By TazoachaAsonganyi, Yaounde
Political discourse is like advertising.
Both are meant to have an effect on people. For both, the first effort is to
get the attention of the audience; the next crucial one is to get the idea
across.
The
political discourse in town is the divisive issue of the next presidential
election. Somehow, the CPDM has used motions and calls about the next
presidential election to force the more unifying war effort against Boko Haram
to the backwoods!
Their
first step was to surprise us at a most unexpected time by presenting the next
presidential election supposed to be held in October 2018 as an urgent matter.
Bizarrely, they were clamouring to “beg” their natural candidate to accept to
be a candidate! When they were sure that
we were all attentive, they put the joker on the table – they called for the
election to be anticipated!
They
themselves say that it is their “democratic” right to behave this way. Fair
enough for the “democratic” environment that their policy of one strongman with
extremely weak institutions has foisted on all of us. It has permitted that
their desire can become the rational and the irrational can become their
desire.
Whatever
the case, election is the single most important issue that unites the people
with its leadership. Curiously, the CPDM takes it seriously only in the effort
its leadership makes to detach the people from the outcome of the electoral
process.
The
dialectics of the responses of some opposition actors to the “calls” is likely
to contribute to this uncoupling effort of the CPDM. Some are engaged in
Orwellian doublespeak - saying that there will be war if the election is
anticipated, but preparing for the election all the same, as if the “war” will
be prosecuted by some outsiders. Others are calling for the revision of the
electoral process as if it is a stand-alone problem, not part of the problem of
the whole failed system.
And yet others are calling on the actual
initiator of the “calls” not to accept the calls. In this, they forget the
saying that in politics it is irrational to follow the wishes of your enemies.
In politics, you cannot easily make an opponent to change an idea; the more you
encourage them to do so, the more you stiffen their resolve to do it!
In
the cacophony, the bottom line is the unpredictability of politics – the effect
of unknowns. But it is no excuse for those who want to ride two horses at once!
Since pity is said to be a kind of affection, we can actually pity some of us!
There is no need for duplicity and hypocrisy, or for touting a public persona
that is very different from the private self. There is a point beyond which
people with deeply felt convictions in politics cannot be dragooned, so there
is no need to give the impression that strong willed persons are being dragged
in by the weak. Whatever you accept to do in politics, it is all your choice!
Everybody
is saying that soon the bandwagon will lay its case at the feet of parliament.
Every schoolboy knows that that is where the cacophony will end up. Who does
not know that parliament has become not an effective but a dignified element of
the political chessboard? Who does not see government ministers giving long and
empty replies to questions in parliament, that avoid the questions; giving brief
and inadequate responses in the confidence that there can be no follow-up
questions? And parliament enjoys it, like we all do!
So,
sure enough, the bandwagon is heading to parliament. Like in 2008, this other
one will have its way, and all the bluffs floating around will be called by the
fact.
Some
CPDM people are begging their hero even more frantically not to say “No”. They
say such an answer would cause the “house” to collapse on itself because of the
feuding factions in the house. In other words, they are engaged in the folly of
solving a problem by shifting it forward so that the factions can sharpen their
weapons and strategies and prepare for a bigger fight ahead. Or maybe some
serious God-sent kaleidoscope may just shake the glass pieces into another
pattern that will avoid conflict and disorder?
Time
has a way of solving apparently complex problems. Invariably, people with a
sense of indispensability always end up humiliated when such indispensability
is entirely dissipated by the timelessness of the life of the nation, and the
emergence of new leadership that leads differently and much, much better.
My
advice is that those inhabited by fear should shed the politics of
make-believe, and embrace the only effective political vaccine against fear –
the people.
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