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81 13 Our Book of Revelations1 M y priestly hangover is still with me. Well, you don’t get over an abortive attempt at “fada-work” so easily, do you? My Bible is never more than a heart-beat away! Last week, I was meditating on Matthew 24:15. Today: my thoughts have taken one giant stride and landed on Revelations, the last Book of the Holy Bible. The Book of Revelations must be one of the least read books of the Bible. You hardly find even scripture scholars who are very eager to discuss it. And perhaps for good reason. Anything revelatory always conjures a feeling of uneasiness. Most revelations are better left unrevealed. Well, we seem to be landed with a big book of revelations of which the first two chapters have just been read out to us. Shall we hear the rest of the remaining 20 chapters? I hope not! It is unpredictable what that may do to our collective psyche. I remember Richard Nixon and his “Watergate” mess of the early seventies. At the time, “Watergate” was described as “the greatest scandal of the century.” That is because nobody was thinking of Africa or was futurologist enough to catch a clairvoyant glimpse of Cameroon in 1992. Our own “Mvomekagate” would certainly be bidding for the gold medal when all the “gates” of the century eventually assemble for the Olympics. Aha!, before I continue, I have just remembered that I had a book entitled I AM NOT A CROOK which one of my ‘friends’ borrowed several years ago and has never returned. If you are the one, please, kindly rush the book back to me as I would love to reread it. Thanks in advance! Back to Richard Nixon and his Watergate scandal. An apocryphal anecdote has it that, as the Watergate scandal started unfolding, one of Nixon’s little kids who, like every other American, had read the screaming newspaper headlines and who, in addition, had been enduring the daily teasing and provocations of schoolmates, came back home from school one day and asked Nixon: “Daddy, are you 82 Road Companion to Democracy and Meritocracy a crook?” Nixon was touched to a point of tears. So, the next day, he arranged a television appearance in which he addressed the American people in these words: “Fellow Americans, I know all of you are dying to know whether your president is a crook. Well, I assure you that I am not a crook. Long live the United States of America!” He was lying, of course. But he must have calculated that a lie at a time like that was a lesser evil than continuing to keep quiet. Some silences are so loud and so incriminating that any gaff would be preferable. You know, like the guy who was caught last year right here in my “quartier” stealing clothes from the washing line. The fellow said he was only helping to remove the clothes because rain was threatening, even though the sun was actually blazing at the time. After doing many things wrong, Nixon finally did something right. He resigned. By so doing, he ensured that the “Book of Revelations” of his executive crimes would not be completely read out to the public, which would certainly have happened during the proceedings of the impeachment which was already underway. By resigning, he saved his children, relatives, admirers, friends, and supporters a lot of unnecessary anguish. Just imagine that someone you have idealized and idolized and taken for a saint and superstar, is uncovered as being nothing but a common criminal! The result would surely be irremediable despair. There is no doubt that our own Nixon was generally perceived in the light of a political superstar, if not a living saint, by most Cameroonians in the years between 1982 and 1985. Things started nose-diving for the worse around 1986 and, if he had been a wise person who could read the signs of the times, he would have resigned then. Had he done so, he would surely have remained a hero in the consciousness of most Cameroonians. But he did not. And when rumours started circulating that the economy, which only a few years earlier had been receiving triple alpha ratings from international economic experts, was in bad shape, he went on national television and pompously declared: “Le Cameroun se porte bien.” He must, however, have been right at the time, considering that the pillage and rape of the banks...

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