Truth That Must Be Told : Why Cabral Libii should support Kamto’s leadership
Hon Cabral Libii, controversial National President of the Cameroonian Party for National Reconciliation, PCRN, was guest of the French television channel, TV5Monde, at the weekend, where he was flattered as the ‘Macron of Cameroon’.
He was asked about the possibility of collaborating with the National President of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC, Prof Maurice Kamto and to agree on a single opposition candidate to challenge the natural candidate of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, at next year’s presidential election. Carried away by the qualification as the ‘Macron of Cameroon’ , his reply was as eerie as the noise of the wind howling through the trees. While conceding that “the coalition is a pressing expectation of the Cameroonian people” , he added that he had proposed a “primary within the opposition” in 2018 to select a unique candidate. “ …I even proposed the drawing of lots. Because I remain convinced, and I am not the only one, that it is always better to come together, to pool our strengths, ” Cabral Libii said. How would the betting have been done?
Who would have organised that primary election and the voters? He didn’t say. In 2018, he might have made some iota of logic with his difficult to implement ideas of betting or primaries. But both are irrelevant today as they were seven years ago. As the 2018 presidential election result indicates, Maurice Kamto officially had 503,384 people who voted for him, coming a distant second after winner, Paul Biya, while Cabral Libii came third with a support of 222,020 voters. With that unequivocal data, does Cabral Libii need any further primary, gambling or even a magic wand to know who should be the leader of a genuine opposition alliance, which has been unanimously accepted by political pundits as the only way to give the CPDM a run for its money? Against that background, he was asked if he would accept to be in an alliance with Kamto.
He parried the question. “We have always realised that the first three [candi- dates of the 2018 poll] had more than 95% of the votes each time. So, the coalition that we are actually expecting should involve two, three, or even four political leaders, ” Cabral Libii said.
The four who he didn’t name should include Osih Joshua of the Social Democratic Front, SDF, and Akere Muna of Action Now. As of now, there are two opposition alliances which surprisingly have been banned by the government but the decision appears to be in violation, given that the ruling CPDM also has its Presidential Majority and G20, which support the party’s candidate. Prof Kamto belongs to the Political Alliance for Change, APC, while Hon Cabral Libii is in the Alliance for a Political Transition, ATP. Cabral Libbi in his interview did not appear to sup- port Kamto’s leadership of the opposition. Instead, he wants a “new thing that we are presenting to Cameroonians…we must at least be able to work on a project of common actions. We must at least be able to have a coalition of actions” . Truth be told, both ways the opposition needs a personality to lead them and statistically, logically and politically, it is Maurice Kamto, who may on age ground, not be the Macron of Cameroon. Postscript: “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do, ” – Eleanor Roosevelt
By Asong Ndifor
The Guardian Post No 3238 : Monday September 23, 2024