Dear lovely people,
What is this country wherein the only
language that moves the government and some of its citizens to action is
violence? Why must it get to breaking, burning, blocking roads before the government
can do what it should normally do in the first place? The people can complain
for ages and nothing will happen, nobody will even notice them but the moment
they are fed-up of waiting and go out of themselves, the government wakes up
from sleep, starts calling people to order and blaming the people for not
respecting them.
What is this house-on-fire system
of governance in this country? When the common-law lawyers tabled their
grievances followed by the teachers, government dismissed them. When they went
to the streets, police officers were sent to break and maim them. When breaking
and burning started, the government now called for dialogue, the OHADA document
got translated overnight. Will it have to take violence to get what government
in its superlative duty has to offer its people?
It goes without saying that dialogue
between any two parties should start when one party tables a complaint to the
other, not after the complaint tabled is rubbished, dismissed and the
complainers starts exploring all possible ways to have the-powers-that-be
listen to their complain. If the government did not officially wave aside the
Anglophone problem, labeling the teachers and lawyers as a group of manipulated
extremists, things would not have escalated.
Currently, the government is highlighting
its duty to bring things under control even it means using force and of cause
we all know that the use of force in Cameroon means beating up and maiming peaceful
protesters, abducting and killing innocent citizens from their homes. How do
you justify the fact that a hypothetical illegal organization is banned and its
leaders arrested for what they did before the ban? Only in Cameroon will that
happen.
Cameroon is one of the only countries
wherein it takes an entire village blocking a road to have electricity
reinstated in their community, it takes common-law lawyers going on rampage on
the streets before important texts can be translated in a language they
understand. It takes a painful interruption of school to get the government
listen to the plight of teachers, it takes a syndicate of medical personnel engaging
in a wild verbal exchange with the Minister of health for their working
conditions to be looked into. Why must the people go out of themselves and
resort to violence in order to get what they are entitled to naturally by
virtue of their citizenship?
If you don’t want your citizens rioting,
if you want to stay clear of civil unrests etc., you have to take ample measures
to ensure the people don’t frequently get into outbursts of pent-up anger. Because
as you must have heard repeatedly since the days of the American Revolution and
brought to the limelight again recently by Hon. Wirba; “When injustice becomes law,
resistance becomes a duty.” The people have a universal duty to resist
any form of oppression especially from a government they helped put in place.
It’s my experience that the only
way to resolve PROBLEM ONE, is to face it, decompose and break through it completely
because if you evade it, go around it or stifle it by looking for shortcuts,
you are only working hard at creating a more dangerous PROBLEM TWO. You
can trust that PROBLEM TWO will rise in the future to become a more powerful problem
that will run you down.
#Abongta
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