• By Kah Walla
• Friday 01 July 2016

This Regime is both unwilling and incapable of running our country

 The Biya Regime has the unprecedented capacity to generate so many scandals of catastrophic management and bad governance in a very short space of time, that we its citizens can get caught up in the details of scandal after scandal and forget our primary and most important goal which is to rid ourselves of these people who have proven time after time and in every conceivable domain of our lives, that they are both unwilling and incapable of running our country.

 Within just 10 days the Biya Regime has reminded us that:

• We as citizens are totally unimportant to them.  They see no need to consult us nor to heed us as they take decisions about the laws of the land that will affect our day-to-day lives.  Hence a penal code that will be forced through with a slight revision, but no change in the clauses that truly impact the average Cameroonian.
• They consider the bilingual nature of our country to be a farce.  The basic rights of Anglophones are so unimportant to them that they are willing to pass laws without bothering to translate them properly into English which is supposed to be an official language of the country, equal to French.  It seems it does not matter whether the 20% of the country which is English-speaking, can read and understand the law.
• Citizens who suffer from natural disasters such as flooding, which is under the direct responsibility of the State to manage had better fend for themselves.  In the Extreme North, and the Littoral, lives and property are lost every year due to predictable flooding.  Too bad for these citizens who thought their government was here to protect them.
•  Citizens who suffer from the government’s poor management of an epidemic such as bird flu, should not only lose their businesses and livelihoods, but they should do so without complaint.  Exercising their rights as citizens to protest the actions of government which are threatening their very survival will land them in jail.
• They believe in corruption.  They are corrupt, they have set up institutions to fight against corruption which have been corrupted and when these institutions produce reports denouncing corruption, no action is taken.  The regime has decided that corruption will be the lifeblood of its governance and could care less what we as citizens think of it.

So yes it is easy to get caught up in denouncing scandal after scandal of this regime and trying to figure out the details of each act of bad governance.

It is also a waste of time and a way for us to remain accomplices to our own demise. 

We as a people really have just one objective and no number of scandals will alter this. 

We must put an end to this regime and enter a political transition to build a democratic, just and prosperous Cameroon.  This requires several steps:

1) Put an end to this regime, without violence, with determination and with civil protest.

2) Define for ourselves the foundation of a democratic nation: rewrite our constitution, reform our electoral law, set up the pillars for social and economic growth

3) Hold credible and legitimate elections that will bring new political leaders to power who are accountable to us as a people and whose terms in office are limited.

4) Build a new Cameroon where there is justice, access to basic social services and governance with integrity and accountability

 

We are at step one.  The first step to bringing an end to this regime by non-violent protest is to overcome our fear.  An easy way to overcome our fear is to Wear Black Every Friday.  It is impossible for our government to arrest or even harass thousands of Cameroonians wearing black.  It is also impossible for them to ignore thousands of Cameroonians wearing black. 

What will change if you wear black?  Many things:

• You will overcome your personal fear of standing up for your basic rights as a citizen and for standing up for Cameroon
• You will stand up and be counted for Cameroon
• All of us who are dissatisfied with this government will feel united and strong given our numbers.
• We will bring the attention of this government, other African countries and the rest of the world to the fact that we can no longer continue this way and we must enter a political transition
• We will get to negotiating a political transition for our country.

We as Cameroonians have a choice.  We can continue counting and describing the scandals and doing nothing.  Nothing will change. 

We can start taking action by Wearing Black On Fridays. It is More Important Than Ever to Wear Black This Friday!  The government has already shown us that this speaks to them.  Let us speak louder and stronger. 

It is up to you and me.  This is our country.

 #StandUpForCameroon #WearBlackThisFriday #TousEnNoirVendredi

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