Snapshots: An X-ray of Cameroon�s Democracy, Governance and Unification

4. Western Conspiracy against Cameroon’s Democratic Transition

13 4 Western Conspiracy against Cameroon’s Democratic Transition 12 October 1991 In a bid to counter charges that Cameroon had lost the confidence of Western donor countries, the national media mounted the usual hosanna choir, incanting a scanty catalogue of recent aid packages granted by certain European countries as well as Japan. Highlighting these assistance and investment packages, which included Australian commitment to quarry some rare mineral in Akonolinga, Chinese aid for the Lagdo Dam, Japanese grant of F.M. radio studio and Switzerland’s granting of debt-relief, the government media hoped to establish that Cameroon still enjoyed external credibility despite the opposition’s contrary view. While the claims of the government on the one hand and the opposition’s on the other could be convincingly argued with a good dose of demagogic acumen, the fact that the West is still providing any amount of financial and investment assistance at all is a question which merits critical examination. Continued Western assistance to the ruling CPDM government puts a big question mark on Western declarations since last year that further aid would depend on the extent to which recipient countries are willing to democratize their political systems (political conditionality). At the Franco-African summit in Baule, France, in June 1990, French President Francois Mitterrand reiterated this condition. At the Bretton Woods Committee meeting in Washington in April 1990, the American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen announced that in addition to economic reforms and human rights, democratization would become a third condition for US assistance to Third World dictatorial regimes. The US congress 14 equally declared that limited aid would be awarded to ‘newly forming democracies’ and not wasted on autocratic grimes. In the light of the above and the fact that aid continues to flow gives any observer the impression that the West has failed to live by its own very principles and may not be willing to pay more than lip service to Cameroon’s transition to democracy. The realization that the West is in a conspiracy with its local compradors to thwart the democratic process has been widely expressed by the local press questioning the dubious role of Western countries in the process. Le Messager (August 31st ) flashed the headline “A Quoi La France and Cameroon Post (Sept 6-13) ran the caption: “France will intervene on Biya’s Behalf: America Wants Biya because of Our Oil and Gas. Le Messager also carried an eloquent cartoon in which the French President was seen to be pondering over a card table, playing what appeared to be a game of Solitaire in a bid to find the joker among the emergent political parties in Cameroon. In that same cartoon, President Biya is depicted as crossing his fingers in a desperate superstitious effort to jinx the French President so he doesn’t find the joker. It is very disappointing to realize that even Mr. Mitterrand believes he can facilitate a breakthrough in the present political stalemate by a game of hazards and therefore leaving the future of the country to chance. In trying to find a political joker, one gets the impression that the West is trying to find a suitable alternative to Mr. Biya and at the same time realizing it may not find one who would be popularly accepted and still be conducive to its imperial interest. Cameroon Post suggested that the US is bent on ensuring “that Biya lasts long enough to conclude the unholy oil and gas deal with Uncle Sam.” The West is not only frustrating the democratic process by pumping aid but its financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank have kept the credit line open under the auspices of the Structural Adjustment Plan (SAP) whose disastrous effect on the masses such as mass unemployment, wage freeze and cuts, withdrawal of government subsidies, and 15 inflation have become a stark economic reality. The effect of this has been to instigate bitter discontent, indignity and the worst kind of poverty which have in turn sparked widespread bloody demonstrations and the repression of the masses by armed government forces. A part from generating political opposition and armed reprisals, SAP has caused incomes to fall to an intolerable level. As Claude Ake (Journal of Democracy Vol. 2 No 1 Winter 1991) has rightly observed, “to implement SAPs, governments have been forced to resort to a...