Petrol Price Hikes, Bravadoes and Negotiations

  By Prof. Tazoacha Asonganyi, July 8, 2014

Issa Tchiroma, Cameroon's Communication Minister

Issa Tchiroma is in town again, professing his usual incongruities. As always, he is accompanied by political lackeys, hatchet men, spooks, conspirators and all types of dealers. They are trying to manage the mood of the nation by sending us to wild-goose-chases following the price hikes in the petrol sector. They are peddling one confusing idea after the other, making the best effort to fool all of us.

And so noises about strikes, negotiations and agreements are filling the air. Mark you, there are no strikes, and there are no real negotiations. It is all about the lackeys and others we have  mentioned above trying to increase the volume of currency notes they will take home by the time attention is turned to other issues to let the price hikes have their desired effects.

Those who know the story of South Africa know that it is trade unionists like Cyril Ramaphosa that used skills they had honed in negotiations with powerful mine bosses to bring an end to apartheid. He was head of the most powerful African trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers. It is in that union that he learned how to cut a deal, and about power which he regularly wielded “to bring mines to a standstill through strikes.” As he says himself in “Anatomy of a miracle” by Patti Waldmeir, “The bosses outclassed us. We were not sophisticated in our approach to negotiation; all we had was a sense of injustice and a mission to improve the lot of workers, and the raw power of a strike…After being caught a few times with our pants down, we learned to do our homework…”

And so by the time the negotiation paradigm moved to centre stage in South Africa, Ramaphosa and his colleagues “had been through negotiations par excellence in the mining industry” as his opposite number Roelf Meyer would later recall, referring to the effectiveness of Cyril Ramaphosa in their negotiations.

All this is to say that the acts of bravado from so-called trade union leaders here in Cameroon lodged in air-conditioned offices are bereft of any negotiating power. Since they are always “negotiating” when their members are not active in bringing anything to a standstill, the “negotiations” always last just hours and the bosses – most of the time the government – always come out the winner. No real negotiated settlements; no real skill honed; no deal cut!

The years of structural adjustment (SAP) dealt a serious blow to our development, and left us with a new habit that ignores social policy in economic decisions. The set-up and management of the state in Cameroon condemns us to the reality that, increase in the prices of commodities like petrol enriches the state, but does not transform the lives of citizens. This is because of rampant embezzlement of state funds, filthy corruption, impunity and the greedy appetite of members of a regime that lacks vision, a conscience and a heart for a bleeding nation the regime has taken hostage.

 We are suffering from the consequences of the policies of a regime that for over thirty years has shown a frightening incapacity to diversify our economy to broaden the tax base. This has left us with poverty and suffering because the economy depends too much on a mismanaged commodity like petrol. We are suffering the effects of the policies of a regime that daily trumps creativity and hard work by ensuring that individuals gain wealth mainly by embezzling state resources. We are suffering from the obscurantism of a regime that lacks exemplary leaders, while notion-of-support midwives abound. Indeed, they use motions of support as a parapet for regime failures.

It is no longer news that the claim that high petrol prices are subsidized by the government is false. The high prices are the result of the numerous taxes levied by the government on the very cheap commodity before it is sold to us. The low prices of petrol in oil producing Gulf and Middle East countries are testimony to this.

It is usually said that "black gold," as petrol is called, often brings hardship and misery to the societies where it is found. This seems to be the case in Cameroon because rather than being the motor of development and social advancement, the commodity is a major source of enrichment of regime barons, puppets, sycophants and peddlers of motions of support.

The future stability of Cameroon may need skilled negotiators to get us out of the impasse in which the society is immersed today. Trade Union leaders have to learn the tactics of generating standstills to gain the power of negotiation that they need to cut good deals for the people they claim to represent. Who knows? Those skills may also turn out to be useful to us all tomorrow.

Commentary: Governance and Inquiries

By Prof. Tazoacha Asonganyi

Biya, Cameroon's Head of State

Before the demise of the venerable Bishop Verdzekof, he wrote a little manuscript titled “Running on the wrong road?” In it, he reminds us of a 1961 editorial of The Daily Times Newspaper about the reunification process, brought to his attention by Dr Anthony Ndi, which went as follows "We are bringing into this union a great inheritance, viz., Democracy; the English have not given us fine roads and fine buildings but they have given something far more valuable: a democratic way of thinking…With this inheritance we need not be afraid to meet our brethren across the border for we are not coming empty handed."

These high expectations were because the political class in West Cameroon hoped that the best they were bringing along would be married with the best from East Cameroon, to produce “common values, common understanding and common aspirations." They surely had good intentions, but they suffered from a misunderstanding of human nature and the nature of power.

In any case, human beings always view their deprivation as relative, since they tend to compare themselves with people they are in the same boat with. That is why the North West Region always compares itself to the South West Region, and vice versa; and West Cameroon always compares itself with East Cameroun. It is through such lenses that historical outcomes and evolutions are usually evaluated, judged and dealt with. It is with such a lens that we here examine Paul Biya’s decreed “inquiry” into the Lions’ debacle in Brazil.

Probing into different compartments of the state to find out what is going wrong in order to look for the right solutions is an approach usually used to earn legitimacy from the people and ensure their obedience of state authority. A “democratic way of thinking” means that rules and rational principles matter, but more importantly, the thousands of small things that those in power do or fail to do to establish their legitimacy also matter a great deal. The West Cameroon Commission of Inquiry Ordinance (Cap. 36 of the 1958 laws) was therefore meant to ensure legitimacy in the exercise of power by those who were delegated the power of the people.

And so on 01 April, 1967, the West Cameroon Gazette no. 13, volume 7, published as notice no. 90, a decision of the Prime Minister appointing a Commission of Inquiry into the Department of Lands and Surveys, West Cameroon. On 27 March, 1968, the West Cameroon Gazette no. 14, vol. 8, published as notice no. 61, a decision of the Prime Minister appointing a Commission of Inquiry into the activities of the West Cameroon Development Agency, as from 1959. Further, on 30 April, 1968, the West Cameroon Gazette no. 20, volume 8, published as notice no. 98, a decision of the Prime Minister appointing a Commission of Inquiry into the West Cameroon Electricity Corporation.

The commissions were usually headed by a respectable person of the law profession and had four or five other members of integrity. These people of integrity were imbued with capacities that can be described as Verdzekof’s three steps: (1) discerning what is right and wrong; (2) acting on what you have discerned, even at personal cost; and (3) saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right and wrong.

Each decision to create a commission of inquiry always had very clear terms of reference, and the following paragraph: “The sessions of the commission will be open to members of the public. Any person who has any information that may be of assistance to the Commission should communicate such information to the Secretary to the Commission. Any person who wishes to give evidence to the Commission should also contact the Secretary to the Commission.”

The Commissions did their work diligently and always ended up with a voluminous report, copies of which they sold to the public at a token price. The report belonged to the people, and the court of public opinion was there to follow up the implementation of the findings by state authority.

With the “Yang Inquiry” commission that Paul Biya has decreed, many people are thinking about the humiliation Philemon Yang suffered in the hands of the Lions, and wondering how much he can be dispassionate in his “inquiries.” He may be thinking that this is the time to use his authority to respond to the disobedience of the Lions. It may not occur to him that disobedience can also be a response to authority; that if a government does not do its job well, citizens can become disobedient. Following his flag experience with the Lions, no one needs to remind him that obedience is linked to how people in authority behave.

The government is the principal culprit in the Lions’ debacle in Brazil. The “Yang Inquiry” may only bring out – or choose to hide - what everybody already knows. What we need now is not some emotional reaction to seek individual culprits for punishment. We need a thorough and dispassionate internal and external evaluation of football in Cameroon to seek a more productive approach that can generate positive results in future. We need a strategic vision, a clearly set goal, to ensure that all efforts at achieving success in future will be geared towards that goal. We need a strategic vision that ties down all future corrective acts to the achievement of the set goal. Without such a well publicized strategic vision, all “inquiries” and strategic planning will be worthless.

Succession politics in Cameroon: Beware of McCarthyism!

Asonganyi Tazoacha

By Asonganyi Tazoacha

Joseph McCarthy was one of the most corrupt politicians of his time. He exploited the scare about the prospect of communist subversion against the United States with the claim that he had a list of people in the State Department who were known members of the American Communist Party. He engaged in witch-hunts against innocent citizens he accused of being communist subversives. Today, “McCarthyism” refers to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations of political adversaries and rivals; it also refers to public attacks on the integrity, character or patriotism of dissenting citizens.

 

Mark you, in Cameroon there is a succession cold war being fought within the ranks of people of power – people of the CPDM regime. Regime powerful daily circle one another, knife in hand, looking for the least opportunity to “finish them.” They buy one journalist or the other, one press organ or the other, to do their dirty work against their perceived adversaries, or “enemies,” or rivals. They use tracts, signed and unsigned letters, motions of support and other foul means to express their loyalty and worries, and to accuse and counter-accuse friends and foes. The most used weapon of blackmail is succession politics around their aged president-in-perpetuity, known to have a strong aversion for any thought about his succession.

 

Further, there is a Boko Haram scare in town! And we have started hearing noises about unnamed collabos. When we start hearing such noises in a regime that is one of the most tyrannical, most corrupt and repressive in the world, we have to beware of McCarthyism!  Those making such noises about suspects only known to them should be watched closely. True, the fight against Boko Haram should involve a lot of secret strategies and tactics, but we should never lose sight of the possibility of regime barons turning such secrecy to a weapon of destruction against their perceived political adversaries, “enemies” or rivals.

 

Those who still doubt the tyrannical and repressive nature of the regime should ponder the recent arrest and detention in Fundong on 2nd April of members of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Union (CATTU) for the simple act of distributing tracts to sensitise their members about an impending strike, or the way in which Jean Michel Nitcheu, an SDF member of parliament, was recently harassed on 20th May for the simple act of carrying a banner that expressed an opinion that the regime did not like. They can also check the mindless act of ordering the release of a corruption suspect – arrested by the same regime – with the flimsy excuse that he is a member of government, while at the same time destabilising the football association (FECAFOOT) by arresting and locking up its elected president when an important event like the World Cup was in the offing!

 

And so there is the imminent return of the Lions to town. It is no longer news that we suffered a football debacle in Brazil. Rather than being an occasion to examine the lack of purpose, of shared vision, and of strategic vision that rendered all our strategic planning for the World Cup worthless, there are emotional people all over the place, shouting the names of those whose heads should fall!

 

Football is not an old boys’ network where you get ahead because of money or connections – like is the case in all domains of Cameroon society today. It is a world where victory comes from talent and performance. By the end of the football fiesta in Brazil, those who do the right analysis will realise that the victors will be those who combined talent and preparation. Such preparation is not about those fruitless friendly matches played just before the World Cup. It is about providing infrastructure for identifying talented children early and honing their skills to ensure that they meet the magic number for excellence in football,like in any other profession, of ten thousand hours of practice before they become real stars. They will realise that those who will go home with the cup are those with players that have practiced the most in their lifetime, continuously from childhood to the professional level. They will confirm the old saying that achievement is talent plus preparation, with preparation playing a greater role.

 

Our players may have enough ability to get into top football clubs abroad, but their performance differs from that of other players from countries like Brazil at crucial moments, because of the low number of hours they spent developing their football skills from childhood. Ten thousand hours of practice before young adulthood cannot be achieved by the individual alone. It needs a family that encourages, and a government that provides infrastructure and opportunities for practicing the art of football right from nursery school. I will not blame the team for our debacle in Brazil. I will blame a regime that refuses to provide opportunities all over the country for selecting and nurturing football talent right from childhood through to young adulthood. I will fault a government that refuses to fund club football in the country and depends on foreign clubs to nurture and exploit the talents of our players at a late stage of adulthood.

 

We can only hope that the journalists that went to Brazil, and CRTV that bargained for exclusive coverage in Cameroon only in the French language, went beyond enjoying football matches and took some time to lookout for why Brazil is a football nation. We have to invest seriously in football by providing appropriate infrastructure in every school, every village, every subdivision, every division and every region for nurturing and promoting talent in the game of football. Otherwise, we shall remain a country that wishes to reap where it did not sow.