SDF at 25

Fru Ndi

From national party to party of booty sharers
- Time for SDF to stop barking and start biting!
- Time for SDF to reconsider its support to the Biya regime!
- Also time for Fru Ndi to rethink his declining career as opposition leader!
As supporters of Cameroon’s leading opposition party – the SDF, converge on Bamenda this week to celebrate 25 years of the party’s existence, observers say instead of celebrating, Fru Ndi and his partisans should seize the occasion and begin the hard thinking that they must do if the SDF must recover the lost ground. Fru Ndi should also consider the Silver Jubilee commemoration as a most welcome opportunity to rethink his declining career as leader of Cameroon’s leading opposition party.
By Ojong Steven Ayukogem in Yaounde
It was Italy’s former dictator, Benito Musolini who once said: “It is better to live a day like a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb”. This opinion of the Italian strongman vividly contradicts with the leadership of the SDF party in recent times.
    Instead of biting hard and making things really hot and uncomfortable for the Biya regime, the SDF leadership has opted to playing the lamb: Fru Ndi and his partisans have been unable to take their opposition of the regime beyond mere words, barking without being able to bite. Quite unfortunately!
    Observers contend that this state of affairs is unlike in the early 1990s when Fru Ndi would dare Biya and attack his regime frontally, without mincing or wincing.

    Fru Ndi’s blistering attacks on the regime quickly amassed for him supporters and admirers even within Biya’s CPDM party. And Cameroonians in their majority readily jumped for the opportunity, whenever Fru Ndi called for a mass demonstration to protest an unpopular decision of the government.
    At that time, Newspapers only needed to carry a photo of Fru Ndi with his clenched fist, on their front pages, and they were sure to make record sales.
    And because President Biya’s popularity at the time was at an all-time low, the General Manager of the state-run Daily, Cameroon Tribune, decided to abolish the tradition whereby President Biya’s photo was posted on the front page window of every edition of the paper. Celestin Ndembiyembe argued that President Biya had lost face with Cameroonians and the posting of his image on the front page of Cameroon Tribune only discouraged Cameroonians from buying the paper.
    Even though this bold decision would later lead to Ndembiyembe’s sacking (he is still in political limbo until today), it was telling of the damage that Fru Ndi’s growing popularity had done the regime.
    For their part, President Biya and his apologists were discernibly confused and not knowing how to deal with Fru Ndi and the SDF. Regime insiders said Biya was evidently awed and frightened.
    However, Fru Ndi’s charismatic leadership was not to last as long as many had expected: Fru Ndi surprised his admirers when suddenly he dropped his tiger posturing and adopted a somewhat moderate approach to his dealings with the regime.
    Fru Ndi and the lackeys that he surrounded himself with, surprised the public when all of a sudden they started staying silent on important national issues, even issues that in the past always led to nationwide anti-government protests and strongly-worded statements from the SDF Chairman attacking the regime.
    On some occasions when Fru Ndi realized that the populations were not comfortable with his “treacherous silence”, he would hurriedly arrange a press outing to make amends. But more often than not the outing hardly produced the desired effect. On most of such occasions Fru Ndi would only sing the same old song that he has kept singing until today. Whenever his listeners expected him to march fire-for-fire and announce a nationwide SDF uprising against the regime, Fru Ndi only ended up barking without biting; he ended up leaving his listeners disappointed.
    Even though Fru Ndi’s partisans argued that his soft tone on the regime was a sign of political maturity on his part, his critics wasted no opportunity to say that he had been bought over.
    Fru Ndi’s critics observed that ever since the SDF signed a peace pact with the CDPM in 2002, nothing has been made public about the reasons for the pact and the clauses in it.
    Commentators observed that ever since the pact was signed, Fru Ndi has lost his fiery form of the early 1990s and instead of pouncing on the regime like the tiger that he was, he now prefers to play the lamb, much to the comfort of President Biya, and the discomfort of the millions of Cameroonians who looked up to him for the much needed democratic change in Cameroon.
    And if what we hear is true, that by virtue of that peace pact, Fru Ndi and Biya came to a mutual understanding to protect each other - while Biya stays as President and Head of State, Fru Ndi remains the opposition leader. Biya also promised to make Fru Ndi comfortable enough as leader of the opposition.
    And this may just be so especially when one imagines the favours that the SDF has been receiving from the regime. We understand that politics is a power game; a game where-in the strong annihilate the weak.
    But this is not the kind of relationship that exists between Fru Ndi’s SDF and Biya’s CPDM. The two rival parties have become political bed fellows all of a sudden, protecting the other’s interests whenever and wherever need be.
    That is why it did not surprise many when during the recent senatorial elections the CPDM party sacrificed the Adamawa region to the SDF, even though the SDF has no proven followership there.
    Also, for a regime that is known to fix the results of elections even before the polls are conducted, many say it is not by chance that the SDF is always given the second place, only after the CPDM.
    During the 1997 parliamentary polls, when it emerged that the SDF scored 14 seats and could not form a parliamentary group, the CPDM sacrificed some of its seats to the SDF and Joseph Mbah Ndam and Co. could once again retain their juicy positions in the Glass House.
    Very recently, when the government tabled the infamous bill on the anti-terrorism law in parliament, Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam of the SDF came out strongly and supported the bill as not only imperative but a blessing to Cameroon. This Newspaper later learnt on good authority that Mbah Ndam’s law firm in Yaounde was among those consulted by the government to provide the needed expertise to prepare the draft law.
     It therefore stands to be understood why Fru Ndi upon coming out later to criticize that law, only asked Cameroonians to take their responsibility in their own hands and fight against its promulgation. Fru Ndi never reprimanded Mbah Ndam for taking a contrary position to his own, on the very obnoxious and unpopular law.
    Today, observers say the SDF far from being the mass party it was conceived to be, has become a party of booty sharers. Observers say it is this booty sharing attitude that has reduced the party’s support base to barely beyond the NW region.
    Many SDF supporters, especially those of non NW extraction are unable to come to terms with the fact that all the juicy positions in the party are occupied by indigenes of the NW region alone - National Chairman, Party Scribe, Parliamentary Group Leader, Vice President of National Assembly, Questor of National Assembly etc etc.
    It is for these and many other reasons that analysts are advising that if truly the SDF is out for serious business and must forge a better way forward especially as 2018 approaches, then Fru Ndi must answer many questions and find solutions to the rapidly declining fortunes of the party. If Fru Ndi fails to do this he risks ending up like one of Nigeria’s dictators – Yakubu Gowon, who after failing to find solutions to the many problems plaguing his country during his regime, took the hard but humble decision to go back to school nine years after becoming Head of State of Africa’s most populous nation.
         We of this Newspaper wish the SDF Chairman and his many militants a happy feasting and sober reflections as they commemorate May 26, 1990.