English-Speaking Crisis: When Will The Convening Of The Inclusive Dialogue With Ayuk Tabe Be Called?

It is almost fifteen months to the day that this bloody crisis continues in the Anglophone part of Cameroon. 

However, it began in November 2016 as an ordinary corporatist demonstration of the lawyers and teachers of this former federated state that existed in the defunct federal system of the country, from 1961 to 1972, then called western Cameroon (North West Provinces). and south-west of present-day Cameroon).

English-speaking lawyers and teachers on strike were only asking for the use of their language of use inherited from British colonization, English, in their respective trades and the end of the progressive and seemingly programmed Francophonization of this region. Anglophone country.

English-Speaking Crisis: When Will The Convening Of The Inclusive Dialogue With Ayuk Tabe Be Called?

Elsewhere in the world, such union grievance would have been settled in a few weeks without major breakage, through consultation between the respective unions and the employer, which in this case is the State of Cameroon.

Instead of proceeding through negotiation and consultation among stakeholders as is done around the world for a case of corporatist strike, the Cameroonian State and its President of the Republic, Paul Biya, preferred to proceed by denial, violence and intimidation as the only answers to these union strikes, which are nevertheless legal in the sense of the constitution and the meaning of the regulations governing labor standards in Cameroon.

In the absence of negotiations, and as a result of the state's intimidating violence against the strikers, the population of the Anglophone region embarked on the struggle. The simple strike then gradually turned into a generalized popular riot against the marginalization of this Anglophone region of the country, then finally in full civil war with its share of dead on both sides of the conflict.

Today, more than in the past, the question that disturbs the tranquility of Cameroonian patriots and which is also raised by many observers around the world, is the following:

How many additional civilians in the English-speaking region of Cameroon on the one hand, and how many additional members of the Cameroonian security forces sent to man the population of that region, on the other, still have to die early and needlessly in the part of this avoidable crisis before Mr. Paul Biya, President of the Republic of Cameroon, finally convenes the inclusive negotiation out of the crisis?

It goes without saying that any solution likely to be accepted by all the parties to the conflict can only result from a sincere and inclusive negotiation, conducted in good and due form, and conducted with sincerity between the parties.

As long as the Anglophone side has not sat down on the negotiating table to express its own demands and express its satisfaction or not with the proposed solutions, the recent unilateral dusting of the hasty, late and superficial measures of President Paul Biya can not to be accused of a satisfactory response to the crisis, as the proponents of his regime claim, without support, to the great support of the state media.

More specifically, President Biya's recent unilateral initiatives such as the creation of the Bilingualism Commission, the creation of the grandes écoles, the translation into English of some documents on the list of grievances of the original Anglophone lawyers' strike or the late start of the application of simple decentralization, which has been enshrined in the constitution since 1996 (22 years later!) can not be considered as a solution to the Anglophone crisis because it does not result from any negotiation session with the Anglophone leaders or with any other party taking part in this crisis. At most,

Now, the time is no longer that of the sole recognition of the merits of the revolt of the Anglophones or the simple catching up of the failed and unmade duties of the state in the past. The time has come to search for and identify the deep root of the Anglophone crisis, to settle the question of substance once and for all, and to implement the resulting solution so as to regulate at the same time all other marginalizations revealed by the multiple memoranda of marginalization that are spreading from other regions of Cameroon.

Such a holistic and definitive solution can only come from a sincere and inclusive negotiation between all the stakeholders of the crisis, as opposed to the selective and cosmetic sprinkling, here and there, unilaterally decreed by President Paul Biya and his regime as described. above, allegedly as the definitive solution to the ongoing Anglophone crisis.

Since the dawn of time, all the wars of the world and all the crises of humanity have always been settled around a negotiating table bringing together all the protagonists, even when there was the total defeat of the one of the parties! Whatever we do and whatever we say, the Anglophone crisis will not escape this implacable logic of the inevitability of the negotiation out of crisis. Why then delay this salutary deadline if it is unavoidable anyway? Any additional delay in the convocation of the negotiation lengthens the list of the early deaths, compatriots mowed in this useless war, voluntarily provoked, thus avoidable.

Michael Fogaing, Diaspora Spokesperson for Modernity-Diaspora for Modernity
In our opinion, the true, clearly identifiable terrorist of this Anglophone crisis and who will bear the odium of it in the face of history is the complicit silence and inaction of the one who, perched at the top of the Cameroonian state, alone invested constitutional powers to convene an inclusive negotiation out of crisis, likes to refuse to do so, lets the situation rot and observes such a compromised viewer, the Cameroonians fight and kill each other, while he would have could avoid the civil war from the beginning, by simply initiating an inclusive negotiation.

The numerous atrocities and massacres suffered by the civilian population and by members of the security forces sent to the Anglophone population as a result of this civil war are the direct consequence of the indifference and lethargic terrorism of the President of the Republic. Republic Paul Biya.

We, members of Diaspora Pour la Modernité, deplore all these Cameroonian lives cut prematurely and unnecessarily from both sides of the conflict.

Through his inaction and his refusal to call for an inclusive post-crisis negotiation, President Paul Biya clearly demonstrates to Cameroonians and the world that keeping his entire power intact is more important to him than the lives of his compatriots and the country. national unity of the country. It is selfishness to the tragic consequence. This is also a crude expression of terrorism.

For all these reasons, we implore all Cameroonians and people of good conscience throughout the world, to put pressure on President Paul Biya, so that he, who alone has the constitutional power to do so, summons without further delay negotiations to exit the Anglophone crisis.
We are all Anglophones.
We are all Cameroonians.
We are Kwa Kwa, Kembong, Mbonge, places of recent atrocities against the Anglophone civilian population.

We are all members of the security forces who needlessly lose their lives in this inter Cameroonian war that has no meaning and no reason to exist.
Mr. President of the Republic, His Excellency Paul Biya, it is never too late to recover. Better late than never. Which Cameroon do you want to leave at the end of your reign?

Please call without further delay the inclusive negotiation out of this highly preventable crisis. This crisis has already so much bereaved our country.
Long live Cameroon, united, just, inclusive, peaceful and master of its destiny.
Michael Fogaing, Diaspora Spokesperson for Modernity-Diaspora for Modernity

NB:
Diaspora for Modernity is a civil society organization of the Cameroonian Diaspora, for whom the independence of democratic institutions from each other is the cornerstone of its political activism in Cameroon. She is based in Canada.