Lessons from Laquintinie tragedy:

Why Biya should lead & not only rule Cameroon

Paul Biya is expected to sanction

his minister of health

No one asked the President to precipitate his return from Switzerland to Yaounde. For someone who did not interrupt his holiday for the death of 200 Cameroonians in the Nsam fire disaster in April 1998, it was unlikely he would really bother for three deaths. Upon arrival in Yaounde, he did not and has still not made any pronouncement on the issue. It was surprising that he also did not receive the Public Health minister as soon as he alighted from his plane at the Nsimalen International Airport. But the unusually long audience he granted the SG of the CPDM party, Jean Kuete, only betrayed where his real preoccupations are

By a syndicated columnist in Yaounde

Monique Koumateke has gone into the annals of history through a forceful delivery in which she lost everything: her life, her twins, and part of her name. The blood that flowed in front of the closed doors of the Laquintiniemartenity streamed with the dignity and humanity of our system of governance. The surgeon suited to the occasion, heroine of despair, whom public authorities transformed into a dismemberer nay desecrator of the human body, brought before our eyes the reflexes of survival that the poor deploy everyday and which the Koumateke drama only captures.

                The images of a caesarean section in the open skies, shocking as they were, prolongs a simple banality for Cameroonians without income, victims of a state which does not know how to provide answers to their basic needs. Their life is either a permanent drama or a daily miracle. At Laquintinie, the miracle did not take place. But what the Koumateke tragedy reveals is the failure of a health system whose repeated scandals builds for it a morbid reputation in which every Cameroonian who frequents hospitals can write a chapter with a pen steeped in the ink of anger. It is the showcasing of the kind of public governance which does not know how to feed the population and no longer prevents them from dying. We can see in it incompetent and cynical power.

Biya’s disturbing silence

                Overwhelmed by the Koumateketrgedy, the Minister of Public Health, André Mama Fouda, still does not know how to come out of the shame that has been chasing him for quite some time now. He is pitifully rocked by a scandal that he neither anticipated nor knows how to manage. Many unfriendly fingers are pointing at President Paul Biya who chose this polytechnic graduate, who had spent all his career at the Maetur to succeed the more competent OlanguenaAwono in the Public Health ministry.

                In Switzerland while the tragedy occurred, President Biya has since not expressed the least direct compassion. The condolence visit paid the Koumateke family by Littoral governor, IvahaDiboua, on behalf of the President, was undoubtedly the governor’s initiative.

                No one asked the President to precipitate his return to Yaounde. For someone who did not interrupt his holiday for the death of 200 Cameroonians in the Nsam fire disaster in April 1998, it unlikely he would really bother for the lives of three Cameroonians. Upon arrival in Yaounde, he did and has still not made any pronouncement on the issue. It is surprising that he did not receive the Public Health minister as he came down from his chartered aeroplane at the Nsimalen International Airport.

                The truth is Cameroonians no longer consider President Biya as the one to whom they could rush when they have difficulties. He persists in his princely silence thereby showing how he is disconnected from the daily management of his country in which he intervenes only to make use of his discretionary rights of nomination. His lengthy discussion with Jean Nkuete at the airport only betrayed where his real preoccupations and priorities are.

Neither guilty nor responsible

                The government version of the story which held that the patient had died, with her twins, before arrival at the Laquintinie hospital, raises more questions than answers. What Mama Fouda failed to understand is that the “surgical” operation on the corpse of Monique Koumateke in front of a maternity whose doors were closed to a family in distress, was a scene that was not supposed to happen in the first place. The minister’s relation of the “facts” frees the Laquintinie hospital from blame; to him, every worker of the hospital was professional and irreproachable. (Perhaps what Mama Fouda should do is to disguise and visit our hospitals to find out if the workers are models – as he claims – or not).

                It is not surprising that the family of Monique Koumateke that accompanied her to the hospital disclaimed Mama Fouda’s version in an extract broadcast on Equinoxe TV.

                Hear the sister of the deceased: “When I got into the maternity I found women sitting and conversing. I told them that my sister was outside; that I don’t know whether she is dead or not, but she is pregnant. I don’t know if it is possible for you to save the children. They remained seated. I went out. When they saw me coming back, they closed the door. The images you are seeing are in front of the closed doors of the maternity.”

                It is thus clear that Mama Fouda, who has still not gone to the Laquintinie hospital, was relating in the press conference what the director of the hospital had told him on phone. In fact, it was naïve for the minister to think that the Laquintinie hospital could produce a report that would implicate its workers. The official version thus incriminated the deceased who was wrong because she was poor, the “surgeon” who tried the gesture of despair to save two lives, and ill luck which only descends on the poor.

Enter the indefatigable Tchiroma

                No one ever doubted that Communication minister and the self-proclaimed government spokesperson, IssaTchiromaBakary, would come into the picture. He waited until after Mama Fouda had held a press conference (on the evening of the day after the tragedy) before holding his own press conference in Douala. Two days after.

                However, as usual, it was much ado about nothing. What Tchiroma served the press with was the infamous thesis of apprentice sorcerers who are taking refuge in darkness to try to destabilize the regime of his ‘mentor’ Paul Biya. Negligence, drama, indignation, and mobilization; this is the scheme that Tchiroma evoked as the signs of a coup d’état that detractors are keen to organize, albeit with futility.

                In the end, everyone saw that he was not really interested in the tragedy but rather in the President and his regime (which Tchiroma forms an integral part of) staying in power for as long as possible

Social media: A force and a weakness

                As it is said in journalism, a picture is worth a thousand words. Without facebook the Koumateke drama would have existed but not the scandal. The anger and emotions are attached to the shocking images of the crude cesarean section posted online. Cameroonian ministers who are proud not to have an account on this social network henceforth know what facebook is capable of doing.

                Nevertheless, the mobilization behind the keyboards has nothing to do with reality, which is more sobre, as was seen in the exaggerated manifestation in front of the Laquintinie Hospital. There was no such demonstration in the real sense.