consumed, which resulted in the acronym “Government Officers like Drinking Heavily after Receiving Payment.” The Kutuma soldiers drank to ascertain the veracity of this abbreviation. Many people joined the army or police without even elementary literacy. The story goes that an illiterate police officer asked a school teacher for his identification paper. The latter presented his identity card with his photograph affixed on it. Unfortunately for the illiterate police officer, the teacher had taken this picture when he was wearing a beard. Now that he was closely shaven, the policeman argued that this was not the same person. He argued that this bushy picture did not resemble the person in front of him. All attempts to convince him to read the name and compare it with that on other identification papers fell on deaf ears. When he realized that he was being ridiculed for illiteracy, he gave the school teacher a detention for one day! The fear of the police in those days was the beginning of wisdom. Knowing that the army was so important for state stability, recruitment was carefully scrutinized. Most of the recruits were from the president’s tribal area. Some could neither read nor write. The most important tests were 17 physical fitness and loyalty. However, for the sake of regional balance, a few recruits were handpicked from the other tribal areas of Kutuma Republic. Another sister strategic department for monitoring power was the secret police. These were plain clothes security officers, whose role was to gather any information about activities that could threaten the peace of the state. They had many tricks for carrying out their tasks. They usually went about with small portable radio-tape recorders. They would visit off-licenses, as liquor drinking businesses were called. Here they would, unnoticed, record people’s voices and take the recordings back to their...