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45 12 From ‘stolen victory’ to ‘moral victory’: Euphemisms for emasculation or capitulation? Monday, November 03, 1997 When victory is qualified, it is no longer victory. The tendency by the leading opposition parties to delude their followers with dubious slogans aimed at camouflaging strategic weaknesses and failure ought to be critically re-examined. So far, the main opposition parties, SDF, UNDP and CDU, have since the beginning of multi-party elections in 1992, failed to satisfactorily explain the rather inconsistent policy to boycott certain elections on the grounds that the rules of the game were unfair and at other times, participating in other elections despite unfair rules. So far the main opposition parties, described as radical, and demonstrably in control of three quarters of the electorate, have not explained why they had failed to come up with that single candidate to face the incumbent in the October 12 election, bearing in mind that since 1992, activists for change have been unanimous that the single candidate strategy seemed the most viable alternative to violent change. Could it be said that the collective good was sacrificed for personal aggrandisement? So far, the radical opposition has failed to explain whether election boycotts were conducted for the mere sake of boycott or whether they were a means to an end, or an end in itself? The tactic, especially by the Social Democratic Front, SDF of wait- and- see, that is giving the impression during periods of political impasse of waiting for an imminent miracle, was crafted to give a false sense of hope and great expectation that seems to have crashed on the dilemma of ‘to dine or not to dine.’ The SDF’s difficulty in deciding whether to withdraw from parliament was compounded by their decision to enter in the first 46 place and, as one observer has noted, Chairman Fru Ndi himself forms part of the difficulty since he is a beneficiary, we are told, of a monthly contribution by SDF MPs. Critics see the SDF entry into parliament not merely as compromise but a surrender, and any attempts to transform a boycott into a victory is sheer papering over the cracks because you cannot win or lose without competing. The SDF, whose creation and the sacrifices incurred by that creation, was conceived and nurtured by a burning Anglophone desire and determination to restore the sovereignty of Southern Cameroons departed from its intrinsic quest to embrace a nebulous notion of a ‘national mission’ which has not only deviated and demobilised the momentum of the Southern Cameroons struggle, but has also dissipated and squandered the resources of Francophone Cameroon which deviously supported it with a hidden agenda to eventually usurp Ambazonian (Anglophone) power. If there is still any gas left in the Chairman’s political tank, observes a Free West Cameroon Movement activist, he should be better advised to “take up the Southern Cameroons [Ambazonia] cause if he intends to have any political relevance in the near future.” S-N F. ...

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