As Paul Biya prepares himself for another fantastic coronation next year to extent his 35 years grip on power in the country, the CL2P takes the opportunity to remind ordinary Cameroonians about the meaning of a democratic election and to enlarge their structure of understanding about democracy, institutional control and citizenship’s equality:

Democratic Election and Consent

For an election to call itself democratic requires the consent of all the electoral body. This knowledge is predicated on the understanding that we get our rights not from the state or the president but from our condition of natality. As such, I am a Cameroonian citizen for being born in Cameroon from Cameroonian parents. In practice, the state of Cameroon cannot decide whether or not I am Cameroonian for the same reason that the state cannot revoke my citizenship. As a consequence, democracy is based on equality, freedom and consent that are integral part of the social contract. On that basis, no one should be excluded from the democratic body.

The real question becomes consent to what? This form of democracy is predicated on the knowledge that ordinary citizens are endowed with the capacity for enlightened self-interest and a strong sense of principles and therefore the power to become rational social actors and masters of their own choices and conscious of their democratic responsibilities.

Thus, since democracy is based on consent and not force and domination, nobody rights must be unilaterally and arbitrary revoked as the political prisoners recognized by the CL2P. Now, the CL2P understands that it has many haters who will cry foul about this but the reasons to unmake these individuals’ citizenship are yet to proven. Hence, before they begin to spit in our faces, any modicum of intellectual honesty must recognize that the CL2P did not politicize the legal system; the Cameroon government did. Otherwise, how can we explain that people so-called referred to as “prevaricators of the public fortune” which is a form of common law crime are subjected to extraordinary public inquisition directed by a dark cabinet or “deep state” under the direct order of the president. Plus, they are judged by special tribunals and locked up under in maximum security prison under a military chain of command? In fact what we have here if people who are above all prisoners of Cameroonian’s institutions and its dereliction of duties against international human right conventions that the regime of Yaoundé has signed but do not enforce.

Democratic Election and the making of Permanent minority

Democracy does not mean the right of the majority. That explains the logic of the separation of power and how, in a normal country, the parliament and the Courts constitute checks and balances that operate as mouse trap against any power overreach. In the United States of America, moreover, they have an electoral college where the power of big states such as California, Texas and New York are counterbalanced by the power of small states which explains why Donald Trump is president, even though, he lost the popular vote by 3 million votes. This has to do with the American founding fathers attempt to protect small states against big ones.

In Cameroon, however, we have a presidential regime with reinforced executive power which de facto turns the president into an absolute monarch. He is a sovereign power onto himself and therefore can veto the National Assembly and the Courts. This kind of absolute power creates, de facto, a regime of unanimity and a subsequent problem of representation.

However, the political prisoners recognized by the CL2P are the weight around his ankles. In practice, these political prisoners constitute a permanent minority which is illegal and illegitimate in a democratic regime. In a real democratic regime, the right of the minority has to be protected. People who do not believe so cannot call themselves democrats because they are actually outside of any genuine democratic process. They are actually involve in anti-politics and archaic modes of power.

Democratic Election and Decision-making in a Democracy

The main question, consequently, is how do we come about collective decision in a democracy? Scholars such as Amartya Sen and Nelson Mandela and the CL2P have theorized at length on the notion of the “African Palaver Tree” and the importance of deliberation in a democratic system. It is true that in this kind of system, deliberation can take a long time, however, this kind of system requires leaders with real political skills and a knack for building coalitions through trust and not authority. Consensus, in this system, is obtained not through the imposition of the majority but the absence of opposition. This practice in fact guarantee that no one impose his will on other people. The goal is always to narrow political points rather than claiming perpetual victories. Thus, politics become a site to elaborate, negotiate and produce common sense.

In Cameroon, however, the CL2P has already claimed that it opposed any election with people that it recognized as political prisoners still in prison. Because, that will be validating the Biya’s regime naked power and control over bodies. So, are Cameroonians going to sit idle and allow this nonsense to continue? Where are the young people whose life has been ruined all these years? Thousands of them have perished en route to Europe because of massive unemployment and government incompetence, yet these people still want the same politicians to continue as usual?