THE TWIN COINS: THERE ARE MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

By ‘coin’ I mean commission of inquiry. Cameroon is a country of gargantuan contradictions. This is a country where the Manichean principle of good and evil and their eternal co-existence and perpetual conflict seems to have taken permanent abode. This is a country where, in a five star Hotel, 50 metres from a garbage dump where healthy adults are scavenging for food, an obscure woman, not known to be a millionaire or an executive public thief, can pay 50 million francs CFA! for a cake (a mixture of flour, milk, eggs and sugar baked in an oven) supposedly made by the wife of the head of state. All in the name of “la lutte contre le SIDA” whereas nobody is willing to assist a renowned researcher who has discovered a serious candidate vaccine against AIDS with as much as a few hundred thousands francs to advance work on his vaccine against the killer disease. HIV/AIDS has become big business and should be left in the hands of those who know how to make big money doing nothing, not so? This is a country that has distinguished itself as the ‘oasis of peace’ in a turbulent central African sub-region and at the same time a country where people disappear regularly without trace, where no one can hold a ‘peaceful’ demonstration against anything without being brutally suppressed, where a new born baby can be suffocated to death with tear gas without anybody saying or doing anything. This a country whose head of state never misses any opportunity to call for the establishment of a global ethical observatory whereas, in the country over which he himself presides, there are no ethical principles of any sort, let alone an ethical observatory.

This is a country of mind boggling gargantuan contradictions. This is a country without a single standard football stadium but whose national football team has attained and maintained world-class status. This is a country with many heavy weight politicians, some with remarkable political charisma, insight, foresight and clear vision, which has allowed someone with a cloudy voice and vision to be leading it, to God alone knows where, for nearly two decades now. This is a country that prides itself as one of the best democracies in Africa and even in the entire world and at the same time a country where parliamentarians trying to hold a peaceful demonstration can be beaten and dragged in the mud, with no consequence. This is a country where an official radio communiqué can tell people at any time the very opposite of what they have personally witnessed with their own eyes and they would believe the communiqué. This is a country where everybody curses the government in private and praises it in public. This is a country of gargantuan contradictions.

This is a country where commissions of inquiry, judicial and otherwise, are a standard ploy for diverting attention from serious official blunders, wrong-doing and flagrant failings. This is a country where the enquiry of any commission of inquiry takes an eternity to conduct, where the results of public commissions of inquiry are never divulged to the public. Against this background, the celerity, punctuality and promptitude with which the report of the latest two official commissions of inquiry has been turned in and the fanfare with which they have been divulged to the public are simply too good to be true. Trop beau pour ệtre vrai! This situation that might possibly mark a transformative break with the past, a real positive breakthrough in the administration and management of public affairs and our entire system of governance, is nothing short of a hat trick. But, for now, it raises far more questions than answers.

How did these twin commissions of inquiry manage, against consolidated tradition and usual practice, to find the answers to their puzzles so easily and speedily? Why has the government, against its well-known tradition and practice, rushed almost breathlessly to announce the results of the commissions without even issuing a white paper on them? Does the action of the SDF party and particularly its parliamentarians, their determination to continue with public demonstrations against all odds until the whole truth about the Bepanda 9 is revealed, not have something to do with it? The anonymous thorough/profound Bepanda 9 commission of inquiry has submitted a perfectly anonymous report. The gist of its findings is that some anonymous “persons suspected in connection with the disappearance of the 9 Bepanda youths have been apprehended and handed over to the military tribunal for justice to take its course”. What justice and who are these suspects and what exactly are they suspected to have done? Has a deal not been struck with some small fishes so that the sharks may escape to safety? And what about the fate of the 9 youths? That is what interests us most and what we thought the commission was set up to find out. Besides, and above all, we have no faith in military tribunals. Is it not this same military tribunal that arrested the President of Southern Cameroons, kept him in prison for 14 months without charge and eventually found nothing to charge him with?

This is a country where every problem is solved with radio communiqués. One of the twin commission communiqués is asking Cameroonians to place their confidence in the armed forces for the protection of their life and property. How can any rational person be expected to have confidence in the armed forces when the second commission of enquiry is supposed to have discovered that these same armed forces stole important quantities of arms of all calibers from the national armory and then set it on fire? The commission did not bother to find out for what purpose the arms were stolen or where they actually are at the moment. Did we not have confidence in the armed forces before the disappearance without trace of 9 youths whom they arrested in broad daylight for stealing a cooking gas bottle? What did they do with the confidence we placed on them? How can we feel secure with such armed forces? The reshuffling of portfolios within the armed forces is evidently for the safety and security of the commander in chief of the armed forces (we hope he is safe!), definitely not for our own safety and security.

So what do we now say about or to Christian Cardinal Tumi? Is anyone apologizing to him for the indecent assault that members of government unleashed on his person for being the first Cameroonian with enough nerve and temerity to draw attention to an extremely nasty aspect of the realities we live daily in this country? Is any one congratulating ACAT? Where now is Tricia Oben? Will she now be recalled and reinstated? The answer to this plethora of questions is surely blowing in the wind. What is not blowing in the wind is the following: An extremely sordid chapter of our life as a nation has just been accidentally opened. We all deserve to get to the bottom of it all. We owe that as much to ourselves as to out children and future generations of Cameroonians. Are the honourable representatives of the people willing and ready to insist on leading us to the bottom of this sordid affair? Over to you, our dear gentlemen and ladies. We are behind you!

GOBATA

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