God the Politician

18. Spiritual Democracy

131 18
Spiritual Democracy efore the creation of Operational Command in the SDF, MPs had in the year 2000 done something spectacular that to a considerable degree substantiated Fru Ndi’s promise of an impending ‘earthquake’ as his MPs took up positions in the National Assembly. SDF MPs attempted a march on the presidential palace in Etoudi, Yaoundé. The essence of the demonstration was to draw public attention, including that of the diplomatic corps, to the reluctance of the Biya regime to carry out democratic reforms in Cameroon. Alerting the international community is one thing the Biya regime dreads because its survival is dependent on foreign financial donors .Even if the country is burning, let the international community be ignorant of the facts. It was in an attempt to stop the MPs that public attention was drawn to the event, especially as security operatives, sent to stop the parliamentarians, inevitably clashed with them. Realizing how determined the MPs were and given that their immunity shielded them from instant arrest and prosecution, Biya was left with no alternative than to sign a decree creating an election-monitoring organ. The National Elections Observatory (NEO), as it was called, had eleven members, at least one from each of Cameroon’s ten province and had as principal function the supervision and control of elections. Its detractors, judging the body by the word ‘Observatory’, quickly concluded that its function did not extend beyond simply watching the electoral process and commenting on it. In reality, the NEO’s powers were limited as it could not declare the final results of elections, a function still to be carried out by the Supreme Court acting in the place of the Constitutional Council, but it was certainly not the ‘toothless bulldog’ and loud sounding nothing which many observers perceived it to be. The NEO’s pioneer president was an ailing one-time member of government by the name of Enoch Kwayeb who unfortunately died without striking an electoral blow and was replaced by a lawyer, Francois Xavier Mbuyom, from the same West Province. The vice president was an Anglophone, Diana Acha Morfaw, who to date is the only woman in the Observatory. However the person whose activities gave the NEO the greatest B 132 measure of credibility in the eyes of Cameroonians and the international community was Nico Halle, the Northwest representative. He is a lawyer and international legal consultant based in Douala. Before his appointment, he had been chosen by the traditional rulers (Fons) of his province of origin to be their Ntumfor or ambassador. This was in recognition of work initiatives he had undertaken over the previous two decades or more towards the advancement of unity and peace in the province. It was he who strove to make the public understand the real function of the NEO .Its detractors had to come to terms with the harsh reality that it was prejudicial to condemn a structure or organization without first giving it a chance. Those who continued to nurse doubts about the NEO underwent an intellectual metamorphosis after attending the first sensitization meetings organized by Ntumfor on the eve of the 2002 double elections, meetings that began and ended with prayers and brought together stakeholders in the electoral process. These included political party leaders, the administration, civil society and even clergymen and women. Those who had initially considered the NEO as an elaborate joke listened in total bewilderment as the NEO representative castigated potential election riggers and gave senior divisional officers firm instructions against election rigging. He did not end at giving instructions. Ntumfor personally went to the field and kept members of the administration on tenterhooks, ordering them to bring electoral registers and expunging the names of ghost or non-existent voters. He ordered that polling stations be removed from palaces and private premises. The idea was to put an abrupt stop to the practice whereby traditional rulers and powerful individuals took advantage of their positions to rig elections in favour of parties they adhered to. The NEO representative held strongly that free, fair and transparent elections were guarantors of peace and that 95% of the wars in the world have electoral malpractice as their root cause. It was also his firm conviction that credible elections would give Cameroon significant bargaining power with the international community and would mean that investors would want to become involved in a country where there was democracy, peace and, above all, accountability. The most arduous task of the NEO representative...