Great Misery amid Plenty in Cameroon’s Blocked Political Processes

The wretchedness of much of Cameroon is not in doubt. There is squalor, slum conditions, almost anywhere you care to look. Not far from the Presidency, public offices and squares in the capital city, Yaounde. On the country’s many dirt and few surfaced roads, in towns and villages, out in the country, in and out of living quarters, from invasive dust in dry season to floods and muggy mud when it rains. Blocked or non-existent drains, mosquitoes, foul smells, clatter, preventable injury, disease, ill-health and deaths – despondence in so much physical and mental suffering.

Welcome to Cameroon! Not just that of the post card magnificence of the Presidency of the Republic and other buildings, blue and various shades of nimbus covered skies, fabulous trees, posing well-fed faces, colourful birds that fly about in the country and add to the songs that come from Cameroon’s changing landscape and all its many inhabitants including the sixteen or so million humans with common interests in a Body Politic set up to guarantee individual rights and freedoms.

For many citizens, the government of Cameroon has long stopped listening to them and treats them badly as seen in the extent of wretchedness amid plenty in the country. They, in turn, except when threatened or forced, have stopped bothering to communicate with the government. Their messages, when addressed to the government, tend to focus more on what they imagine or know the government wants to hear and less on their own actual needs and possibilities or plans to clarify and resolve the issues. The government that is denied strong skills and competence and scarcely does things right is so presented as one that works or can somehow work! The State of Cameroon is a long way, clearly, from ensuring the degree of co-operation that would deliver on its mandate.

Beleaguered governments, determined to hold on to power, seek props elsewhere when largely denied at home. The government of Cameroon has not been an exception to this rule. It has relied on strong bilateral hold ups and also, since the mid 1980s, on multilateral support that has been increasing grudgingly. Such are the agreements the government of Cameroon has been negotiating and reaching over the years with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, for example. The rhetoric of the government and some of its partners aside, the people the government appears to fear at home are taken hostage and continue to pay the price in their wretchedness.

Even those with skills and knowledge, health, formal education and money in their pockets to produce and/or pay for public as well as private goods and services in Cameroon, suffer in their numbers.

Who said “money is power!?” or that “knowledge is power!?” or “the customer is king!?” or that “he who pays the piper calls the tune!?” or “health, is wealth, is power!?” or that “power is in numbers!?”

Not so, if citizens as individuals ignore the way their State power is used, shy away from discussing and clarifying the issues in public and do not derive honour in doing things right!

EFFERVESCENCE POLITIQUE

[Story from the Government Bilingual Primary School (GBPS) Kumba-Mbeng III (1999/2000) for EITD Research. Text edited by NANA-EMMANUEL, Head Master, GBPS Kumba-Mbeng]

Une faction de la population, mécontente du régime en place, amorce des troubles pour le déraciner.

Le salaire des functionnaires est diminué, deux fois de suite en espace d’un laps de temps. L’opposition politique recupère cette situation pour asseoir son opinion auprès de toute âme legère qui lui prête oreille. La vie devient maurose. Ça sent du pétrole.

Les profanes sont prêts, à tout prix à débouter le gouvernement, “celui-ci n’est bon à rien, il doit partir”. Sans refléchir, ils ne cherchent pas à connaître ni le commencement, ni l’aboutissement de ce que “les tracs” véhiculent comme information, encore moins “qui fait quoi”. La rumeur circule de bouche à orielle.

Un martin, une fausse alerte émane d’une ville située en hauteur. Elle atteind la population localisée dans une cité aux bas fonds dans la plaine. Rapidement les vandals s’ébranlent. Ils s’orientent vers la prison centrale, libèrent les détenus. Ces derniers grossissent le nombre. En vagues, ils enflamment tour à tour, la maison d’arrêt, les bureaux administratifs et la gendarmerie. Les rencunes et les reglements de compte deviennent monaie courante. Les dégats sont importants. Que de pertes en vie humaine pour ne pas parler du matériel.

Les agresseurs, parce-que le roi supporte le gouvernement, descendent à la chefferie. Le sultan sort et déclare: “Mes fils, c’est pas moi qui ai construit ce palais. Si c’est ma tête que vous voulez, alors la voici”. A ces mots, il se couche, le dos dans la poussière, les yeux levés vers le ciel. Curieusement, toute la bande fléchit et c’est la fin des austilités.

Plustard, on apprend qu’à la ville en hauteur, on avait tout juste brûlé de vieux pneus sur la chaussée et que la fumée s’était considérablement élevée.

Maintenant on regrette, mais pouquoi avoir agi avant de refléchir?

Cameroon’s Clandestine Budgets

As the Constitution mandates, the government of Cameroon presents its State budget proposals every year to the country in Parliament, which is required to scrutinise, amend and/or approve as well as authorise the President of the Republic to sign it into law. The budget numbers generally show anticipated revenues equalling expenditure and give the impression that all revenue and expenditure sources are or have been accounted for. But have/are they?

No! A close look at Cameroon budget numbers and existing regulations reveal many troubling discrepancies. On the revenue side, for example, proceeds from important income sources in the tax code are not at all accounted for in the State budget numbers the government presents to Parliament, every year. These include takings (billions of CFA francs) from sources earmarked, in the tax code, for key central government agencies such as the National Social Insurance Fund (CNPS) that handles pensions, Cameroon Radio and Television Corporation (CRTV) and the Local Government Funding Agency (FEICOM).

Similarly, State budget expenditure figures the government presents to Parliament do not include spending arrangements of the key central government agencies. Boards of the organisations are expected to decide and oversee their budgets. The Boards are scarcely known for meeting regularly, if they meet at all. So, the government agencies often run on the say-so of their managers, and the funds they use are hardly discussed or formally accounted for in public!

These clandestine budgets provide the government huge pots of put away money to allocate and spend as it sees fit. So much so, the government appears in no need to approach Parliament for supplementary budgets at any other time in the financial year, even as consultations between the government and Parliament look continuous. The government has a full-time minister in charge of relations with Parliament. But the substance of the consultations or lack thereof is not entirely public. Partisan political considerations play a big part in the consultations. Government supporters in Parliament rarely complain as much as opposition parliamentarians often do, about government budget consultations or lack thereof with them.

Nevertheless, Cameroon’s clandestine budgets are approved (tacitly at least) by Parliament, which endorses, with little or no scrutiny, the tax code and budget numbers the government presents in November, every year. The guarantee of individual rights and freedoms is so denied much needed transparency, responsiveness and accountability in Cameroon’s budget processes.

You can bring more attention to these problems and contribute to their resolution by raising and discussing them in public.

Another Man Dies In Police Custody!

Mr. Khan Ernest, 22 years old, died March 31, 2006 in Police custody, Kumba. He is said to have “collapsed in the cell and was taken out and abandoned in the corridor, where he died hours later. A forensic expert from Douala has established that the youth died from a severe cranial injury and blood clot in his head, which he attributed to violence”. (See attached letter from Global Conscience Initiative, a Kumba based advocacy group, to Cameroon’s Minister of Justice).

The Legal Department in Kumba is reported to have remanded another detainee who is said to have beaten Mr. Khan in the police cell. Even as official investigations are said to be ongoing, it is far from clear whether they will reveal: what led to the alleged beating of Mr. Khan; conditions in the cell; how Mr. Khan came to be found outside the cell and abandoned in the corridor, where he died hours later, in police custody.

Mr. Khan’s detention appears also to have been arbitrary. He was detained as a suspect in a stolen bicycle case. The owner of the stolen bicycle is reported to have seen it with a certain Mr. Gospel Penn, who said Mr. Khan gave him the bicycle. The bicycle owner took his allegations to the police and Mr. Khan was arrested. The police are still to find Mr. Gospel Penn.

The preventable rough treatment and death of Mr. Khan follows that of another man in Kumba, two years ago, whom a police set “ablaze after having cuffed his hands behind and forced him to drink kerosene. The suspect later on died and the police inspector was found guilty of torture and of assault occasioning death.” (See attached Global Conscience Press Release).

This dire situation of people including detainees in Cameroon is not limited to the police in Kumba. Violations of individual rights and freedoms are widespread in Cameroon State services and society. Some of these have been widely documented and followed-up, with consequences that have been less than comprehensive. (See some of our several reports and also those of the African Union’s Africa Commission Special Rapporteur on Prisons and Conditions of Detention, and those of the UN ESCOR Commission on Human Rights).

Nevertheless, and sad as it is, Mr. Khan’s death provides great opportunity to raise individual rights and freedoms issues including those of detainees anew, and seek purposeful clarifications from not just the Minister of Justice in Cameroon, but also from other authorities and society as a whole. The issues include:

(1) The exact circumstances that led to Mr. Khan’s arrest, his detention conditions and subsequent death;

(2) The role of the police and other State services in guaranteeing freedom and security for each individual, including detainees;

(3) Policy guidelines and funding arrangements that were/are in place to enable the police and other State services to meet their responsibilities towards each individual in wider society and in detention;

(4) The extent to which those policy guidelines and funding arrangements were made operational in the particular case of Mr. Khan; and,

(5) What improvements, if any, are now needed to circumvent further individual rights and freedoms abuses in our police and other State services?

We would, therefore, like to invite you and everyone you know, to contribute as much as you can, to ensure:

(a) Adept monitoring and follow-up of the official investigation that is said to be ongoing, and perhaps designing and undertaking other enquiries, so that all facets of Mr. Khan’s arrest, detention and death are addressed adequately;

(b) Broad debate on what the police and other State services can, or what we would like them to, do and be doing so our individual rights and freedoms including those of detainees are guaranteed;

(c) Discussion of specific laws, conventions, executive orders, and other guidelines including budgets and the quality of staff at various levels in our police and related State services;

(d) Systematic investigation and broader discussion of the way(s) existing police and related State services policies and funds allocated to Kumba were put to work or not in the case of Mr. Khan; and,

(e) Discussion and adoption of reforms that may be needed.

Details at the EITD Research Public Policy Forums.