"The Paul BIYA computers are proof that Mr. BIYA and his regime do not like the Cameroonian youth. This operation conducted in collaboration with China gives me the opportunity to denounce the insidious interferences of this country in the domestic politics of our country.
MESSAGE FROM THE END OF 2017 BY PRESIDENT MAURICE KAMTO AT THE NATION.
Cameroonians, Cameroonians, My dear compatriots;
The end of 2017 has been one of the most challenging for our country and our people for several decades.
The galloping impoverishment of the overwhelming majority of Cameroonians has been complicated by a predictable fiscal crisis and an unprecedented political crisis that now calls into question the very survival of our country, as a united nation rich in its cultural diversity inherited from colonization. In short, the Cameroonian nation is in a critical situation on the threshold of a crucial election year for its future.
President Paul BIYA inherited from his predecessor Ahmadou AHIDJO, in November 1982, a peaceful, stable and prosperous country, in which, after years of bloody nationalist struggles, we had now turned to inducing global development. raising the standard of living of the populations. In thirty-five years of power, Mr. BIYA, the CPDM and its regime have, by their irresponsible and inconsistent management, deconstructed all the achievements of yesterday, including national unity and living together. They turned the country into a hotbed of chronic insecurity, tribalism and ethnic hatred. President BIYA and the CPDM have spent more than three decades selling Cameroonians peace, which they were not the artisans. They have nothing left to offer now that they plunged the country into civil war, after deciding to wage a war against Boko Haram that was not that of Cameroon. It is now clear to every Cameroonian citizen that it is not this president and his regime that can preserve the unity of the country and national harmony. As with most of his statements, including "rigor and morality", President BIYA spoke of "national integration" without faith. The country is more than ever divided and the defense of its territorial integrity has even passed in recent years, by the solicitation of the armed forces of a neighboring country. We could not lower a nation that was the lighthouse of Central Africa and is now condemned to look with nostalgia for its past glory. Those responsible for this national drama exist and the Cameroonian people must not forget it, nor accept that they take refuge behind the unacceptable formula: "We are all responsible".
MRC activists and supporters will forever be grateful for the sacrifices made by our brave defense forces and courageous Far North populations to keep the Republic standing up against the terrorists of the Boko Haram sect. These sacrifices and sufferings (of our soldiers and our populations) are, it must be remembered, the dramatic consequence of the serious political fault of the power which, for thirty-five years, has chosen to abandon at the mercy of various predators. , entire parts of the national territory and the populations living there. Busy with protecting the people, Mr. BIYA's regime has forgotten that the country has borders that must be protected.
Preferring political corruption to the far-sighted and responsible management of the northern part of the country, he has bet everything on an elite in his pay. This CPDM elite, which specializes in the production of election results unrelated to the local political reality, uses and abuses various forms of terror to subdue the populations of these areas of the country. With his support, President BIYA has patiently and cynically built the breeding ground of insecurity that Boko Haram terrorists have only exploited.
To the brave people of the northern part of the country, where famine threatens nearly three million of our compatriots, and particularly those stricken from the Far North; to the soldiers who, at the cost of their lives, have hitherto preserved the integrity of the national territory in the face of these barbarians of modern times; the MRC and I address our eternal gratitude, our solidarity and our renewed encouragement!
My dear compatriots,
While the country had not yet definitively disabled the Boko Haram terrorists in the Far North, the Anglophone question, which the MRC has endorsed in its Vision for Cameroon since its creation in 2012, is noisily imposed on national public life from October-November 2016.
The denial of the Government followed by its arrogance, the excessive use of force, the judicial terror and the punitive mass military operations with the aim of massacres of unarmed populations, have succeeded in transforming the legitimate social and political demands of the population. North West and South West, in revolt against the regime and finally in civil war.
I reiterate my condemnation and that of the MRC, without reservation, of any project of secession of Cameroon. Likewise, I condemn violence in all its forms: whether it is the violence of the defense and security forces against unarmed populations - even if they express political demands - or the violence of members of secessionist groups who target either the soldiers carrying out their missions as security guarantors and the integrity of the national territory, or the populations and leaders who reject extremism.
In the MRC, however, we can not help but think that a political agenda is hidden behind the civil war that President BIYA finally succeeded in imposing on the Cameroonian people, despite the benevolent and patriotic advice we gave them publicly, but also informally those of many other national political actors, friendly countries of Cameroon and various international organizations, including the United Nations. In fact, any attentive observer is at least troubled by the essentially warlike attitude of the President of the Republic and his Government, in a purely political affair which, moreover, is in fact only the consequence of his obstinate refusal and irresponsible to implement the regionalization enshrined in the Constitution of 18 January 1996. At a time when the national army is already engaged on the front of the Far-North with a costly human, economic and financial cost for the country, where six of the ten regions of the country are fiscally damaged, where Cameroon has returned to the IMF and that opens in 2018 a long election year with significant financial commitments, one wonders why the President of the Republic can tilt the country into the war if it is because it has chosen the politics of chaos to maintain power, or because it no longer has the lucidity to govern the country. The result is or will be the same in both cases: a disaster for Cameroon.
No matter what the near future will tell us about the illogical will of the regime to maintain the civil war in the two English-speaking regions of our country, the MRC reiterates, once more, its categorical rejection of the slippage of the electoral calendar for whatever reason. A war desired, provoked and maintained by a regime that fears to defend the record of thirty-five years of undivided rule and errors in the face of a people now prepared to free themselves from dictatorship, can in no way be invoked to justify a full or partial postponement of the elections scheduled for 2018.
That said, despite the many lives of needlessly sacrificed soldiers and civilians and the horrendous suffering imposed on the peaceful populations of the North-West and South-West through excessive militarization and administrative terror measures, it is still possible to save peace. For that, as we have proposed to the Government relentlessly, it is imperative and urgent to organize a sincere national dialogue to resolve the English-language question in depth. At the same time, we must look at the political, institutional and electoral reforms, made unavoidable by the general state of the country and the risk of widespread crisis that the upcoming electoral deadlines weigh on him as a result of an Electoral Code favoring massive fraud and the holdup of the results.
This dialogue must be preceded by some preliminary actions on the part of the authorities:
- the release of all persons detained or prosecuted in the context of the Anglophone crisis;
- the return of refugees assessed credibly in the thousands;
- a message from President BIYA to our English-speaking compatriots about all the humiliations that have been unjustly imposed on them since November 2016;
- a visit of the President of the Republic to the two regions during which he will have to, if only to save the forms, speak and discuss with his English-speaking compatriots in English, of their pains and their bad being, them which Without discrimination, all sorts of insults ("terrorists", "dogs", "bandits", etc.) were received from prominent members of the regime, who were never even reminded of order.
If he were unable to conduct such a linguistic and political exercise, not only would he justify the English claims himself, but he would disqualify himself from his presidential office, in a country where people come to brave the usual fears to demand living the fullness of their bilingualism enshrined in the Constitution, and their double culture inherited from history. Her recent speech, made entirely in French to the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, speaks volumes about her desire to deny colonial biculturalism.
Nevertheless, we encourage it to undertake this approach of responsibility towards our English-speaking compatriots. It is certainly contrary to its political management based on arrogance, contempt and sufficiency with regard to those whose legitimacy it nevertheless holds. But in the critical situation where he and his supporters have plunged the country, there is no viable alternative.
My dear compatriots,
On June 2nd, 2017, our country was once again brought to the fore following a new tragedy: the murder and drowning of Bishop Jean-Marie Benoît BALA, Bishop of the Diocese of Bafia, at the 58 years old. As in the past, our revolt was silent in the face of these unspeakable acts of the CPDM regime and its dark practices. That light is not made to this day on this shocking death, as after the monstrous assassination of several bishops, priests, and nuns of the Catholic Church in Cameroon, the ritual murder of young Narcissus DJOMO POKAM in broad daylight at the Hilton hotel in Yaounde in 2006, or the theft of Vanessa TCHATCHOU's infant in 2011, all this, I say, provides enough information on the degree of moral decay of the regime that governs us.
One year after the disaster of Eséka on October 21, 2016, the pain of the families and friends of the victims remains deep and, to tell the truth, the entire Cameroonian people remain upset in their silence. Let those who govern the country be compassionate and give answers to the families who, like this lawyer, are desperately searching for his Notary Wife disappeared in this tragedy, or waiting to be fixed to do the work of mourning. A power can not show so much lightness and indifference to so many misfortunes, traumas and sufferings of the populations for which it is responsible. Each of us must form in his heart the resolution to put an end to such a regime on the occasion of upcoming elections, because no one is safe from such deadly drifts.
My dear compatriots,
On the economic and social level, the country's situation is, it must be said, disastrous. I do not have, and you know, the habit of excessive vocabulary. But I have to present the reality to you.
Between the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, the Government has again placed our country under the caudal fork of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Despite various denials, if the Cameroonian economy is not yet technically into recession, the state is threatened with bankruptcy. This is a return to square one: we remember that only five years after the accession to power of President BIYA, he turned to the IMF when he had just inherited a country prosperous, financially healthy and abundant. Cameroonians have made more than 20 years of sacrifice to get out of structural adjustment. But just out of a tunnel which had been announced the end for several years, the Government has fallen into the mismanagement, a massive debt to fund projects poorly studied, overcharged and inefficiently questionable. Added to this are economic policy mistakes. And the same president BIYA has placed a second time Cameroon under the financial supervision of the IMF. The loop is closed. Such a failure in the management of the economy is rare under the same President of the Republic. The conclusion of an objective analysis of the economic policy and conduct of this regime is now a shared fact: the slogan "Emergence in 2035" is already dead of its beautiful death, because from the beginning, such a goal was out this Government, which has never attained once in seven years, the rate of growth that it had set for itself in the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper (GESP) supposed to lead us to this paradise. In fact, with a growth rate of around 4% in 2017, lower than in 2016, in a downward trend, the Cameroonian economy is stalling, while poverty and precariousness are intensifying and spreading. The mirror with larks of the famous "structuring projects", vainly baptized the "Big achievements", ceased to be illusion. Engaged after three decades without Renewal investments in the sectors concerned, they are a collection of chess. Hold: the Mekin dam whose design was missed is still not functional and one wonders why it is a structuring project; the Memve'ele dam, built without connection to the consumption poles, is lost in the middle of nowhere and will in any case produce an energy out of price; the Lom Pangar dam, which has only been partially filled with water, is slow to produce the expected effects on energy production in our country, as power cuts continue to increase ; the deep-water port of Kribi, a white elephant estimated at some 800 billion FCFA is still not operational for the so-called "completed" part, and will be oversized when it is completely finished as planned to treat 100 million tons then whereas major African ports such as Tangier-Med in Morocco and Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire respectively handle 45 million and 25 million tonnes; the construction of the Nsimalen-Yaoundé highway, at a distance of barely 15 km is hard work; as for the Yaounde-Douala highway, it is abandoned: not only the first 60 kilometers announced for ages have not been completed, but they start and end in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the forest. Much more serious, its construction beats the price record, because it costs 7 billion FCFA per km while the km should not exceed 2 billion.
On the social level, despite government propaganda, the main indicators of the standard of living of Cameroonians show a strong overall decline. By the 2015 deadline, the country had achieved only two of the 17 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and by the end of 2020 it is hoped that at least half of these targets will be met. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the current regime has produced about 2,500,000 more poor since 1987. The total number of poor reaches 8.1 million people, the most affected region of the country being the Far North where poverty reaches 74% of the population. Life expectancy is declining and is estimated at 56 years. Underemployment reaches 70% of the working-age population. The informal sector, with low productivity, employs nearly 90% of workers. In the field of health, our country records about 600 deaths per 100,000 births, while the less affluent countries are doing much better: including 550 for Niger, 345 for Burkina Faso, 45 for Cape Verde. Only 3 out of 5 births in our country are attended by qualified staff, whereas we are more than 4 out of 5 in most countries of the world. 2 in 100 Cameroonians have health insurance. The number of people with access to consumable water is insignificant: the total number of subscribers to drinking water was 500,000 in 2016, while it is over 700,000 in a country like Senegal that has 1 / 3 fewer people than Cameroon. As for housing, the deficit is abysmal. It is estimated at 1,500,000 units, while the Société Immobilière du Cameroun (SIC) has produced only 14,000 dwellings in 65 years, an average of only 215 dwellings per year.
My dear compatriots,
Before the advent of the so-called "Renewal" regime, the entrance examinations in the big schools opening the way to the civil service and the recruitments in the public and parapublic administrations were certainly not perfect, but they fully fulfilled a essential function in the construction of national sentiment, social cohesion, rooting of the cult of excellence in the minds of young Cameroonians. They also played the crucial role of a social lift that allowed children from modest families to rise through their efforts and merit in the high spheres of administration, thus making possible the materialization for all of the great Republican dream. It is this selection system that has allowed many dignitaries in this country and even the current regime to rise to the social rank they occupy today. But after crossing the river they broke the bridge behind them. The Biya-CPDM regime killed that dream.
From now on, a young Cameroonian can not enter the ENAM, the IRIC, the Normal Schools, the Faculties of Medicine, the School of Police, the EMIA, the Polytechnic Schools and so on. he carries certain surnames, or if he has money to buy his success, or if he is the protégé of a personality of the CPDM. The competitions are organized for the form, the results being known in advance. Administrative dynasties are organized. Indeed, without any embarrassment, those who manage the country under the current regime now measure their political power among their offspring and other members of their families that they "register" as "admitted" to entrance competitions in the United States. major schools giving access to the higher administration. The dynastic succession is assured.
In sum, the widespread corruption of the regime has destroyed the Cameroonian education system, especially its public university system, which was one of the most successful and respected in Africa all regions. But if you want to destroy a country, there is no better way to do it than to destroy your education system. Recruitment and promotion of university teachers followed the same path. You really have to hate your country to let such practices flourish, which take place with the knowledge of the authorities and with total impunity!
As with all forms of corruption that fatally plague our country, the MRC is committed to purging the Cameroonian society of this evil that has undermined it for decades, if the Cameroonian people brought it to power during the next elections.
My dear compatriots,
During his address to the youth, February 10, 2016, the President of the Republic, Paul BIYA, had unveiled the project "a student, a computer" that he then enrolled as part of the "Special Youth Plan". In the wake of the presidential announcement, the Minister of Higher Education announced that the Government would offer 500,000 computers to students of State Universities and Private Institutions of Higher Education (IPES) enrolled during the academic year 2016 -2017.
This is not the place to dwell on the criminal practices put in place by the Ministry of Higher Education and State Universities to extort funds from the IPES in this operation, nor to question the criteria. which were finally applied to the selection of beneficiary students, given the delay in the delivery of the first computers that arrived in Cameroon on December 22, 2017, while the last ones are announced for June 2018.
This is not the place to focus on the conditions for the awarding of this important public contract, which was initially announced at CFAF 75 billion but which, at a unit price of CFAF 300,000, was revealed by the Minister of Higher Education on 26 December 2017, should finally make the computer Paul BIYA probably one of the most expensive electronic toys in the world. Indeed, at the official unit price, the total cost of 500,000 computers would amount to 150 billion CFA francs. To this exorbitant amount, it will be necessary to integrate the extension for the equipment by Microsoft of the Windows 10 operating system, the transport costs and the interest payable to EXIM BANK China. In the end, these computers, ridiculously dubbed "Paul Biya Higher Education Vision (PB HEV)", will cost nearly 200 billion CFA francs to the Cameroonian people. They are bought on credit while the Government celebrates the signing of a humiliating agreement to release a CFAF 112.83 billion budget loan with the World Bank negotiated painfully since last year.
The very idea of making computers abroad, with a loan whose terms are hidden, computers to offer to students enrolled in the only academic year 2017-2018 and no longer 2016-2017, dedicates the lack of the patriotism of the regime of renewal, its inability to diagnose and then propose solutions to the serious problems of Higher Education and Research. Indeed, after the students enrolled for the academic year 2017-2018, those who follow are automatically excluded from the vision for Higher Education candidate Paul BIYA, assuming he has one.
How not to note that the students who today happily receive, with 2 years delay, the famous Paul BIYA brand computers are the unemployed of tomorrow who will take, for lack of job opportunities, the sinister path of emigration which leads to Europe via Libya. They will throw themselves like other young people before them, in the adventure of despair where, unfortunately, some will end their throats after their families have been ransomed and others sold or treated as slaves under the watchful eye of the cameras.
The conclusion is clear: in fact, Paul BIYA computers are not part of a vision of a statesman anxious to rely on a reform thought of higher education to secure his country to modernity, thanks in particular facilitating the access of Cameroonian youth to information and communication technologies. They simply participate in a rude and clumsy political marketing operation related to the launch of his election campaign.
This sad fact can not leave indifferent the citizens of this country, in particular its student youth in the name of which is organized this pitiful masquerade which hides badly a vast swindle. Because, in fact announced computers, these are electronic toys that are distributed to those who will be elected for this "donation" on public funds candidate Paul BIYA; a "gift" on loan that will cost Cameroonian taxpayers a lot and will help to increase the country's debt. This sad joke of the Paul BIYA computers is proof of the economic antipatriotism of Mr. BIYA, the CPDM and the Renewal regime. For in a country like Cameroon where unemployment is now a factor of serious insecurity, which notably provides the ranks of the terrorist sect Boko Haram, a cause of desperation that feeds the Anglophone crisis and the emigration-suicide of youth, to import 500,000 computers is the manifest expression of a lack of vision for the country. By providing the country with factories to assemble these computers if they failed to manufacture them, the President of the Republic would have enabled Cameroon to increase its mastery of technology in this area and to ensure the supply of current and future generations of people. Cameroonian students in computer equipment of all kinds. The establishment of such factories would have prevented a responsible, patriotic, job-conscious government, especially that of young people, from transforming the so-called "Special Youth Plan" into a source of enrichment for Chinese industry and job creation for Chinese workers.
In the end, the Paul BIYA computers are proof that Mr. BIYA, the CPDM and his regime do not like the Cameroonian youth, but only what they can draw from it, namely, the instrumentalize it to maintain itself to power and continue their scandalous and boundless enrichment. One can not understand otherwise an operation announced within the framework of a "Special Youth Plan" initiated by the Head of State which turns into a personalized operation of the candidate Paul BIYA in the presidential election of 2018. The string is big and the Cameroonian people are not fooled. This is the place to raise a strong condemnation of this financing of Mr BIYA's campaign by public debt. The Special Criminal Court (TCS) must therefore monitor with particular attention what appears to be a misappropriation of public assets of about 200 billion FCFA, subject to other surprises to come, by the natural candidate CPDM in the next election presidential.
This operation conducted in collaboration with China gives me the opportunity to denounce the insidious interference of foreign powers including those of this country, and for several years now, in the domestic politics of our country. The collusion between the Chinese Government and the CPDM regime against the interests of the Cameroonian people, resulting in recurrent and all-out Chinese "donations" to this party, must stop. It is contrary to the laws of our country and does not support the well-understood interests of China in Cameroon.
My dear compatriots,
The year 2018 will be an important year because of the challenges we face in Cameroon's security, economic, political and social situations. It is above all a crucial election year for the future of our dear country.
The MRC was born on the recognition of the difficulty of the opposition, yet sociologically majority in the country, to unite against this power that captured the state. As a result, our party has based its strategy on the union of all reforming forces and change. In this unitary perspective, in 2015 our party made a written and personalized political offer to political parties and civil society organizations to set up a joint technical secretariat to work on the proposal of consensual measures for the Improvement of the Electoral Code whose double ballot on 29 September 2013 showed serious shortcomings. These organizations did not even find it useful to acknowledge receipt of the correspondence addressed to them, although our approach was imbued with humility.
The future of Cameroon and our people challenges us and must be placed above all personal pride. That is why, overcoming the indifference of the main political leaders of our country to our efforts to unite, I will engage in the coming weeks a national campaign to raise awareness of the latter on the urgency of pooling our resources. forces to finally offer Cameroonians the political alternation they have been waiting for for nearly forty years.
In this context, I will now meet with the leaders of the opposition political parties, no matter where they want to give me an audience.
I will also take language especially with important political figures who do not have a known partisan affiliation, English-speaking Republican leaders, leaders of organizations of the Cameroonian diaspora, as part of a wide-ranging approach.
The critical situation of our country imposes a capitalization and a mutualisation of all wills and all experiences. Also, it seems to me necessary to ask, despite their current situation of prisoners, the experience and ideas of important personalities such as the former Prime Minister, the former Ministers of State Secretaries General to the Presidency of the Republic and many other former ministers and personalities of such an experience. Following the same approach, I will meet the world of business and the various professional corporations so that together we make common cause to lift the Breath of Hope on our country.
Within the party in power, many reformist patriots, including executives who, failing to put their ideas and talents at the service of our country, suffer in silence in front of the poor political, social, economic and security of the regime since soon forty years old. To those patriots inhabited by the concern for national recovery, those cadres who are marginalized by the regime's go-to-war for their lucidity, the RCM is reaching out for a synergy of ideas and efforts beneficial to our people.
In parallel with this inclusive approach of constructive sharing of ideas and saving efforts for our people, the RCM will continue to animate, in various forms, its demand for the consensual revision of the Electoral Code, which is essential to protect our country from contesting electoral results.
My dear compatriots, as the natural candidate of CPDM launches his campaign for the presidential election of 2018, I feel the patriotic duty to call for your vigilance and your ultimate determination to put an end to the tragic adventure of this president and his regime of suffering and misfortune, which methodically destroyed the flourishing economic and social legacy bequeathed by his predecessor, wiped out our dreams of development, lowered Cameroon and its talented, hardworking, dignified and proud people to the ranks of a nation without any relief, which no longer counts in Africa and even more so in the world. This eternal candidate who wants to be an eternal president, is finally in action only during the electoral campaign, and still only in photo and through his "creatures" and other captives of all kinds. He is therefore on his way to 2018, for an additional term that should allow him to total, a few years, a half-century at the head of the state!
Dear compatriots, I know you tired of this old regime that can no longer be a miracle after thirty-five years of failure, neither for yourselves nor for your children! So I invite you now, to take the firm resolution that it is not with your voice that Cameroon will become in 2018 the laughing stock of Africa and the world!
The key to change in our country is voter registration and voting. These are the powerful instruments of expression of our common will to turn the page of 35 years of rampant dictatorship, deconstruction of the Nation and economic and social sinking. That all our compatriots who have not yet done so rush into the offices of ELECAM of their localities from January 2, 2018 to register on the electoral lists. This is the last opportunity they have before elections next year. I count on their sense of patriotic duty to give themselves the means to participate in the first great democratic revolution to be held in 2018 in our country; because, thanks to their vote, we will rid Cameroon of this regime which gangrene it to build a Nation, solidarity and attentive to the poorest, united by a living-together, built on a sincere dialogue and resolutely put on the orbit of the modernity .
Cameroonians, Cameroonians,
As you leave, I would like to tell you that a bright future is opening in front of our beloved country, with the change expected next year. You will live in a country where we cherish the harmony and trust between Cameroonians, where the patriotic ambition to build a peaceful and united Nation, prosperous and just, modern and powerful, driven by technological mastery guides the action of the 'State. You can count on me to build it together. It is on this commitment that I wish each of you individually a happy new year 2018.
Long live Cameroon!
The National President of the MRC
Maurice KAMTO.
Yaoundé, December 29, 2017.
Cameroon-Info
MESSAGE FROM THE END OF 2017 BY PRESIDENT MAURICE KAMTO AT THE NATION.
Cameroonians, Cameroonians, My dear compatriots;
The end of 2017 has been one of the most challenging for our country and our people for several decades.
The galloping impoverishment of the overwhelming majority of Cameroonians has been complicated by a predictable fiscal crisis and an unprecedented political crisis that now calls into question the very survival of our country, as a united nation rich in its cultural diversity inherited from colonization. In short, the Cameroonian nation is in a critical situation on the threshold of a crucial election year for its future.
President Paul BIYA inherited from his predecessor Ahmadou AHIDJO, in November 1982, a peaceful, stable and prosperous country, in which, after years of bloody nationalist struggles, we had now turned to inducing global development. raising the standard of living of the populations. In thirty-five years of power, Mr. BIYA, the CPDM and its regime have, by their irresponsible and inconsistent management, deconstructed all the achievements of yesterday, including national unity and living together. They turned the country into a hotbed of chronic insecurity, tribalism and ethnic hatred. President BIYA and the CPDM have spent more than three decades selling Cameroonians peace, which they were not the artisans. They have nothing left to offer now that they plunged the country into civil war, after deciding to wage a war against Boko Haram that was not that of Cameroon. It is now clear to every Cameroonian citizen that it is not this president and his regime that can preserve the unity of the country and national harmony. As with most of his statements, including "rigor and morality", President BIYA spoke of "national integration" without faith. The country is more than ever divided and the defense of its territorial integrity has even passed in recent years, by the solicitation of the armed forces of a neighboring country. We could not lower a nation that was the lighthouse of Central Africa and is now condemned to look with nostalgia for its past glory. Those responsible for this national drama exist and the Cameroonian people must not forget it, nor accept that they take refuge behind the unacceptable formula: "We are all responsible".
MRC activists and supporters will forever be grateful for the sacrifices made by our brave defense forces and courageous Far North populations to keep the Republic standing up against the terrorists of the Boko Haram sect. These sacrifices and sufferings (of our soldiers and our populations) are, it must be remembered, the dramatic consequence of the serious political fault of the power which, for thirty-five years, has chosen to abandon at the mercy of various predators. , entire parts of the national territory and the populations living there. Busy with protecting the people, Mr. BIYA's regime has forgotten that the country has borders that must be protected.
Preferring political corruption to the far-sighted and responsible management of the northern part of the country, he has bet everything on an elite in his pay. This CPDM elite, which specializes in the production of election results unrelated to the local political reality, uses and abuses various forms of terror to subdue the populations of these areas of the country. With his support, President BIYA has patiently and cynically built the breeding ground of insecurity that Boko Haram terrorists have only exploited.
To the brave people of the northern part of the country, where famine threatens nearly three million of our compatriots, and particularly those stricken from the Far North; to the soldiers who, at the cost of their lives, have hitherto preserved the integrity of the national territory in the face of these barbarians of modern times; the MRC and I address our eternal gratitude, our solidarity and our renewed encouragement!
My dear compatriots,
While the country had not yet definitively disabled the Boko Haram terrorists in the Far North, the Anglophone question, which the MRC has endorsed in its Vision for Cameroon since its creation in 2012, is noisily imposed on national public life from October-November 2016.
The denial of the Government followed by its arrogance, the excessive use of force, the judicial terror and the punitive mass military operations with the aim of massacres of unarmed populations, have succeeded in transforming the legitimate social and political demands of the population. North West and South West, in revolt against the regime and finally in civil war.
I reiterate my condemnation and that of the MRC, without reservation, of any project of secession of Cameroon. Likewise, I condemn violence in all its forms: whether it is the violence of the defense and security forces against unarmed populations - even if they express political demands - or the violence of members of secessionist groups who target either the soldiers carrying out their missions as security guarantors and the integrity of the national territory, or the populations and leaders who reject extremism.
In the MRC, however, we can not help but think that a political agenda is hidden behind the civil war that President BIYA finally succeeded in imposing on the Cameroonian people, despite the benevolent and patriotic advice we gave them publicly, but also informally those of many other national political actors, friendly countries of Cameroon and various international organizations, including the United Nations. In fact, any attentive observer is at least troubled by the essentially warlike attitude of the President of the Republic and his Government, in a purely political affair which, moreover, is in fact only the consequence of his obstinate refusal and irresponsible to implement the regionalization enshrined in the Constitution of 18 January 1996. At a time when the national army is already engaged on the front of the Far-North with a costly human, economic and financial cost for the country, where six of the ten regions of the country are fiscally damaged, where Cameroon has returned to the IMF and that opens in 2018 a long election year with significant financial commitments, one wonders why the President of the Republic can tilt the country into the war if it is because it has chosen the politics of chaos to maintain power, or because it no longer has the lucidity to govern the country. The result is or will be the same in both cases: a disaster for Cameroon.
No matter what the near future will tell us about the illogical will of the regime to maintain the civil war in the two English-speaking regions of our country, the MRC reiterates, once more, its categorical rejection of the slippage of the electoral calendar for whatever reason. A war desired, provoked and maintained by a regime that fears to defend the record of thirty-five years of undivided rule and errors in the face of a people now prepared to free themselves from dictatorship, can in no way be invoked to justify a full or partial postponement of the elections scheduled for 2018.
That said, despite the many lives of needlessly sacrificed soldiers and civilians and the horrendous suffering imposed on the peaceful populations of the North-West and South-West through excessive militarization and administrative terror measures, it is still possible to save peace. For that, as we have proposed to the Government relentlessly, it is imperative and urgent to organize a sincere national dialogue to resolve the English-language question in depth. At the same time, we must look at the political, institutional and electoral reforms, made unavoidable by the general state of the country and the risk of widespread crisis that the upcoming electoral deadlines weigh on him as a result of an Electoral Code favoring massive fraud and the holdup of the results.
This dialogue must be preceded by some preliminary actions on the part of the authorities:
- the release of all persons detained or prosecuted in the context of the Anglophone crisis;
- the return of refugees assessed credibly in the thousands;
- a message from President BIYA to our English-speaking compatriots about all the humiliations that have been unjustly imposed on them since November 2016;
- a visit of the President of the Republic to the two regions during which he will have to, if only to save the forms, speak and discuss with his English-speaking compatriots in English, of their pains and their bad being, them which Without discrimination, all sorts of insults ("terrorists", "dogs", "bandits", etc.) were received from prominent members of the regime, who were never even reminded of order.
If he were unable to conduct such a linguistic and political exercise, not only would he justify the English claims himself, but he would disqualify himself from his presidential office, in a country where people come to brave the usual fears to demand living the fullness of their bilingualism enshrined in the Constitution, and their double culture inherited from history. Her recent speech, made entirely in French to the Secretary General of the Commonwealth, speaks volumes about her desire to deny colonial biculturalism.
Nevertheless, we encourage it to undertake this approach of responsibility towards our English-speaking compatriots. It is certainly contrary to its political management based on arrogance, contempt and sufficiency with regard to those whose legitimacy it nevertheless holds. But in the critical situation where he and his supporters have plunged the country, there is no viable alternative.
My dear compatriots,
On June 2nd, 2017, our country was once again brought to the fore following a new tragedy: the murder and drowning of Bishop Jean-Marie Benoît BALA, Bishop of the Diocese of Bafia, at the 58 years old. As in the past, our revolt was silent in the face of these unspeakable acts of the CPDM regime and its dark practices. That light is not made to this day on this shocking death, as after the monstrous assassination of several bishops, priests, and nuns of the Catholic Church in Cameroon, the ritual murder of young Narcissus DJOMO POKAM in broad daylight at the Hilton hotel in Yaounde in 2006, or the theft of Vanessa TCHATCHOU's infant in 2011, all this, I say, provides enough information on the degree of moral decay of the regime that governs us.
One year after the disaster of Eséka on October 21, 2016, the pain of the families and friends of the victims remains deep and, to tell the truth, the entire Cameroonian people remain upset in their silence. Let those who govern the country be compassionate and give answers to the families who, like this lawyer, are desperately searching for his Notary Wife disappeared in this tragedy, or waiting to be fixed to do the work of mourning. A power can not show so much lightness and indifference to so many misfortunes, traumas and sufferings of the populations for which it is responsible. Each of us must form in his heart the resolution to put an end to such a regime on the occasion of upcoming elections, because no one is safe from such deadly drifts.
My dear compatriots,
On the economic and social level, the country's situation is, it must be said, disastrous. I do not have, and you know, the habit of excessive vocabulary. But I have to present the reality to you.
Between the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, the Government has again placed our country under the caudal fork of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Despite various denials, if the Cameroonian economy is not yet technically into recession, the state is threatened with bankruptcy. This is a return to square one: we remember that only five years after the accession to power of President BIYA, he turned to the IMF when he had just inherited a country prosperous, financially healthy and abundant. Cameroonians have made more than 20 years of sacrifice to get out of structural adjustment. But just out of a tunnel which had been announced the end for several years, the Government has fallen into the mismanagement, a massive debt to fund projects poorly studied, overcharged and inefficiently questionable. Added to this are economic policy mistakes. And the same president BIYA has placed a second time Cameroon under the financial supervision of the IMF. The loop is closed. Such a failure in the management of the economy is rare under the same President of the Republic. The conclusion of an objective analysis of the economic policy and conduct of this regime is now a shared fact: the slogan "Emergence in 2035" is already dead of its beautiful death, because from the beginning, such a goal was out this Government, which has never attained once in seven years, the rate of growth that it had set for itself in the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper (GESP) supposed to lead us to this paradise. In fact, with a growth rate of around 4% in 2017, lower than in 2016, in a downward trend, the Cameroonian economy is stalling, while poverty and precariousness are intensifying and spreading. The mirror with larks of the famous "structuring projects", vainly baptized the "Big achievements", ceased to be illusion. Engaged after three decades without Renewal investments in the sectors concerned, they are a collection of chess. Hold: the Mekin dam whose design was missed is still not functional and one wonders why it is a structuring project; the Memve'ele dam, built without connection to the consumption poles, is lost in the middle of nowhere and will in any case produce an energy out of price; the Lom Pangar dam, which has only been partially filled with water, is slow to produce the expected effects on energy production in our country, as power cuts continue to increase ; the deep-water port of Kribi, a white elephant estimated at some 800 billion FCFA is still not operational for the so-called "completed" part, and will be oversized when it is completely finished as planned to treat 100 million tons then whereas major African ports such as Tangier-Med in Morocco and Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire respectively handle 45 million and 25 million tonnes; the construction of the Nsimalen-Yaoundé highway, at a distance of barely 15 km is hard work; as for the Yaounde-Douala highway, it is abandoned: not only the first 60 kilometers announced for ages have not been completed, but they start and end in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the forest. Much more serious, its construction beats the price record, because it costs 7 billion FCFA per km while the km should not exceed 2 billion.
On the social level, despite government propaganda, the main indicators of the standard of living of Cameroonians show a strong overall decline. By the 2015 deadline, the country had achieved only two of the 17 targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and by the end of 2020 it is hoped that at least half of these targets will be met. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the current regime has produced about 2,500,000 more poor since 1987. The total number of poor reaches 8.1 million people, the most affected region of the country being the Far North where poverty reaches 74% of the population. Life expectancy is declining and is estimated at 56 years. Underemployment reaches 70% of the working-age population. The informal sector, with low productivity, employs nearly 90% of workers. In the field of health, our country records about 600 deaths per 100,000 births, while the less affluent countries are doing much better: including 550 for Niger, 345 for Burkina Faso, 45 for Cape Verde. Only 3 out of 5 births in our country are attended by qualified staff, whereas we are more than 4 out of 5 in most countries of the world. 2 in 100 Cameroonians have health insurance. The number of people with access to consumable water is insignificant: the total number of subscribers to drinking water was 500,000 in 2016, while it is over 700,000 in a country like Senegal that has 1 / 3 fewer people than Cameroon. As for housing, the deficit is abysmal. It is estimated at 1,500,000 units, while the Société Immobilière du Cameroun (SIC) has produced only 14,000 dwellings in 65 years, an average of only 215 dwellings per year.
My dear compatriots,
Before the advent of the so-called "Renewal" regime, the entrance examinations in the big schools opening the way to the civil service and the recruitments in the public and parapublic administrations were certainly not perfect, but they fully fulfilled a essential function in the construction of national sentiment, social cohesion, rooting of the cult of excellence in the minds of young Cameroonians. They also played the crucial role of a social lift that allowed children from modest families to rise through their efforts and merit in the high spheres of administration, thus making possible the materialization for all of the great Republican dream. It is this selection system that has allowed many dignitaries in this country and even the current regime to rise to the social rank they occupy today. But after crossing the river they broke the bridge behind them. The Biya-CPDM regime killed that dream.
From now on, a young Cameroonian can not enter the ENAM, the IRIC, the Normal Schools, the Faculties of Medicine, the School of Police, the EMIA, the Polytechnic Schools and so on. he carries certain surnames, or if he has money to buy his success, or if he is the protégé of a personality of the CPDM. The competitions are organized for the form, the results being known in advance. Administrative dynasties are organized. Indeed, without any embarrassment, those who manage the country under the current regime now measure their political power among their offspring and other members of their families that they "register" as "admitted" to entrance competitions in the United States. major schools giving access to the higher administration. The dynastic succession is assured.
In sum, the widespread corruption of the regime has destroyed the Cameroonian education system, especially its public university system, which was one of the most successful and respected in Africa all regions. But if you want to destroy a country, there is no better way to do it than to destroy your education system. Recruitment and promotion of university teachers followed the same path. You really have to hate your country to let such practices flourish, which take place with the knowledge of the authorities and with total impunity!
As with all forms of corruption that fatally plague our country, the MRC is committed to purging the Cameroonian society of this evil that has undermined it for decades, if the Cameroonian people brought it to power during the next elections.
My dear compatriots,
During his address to the youth, February 10, 2016, the President of the Republic, Paul BIYA, had unveiled the project "a student, a computer" that he then enrolled as part of the "Special Youth Plan". In the wake of the presidential announcement, the Minister of Higher Education announced that the Government would offer 500,000 computers to students of State Universities and Private Institutions of Higher Education (IPES) enrolled during the academic year 2016 -2017.
This is not the place to dwell on the criminal practices put in place by the Ministry of Higher Education and State Universities to extort funds from the IPES in this operation, nor to question the criteria. which were finally applied to the selection of beneficiary students, given the delay in the delivery of the first computers that arrived in Cameroon on December 22, 2017, while the last ones are announced for June 2018.
This is not the place to focus on the conditions for the awarding of this important public contract, which was initially announced at CFAF 75 billion but which, at a unit price of CFAF 300,000, was revealed by the Minister of Higher Education on 26 December 2017, should finally make the computer Paul BIYA probably one of the most expensive electronic toys in the world. Indeed, at the official unit price, the total cost of 500,000 computers would amount to 150 billion CFA francs. To this exorbitant amount, it will be necessary to integrate the extension for the equipment by Microsoft of the Windows 10 operating system, the transport costs and the interest payable to EXIM BANK China. In the end, these computers, ridiculously dubbed "Paul Biya Higher Education Vision (PB HEV)", will cost nearly 200 billion CFA francs to the Cameroonian people. They are bought on credit while the Government celebrates the signing of a humiliating agreement to release a CFAF 112.83 billion budget loan with the World Bank negotiated painfully since last year.
The very idea of making computers abroad, with a loan whose terms are hidden, computers to offer to students enrolled in the only academic year 2017-2018 and no longer 2016-2017, dedicates the lack of the patriotism of the regime of renewal, its inability to diagnose and then propose solutions to the serious problems of Higher Education and Research. Indeed, after the students enrolled for the academic year 2017-2018, those who follow are automatically excluded from the vision for Higher Education candidate Paul BIYA, assuming he has one.
How not to note that the students who today happily receive, with 2 years delay, the famous Paul BIYA brand computers are the unemployed of tomorrow who will take, for lack of job opportunities, the sinister path of emigration which leads to Europe via Libya. They will throw themselves like other young people before them, in the adventure of despair where, unfortunately, some will end their throats after their families have been ransomed and others sold or treated as slaves under the watchful eye of the cameras.
The conclusion is clear: in fact, Paul BIYA computers are not part of a vision of a statesman anxious to rely on a reform thought of higher education to secure his country to modernity, thanks in particular facilitating the access of Cameroonian youth to information and communication technologies. They simply participate in a rude and clumsy political marketing operation related to the launch of his election campaign.
This sad fact can not leave indifferent the citizens of this country, in particular its student youth in the name of which is organized this pitiful masquerade which hides badly a vast swindle. Because, in fact announced computers, these are electronic toys that are distributed to those who will be elected for this "donation" on public funds candidate Paul BIYA; a "gift" on loan that will cost Cameroonian taxpayers a lot and will help to increase the country's debt. This sad joke of the Paul BIYA computers is proof of the economic antipatriotism of Mr. BIYA, the CPDM and the Renewal regime. For in a country like Cameroon where unemployment is now a factor of serious insecurity, which notably provides the ranks of the terrorist sect Boko Haram, a cause of desperation that feeds the Anglophone crisis and the emigration-suicide of youth, to import 500,000 computers is the manifest expression of a lack of vision for the country. By providing the country with factories to assemble these computers if they failed to manufacture them, the President of the Republic would have enabled Cameroon to increase its mastery of technology in this area and to ensure the supply of current and future generations of people. Cameroonian students in computer equipment of all kinds. The establishment of such factories would have prevented a responsible, patriotic, job-conscious government, especially that of young people, from transforming the so-called "Special Youth Plan" into a source of enrichment for Chinese industry and job creation for Chinese workers.
In the end, the Paul BIYA computers are proof that Mr. BIYA, the CPDM and his regime do not like the Cameroonian youth, but only what they can draw from it, namely, the instrumentalize it to maintain itself to power and continue their scandalous and boundless enrichment. One can not understand otherwise an operation announced within the framework of a "Special Youth Plan" initiated by the Head of State which turns into a personalized operation of the candidate Paul BIYA in the presidential election of 2018. The string is big and the Cameroonian people are not fooled. This is the place to raise a strong condemnation of this financing of Mr BIYA's campaign by public debt. The Special Criminal Court (TCS) must therefore monitor with particular attention what appears to be a misappropriation of public assets of about 200 billion FCFA, subject to other surprises to come, by the natural candidate CPDM in the next election presidential.
This operation conducted in collaboration with China gives me the opportunity to denounce the insidious interference of foreign powers including those of this country, and for several years now, in the domestic politics of our country. The collusion between the Chinese Government and the CPDM regime against the interests of the Cameroonian people, resulting in recurrent and all-out Chinese "donations" to this party, must stop. It is contrary to the laws of our country and does not support the well-understood interests of China in Cameroon.
My dear compatriots,
The year 2018 will be an important year because of the challenges we face in Cameroon's security, economic, political and social situations. It is above all a crucial election year for the future of our dear country.
The MRC was born on the recognition of the difficulty of the opposition, yet sociologically majority in the country, to unite against this power that captured the state. As a result, our party has based its strategy on the union of all reforming forces and change. In this unitary perspective, in 2015 our party made a written and personalized political offer to political parties and civil society organizations to set up a joint technical secretariat to work on the proposal of consensual measures for the Improvement of the Electoral Code whose double ballot on 29 September 2013 showed serious shortcomings. These organizations did not even find it useful to acknowledge receipt of the correspondence addressed to them, although our approach was imbued with humility.
The future of Cameroon and our people challenges us and must be placed above all personal pride. That is why, overcoming the indifference of the main political leaders of our country to our efforts to unite, I will engage in the coming weeks a national campaign to raise awareness of the latter on the urgency of pooling our resources. forces to finally offer Cameroonians the political alternation they have been waiting for for nearly forty years.
In this context, I will now meet with the leaders of the opposition political parties, no matter where they want to give me an audience.
I will also take language especially with important political figures who do not have a known partisan affiliation, English-speaking Republican leaders, leaders of organizations of the Cameroonian diaspora, as part of a wide-ranging approach.
The critical situation of our country imposes a capitalization and a mutualisation of all wills and all experiences. Also, it seems to me necessary to ask, despite their current situation of prisoners, the experience and ideas of important personalities such as the former Prime Minister, the former Ministers of State Secretaries General to the Presidency of the Republic and many other former ministers and personalities of such an experience. Following the same approach, I will meet the world of business and the various professional corporations so that together we make common cause to lift the Breath of Hope on our country.
Within the party in power, many reformist patriots, including executives who, failing to put their ideas and talents at the service of our country, suffer in silence in front of the poor political, social, economic and security of the regime since soon forty years old. To those patriots inhabited by the concern for national recovery, those cadres who are marginalized by the regime's go-to-war for their lucidity, the RCM is reaching out for a synergy of ideas and efforts beneficial to our people.
In parallel with this inclusive approach of constructive sharing of ideas and saving efforts for our people, the RCM will continue to animate, in various forms, its demand for the consensual revision of the Electoral Code, which is essential to protect our country from contesting electoral results.
My dear compatriots, as the natural candidate of CPDM launches his campaign for the presidential election of 2018, I feel the patriotic duty to call for your vigilance and your ultimate determination to put an end to the tragic adventure of this president and his regime of suffering and misfortune, which methodically destroyed the flourishing economic and social legacy bequeathed by his predecessor, wiped out our dreams of development, lowered Cameroon and its talented, hardworking, dignified and proud people to the ranks of a nation without any relief, which no longer counts in Africa and even more so in the world. This eternal candidate who wants to be an eternal president, is finally in action only during the electoral campaign, and still only in photo and through his "creatures" and other captives of all kinds. He is therefore on his way to 2018, for an additional term that should allow him to total, a few years, a half-century at the head of the state!
Dear compatriots, I know you tired of this old regime that can no longer be a miracle after thirty-five years of failure, neither for yourselves nor for your children! So I invite you now, to take the firm resolution that it is not with your voice that Cameroon will become in 2018 the laughing stock of Africa and the world!
The key to change in our country is voter registration and voting. These are the powerful instruments of expression of our common will to turn the page of 35 years of rampant dictatorship, deconstruction of the Nation and economic and social sinking. That all our compatriots who have not yet done so rush into the offices of ELECAM of their localities from January 2, 2018 to register on the electoral lists. This is the last opportunity they have before elections next year. I count on their sense of patriotic duty to give themselves the means to participate in the first great democratic revolution to be held in 2018 in our country; because, thanks to their vote, we will rid Cameroon of this regime which gangrene it to build a Nation, solidarity and attentive to the poorest, united by a living-together, built on a sincere dialogue and resolutely put on the orbit of the modernity .
Cameroonians, Cameroonians,
As you leave, I would like to tell you that a bright future is opening in front of our beloved country, with the change expected next year. You will live in a country where we cherish the harmony and trust between Cameroonians, where the patriotic ambition to build a peaceful and united Nation, prosperous and just, modern and powerful, driven by technological mastery guides the action of the 'State. You can count on me to build it together. It is on this commitment that I wish each of you individually a happy new year 2018.
Long live Cameroon!
The National President of the MRC
Maurice KAMTO.
Yaoundé, December 29, 2017.
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