Janvier Tchouteu

Cameroon's So-Called Opposition Janvier Tchouteu

Cameroon, the microcosm of Africa is a country that is still haunted by an unfinished liberation struggle where those in power are not the people who asked for independence, where the two heads of state in its entire history have not been the choice of the people, but rather the choice of France in a political mafia setup or system that keeps the human-and-material-resources-rich country bogged down in underdevelopment. When the wind of change generated by Mikhail Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika started rattling the monolithic systems and dictatorships of the world, pundits expected the system in Cameroon to be swept away from power as well. But that has not happened. As the majority of Cameroonians started clamoring for change in 1990, some members left the country's single party and formed new parties, purporting to be against the system. The country's nationalists who had suffered defeat in the 1956-1971 liberation war in the hands of France and the army of the puppet it put in power, gave in their support to these new opposition parties, only to realize a decade later that the major opposition parties are actually appendages of the system. In essence, there is no genuine opposition in Cameroon as their participation in elections where more than 80% of Cameroonians do not participate in only perpetuates the system the people do not want.