Message to the youth:

Maurice Kamto evokes propaganda in Biya’s laptops

Dear young compatriots,

Maurice Kamto: Accept the 

laptops but don’t be fooled

At this holiday period when you are cherishing beautiful projects of life, I wish you a peaceful stay in your respective families, after a laborious academic year. At the same time I exhort you to get ready, after a well-deserved rest, to face the next academic year with even more enthusiasm.

                Your personal efforts and the important sacrifices made by your parents to ensure a good education for you translate themselves into the results that we know. For three decades now neither the advanced state of decrepitude of infrastructure nor the strategic insufficiency of Cameroon’s educational system has daunted the strong will to succeed amongst the great majority of you. In general as in technical education, or in the domain of professional training, you have braved many challenges, with diverse fortunes.

                I congratulate those of you who succeeded in your exams. To those of you who did not have the expected results, my advice is that you should not be discouraged, for perseverance always ends up paying.

                I deplore the continual reduction of the purchasing power of your parents, who, at the same time, witness the increase of the cost of your education. Parents of young school goers can remember the hoax of free education pompously announced by the Government a few years back. The reality is that free education is illusory: education of all types has never been as expensive in Cameroon as has been the case during the past twenty years. For example, for computer courses in Government institutions, school children are asked to pay fees without which they are thrown out; here they are asked to bring realms of paper, toilet rolls, etc. Those are some kinds of taxes that are not prescribed by any legislative or regulatory text. The “minimum package” is a ghost project at every back-to-school period and leads to all sorts of illegal trade as soon as it is made known.

                Within public and private educational institutions, your parents endure the torture imposed on them by the chronic malfunctioning of PTA (Parents/Teachers Associations). Worse still, endemic corruption and all sorts of undeserved privileges are bedeviling the educational institution. Admission into such institutions, especially government ones, is very expensive. Government officials at all levels are conscious of this, but everybody adapts to it.

Dear young holiday makers,

                The announcement that young university students will soon receive 500.000 laptops is a big propaganda. In case you receive them, make good use of them, within the framework of your studies or research, and also for your cultural and political emancipation, for the good of your family, and for the prosperity of Cameroon. Benefit from it, to free yourself from rampant dictatorship, to become university students of the world, to transform yourselves into women and men who are resolutely animated by active citizenship.

                Make good use of them, especially as Cameroon will contract a debt of 75 billion FCFA to acquire this material – an amount that will be refundable within 20 years, that is, the fruit of your parents’ taxes and in no distant time that of your own taxes. Contrary to what they are trying to make you believe, it is not a gift from an individual.

Dear young compatriots,

                On this 29th day of July 2016, the planet is celebrating the 17th edition of the day of system administrators. I call on you to seize this opportunity to effectively educate yourselves on the risks linked to issues of internet security. Do not allow yourselves to be carried away by cyber criminality in all its forms, or by extremist and criminal doctrines. Protect your computers in order to ensure their permanent reliability.

                The Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon, MRC, is an avant-garde political party for the nation and particularly for the youth. The “Youth Pact” of our Vision for Cameroon puts national education in the heart of our political project. You can know more by visiting the website of our party, www.mrcparty.org.

                Those people who are depriving you of scholarships whereas they themselves benefited from such scholarships, in high school and in the university, in Cameroon and abroad, who discriminate in administrative competitive exams, in recruitments in the public service and government enterprises, want to make you believe through a politician gesture which is not inscribed in any political thinking, that they are interested in you and in your future. But no one is easily deceived of anything whatsoever and you should not allow yourselves to be abused.

Dear young compatriots,

                You who are doing professional training, secondary and high school students, students of public and private universities, you are the future of Cameroon and the catalysts of National Renaissance.

Our hope rests on you.

Happy holiday!

NB: This message was originally in French. The translation is by The Median