Anger rages in the two provinces that symbolically proclaimed their independence on 1 October. It has taken the traditional political class short. On the side of the power as of the opposition, the "hard" hold the top of the pavement.
There is still no cat in the streets of Bamenda in northwestern Cameroon. Army patrols come and go on deserted avenues. Banks and businesses keep their curtains down. The epicenter of the anglophone revolt has the appearance of an abandoned city. On October 1, the symbolic proclamation of independence was violently suppressed by the police: 10 dead according to the government, 17 according to Amnesty International, 100 according to the Network of Human Rights Defenders in Central Africa (Redhac). Since then, nothing is moving, as if the country was seized with tetany. "There's nothing else to do but wait," said a lawyer. Nothing can move until he has returned. »"He," is the Cameroonian president, Paul Biya. He left his country on 17 September to attend the UN General Assembly and then flew to Switzerland for a private visit. On the 6th of October, at the time of writing, he had not yet returned, and nothing filtered from the Geneva hotel where the head of state has his habits - an establishment whose activists from the diaspora like to disturb the tranquility from time to time.
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| Paul Biya Recognizes His Error And Changes His Method |
None of the known heavy weight has been able to recover the insurgency to make political capital
The RDPC, the ruling party, organized marches for national unity and for peace in the big French-speaking cities. Among them were ministers with a political profile, including the Minister of State for Justice, Laurent Esso, and the Minister of Higher Education, Jacques Fame Ndongo - two close collaborators and good connoisseurs of the methods of this president who governs at a distance.
Opposed, the opposition also tried to exist. In vain. Inaudible, it never managed to impose itself in the game ?: a year ago, it was corporations of teachers and lawyers who launched the strike - alone, without the help of any party . Following in their footsteps, the people took to the streets without, again, the watchword being launched by the traditional opponents of power.
They even seemed to be in a hurry to join - or even capture - the movement. And so Joseph Mbah Ndam, the president of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) parliamentary group, was summoned to resign from his deputy mandate by a crowd that swept into his country residence. Under pressure, this madre parliamentarian promised to lip, but did not execute. Paul Biya Recognizes His Error And Changes His Method
