Cameroon’s English-speaking MPs have reacted angrily to the new bill, that if signed could grant a ‘special status to Cameroon’s two crisis-hit Anglophone regions, which was passed by lawmakers of the lower house on Wednesday. The bill is an attempt to resolve a three-year conflict in the English-speaking regions that has left at least 3,000 people dead and around 600,000 people displaced, according to  the International Crisis Group estimates.

If the Senate approves the devolution law and it comes into force, Cameroon’s Anglophone Northwest and Southwest Regions, where separatists are fighting government troops , will be able to develop their own education and justice policies. Decades of resentment at perceived discrimination against a fifth of the population in an overwhelming French-speaking country have boiled over into an armed campaign for independence that has been met with a brutal crackdown in 2017.

The proposals

The bill contemplates the creation of assemblies of chiefs, regional assemblies, and councils, with each of the two regions having elected presidents, vice presidents, secretaries, and public affairs management controllers. Three commissioners will be responsible for “economic, health, social, educational, sports, and cultural development affairs”. Additionally, independent public conciliators will be put in place to solve disputes over the functioning of regional administrations. The bill also proposes more powers for elected mayors to recruit hospital staff and teachers.

However, all of this is not enough, says Dr. Nick Ngwanyam, a politician who grew up in the Anglophone region. “When we were told that we would have a special status, everybody was confused. It was something we were not really looking at. In terms of terminology, we had to find out what it meant. It was like an empty container and everybody was waiting for the meaning to fill it. And when that meaning came, I for one realized it would not solve our problems.”

“Too little, too late?”

“It is too little, coming too late”, says Senator Henry Kemende. It says in Section 328: In addition to the powers devolved on regions by the proposed law, the North-West and South-West Regions may exercise the following powers: Participating in the formulation of national public policies relating to the Anglophone education sub-subsystem. This is like a piece of sugar in a basin of water, their participation will not be felt. What we would have expected is to empower the regions to determine policies over the educational, judicial, legislative and executive system, to determine issues at a national level, and not just a local level”, Kemende emphasizes.

The power to address issues that directly affect their daily lives is what Anglophone’s have been yearning for in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions, Kemende told DW in an Interview. “They are the people who want to be in control of their own destiny, without guidance from somewhere else with foreign mindsets that don’t suit their local realities.”

In October, President Paul Biya’s government held a “major national dialogue” to settle the Anglophone crisis

Special status: No novelty

After all, the idea of special status is nothing new, says the senator. “It is no novelty before we joined then La Republique Cameroun, Cameroon had a central government that gave the Anglophone regions a special status and a state, but they consulted the people. This time now, they are going back to the special status that they have enjoyed before, but why did they not consult the people concerned?”

Some MPs from the ruling party expressed their anger as they could not make recommendations or make amends to the bill. Questor Cyprian Awudu Mbaya, asked the minister of decentralization in parliament, “why didn’t you just take the text and the president would have just signed a decree? We cannot change even a comma because you will defend it.”

According to 63-year-old Ngwanyam, the government has not taken the tools necessary to bring a long-lasting solution on the table. “If you have a piece of meat and you want to cut it, you use a knife. A knife has a sharp and a blunt end, and using the blunt one would take a lot of time. Why don’t we use the tools that work?”

Unity of a federation – Cameroon is struggling to find a long-lasting solution

The fear of federation

The sharp end of the knife – this is what Ngwanyam calls his idea of a federation for the Anglophone regions of the country. He had suggested this solution in September, with the aim of breaking down the country in East and West Cameroon. “The special status was written with the spirit of assimilation, an agenda that Paul Biya has been running on for the last 36 years.” He does not understand why the government fears a federation system of governance. “They should explain it. Then we can begin to find out why a special status would do the trick.”

In October, President Paul Biya’s organized amajor national dialogueto discuss the anglophone crisis, but the main separatist movements boycotted the forum. One of the key recommendations of the talks was more autonomy for the English-speaking regions, which have so far failed to bring peace and had been criticized for lack of legislative follow-up. The United States has since backed the prospect of devolved power in the troubled regions, saying that the government’s military response was only strengthening separatists.

A bill granting special status to Cameroon’s two crisis-hit Anglophone regions has been passed by lawmakers in an attempt to ease two years of violence.

If the Senate approves the devolution law and it comes into force, the western areas where separatists are fighting government troops will be able to develop their own education and justice policies, it said.

Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest Regions are home to most of the country’s English speakers, who account for about a fifth of a population that is otherwise French-speaking.

Decades of resentment at perceived discrimination have boiled over into an armed campaign for independence that has been met with a brutal crackdown.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in violence by both sides, and around 600,000 people have fled their homes, the International Crisis Group has estimated.

Separatists boycott proposed national dialogue

In October, veteran President Paul Biya’s regime held what it called a “major national dialogue” to settle the Anglophone crisis, but the main separatist movements boycotted the forum.

More autonomy for the English-speaking regions was one of the key recommendations of the talks, which have so far failed to bring peace and had been criticised for a lack of legislative follow-up.

The United States has since backed the prospect of devolved power in the troubled regions, saying that the government’s military response was only strengthening separatists.

Cameroon has called parliamentary and municipal polls for February 2020, two years after Biya’s disputed re-election triggered a major crisis.

Source: RFI

Several dozen English-speaking candidates in Cameroon’s Feb. 9, 2020 local council and parliamentary elections have resigned amid separatist threats and attacks on them and their property. Houses belonging to some of the candidates have been razed and the whereabouts of others are unknown. 

Dozens of people visited the Yaounde residence of Joseph Mbah Ndam, vice president of Cameroon’s National Assembly, the lower house of its Parliament to offer condolences after his house was destroyed by separatist fighters this week.

Among the visitors was 21-year-old businessman Elvis Mbuh, who said he witnessed the incident and fled to Yaounde because he and the lawmaker’s relatives were threatened by separatist fighters.

“They were just shooting in the air,” Mbuh said. “They told us that anybody who did not respect what they said would be killed. Then they asked us, ‘Where is Mbah Ndam? Where is Mbah Ndam?’  We saw fire everywhere and they told us that they would come back if we go to vote.”

Shortly after Ndam’s residence was burned, Batibo Mayor Tanjoh Fredrick Tetuh decided not to run for re-election, saying the security situation there, the killings and abductions, did not permit him to run.

Separatist fighters have said on social media that they will not allow the elections to take place in the English-speaking regions they call their territory. The separatists claimed responsibility for the abduction of at least 40 candidates for Parliament and local councils who defied their demands to resign. The whereabouts of some of the abducted candidates is still unknown. 

The separatists admitted that they torched at least six houses of candidates who escaped to the French-speaking regions for safety and refused to resign. One such house, they said, belonged to Donatus Njong, mayor of the English-speaking town of Kumbo. Njong did not bow to separatist pressure to resign and escaped from Kumbo to the French-speaking region.

Amid the tensions and threats, the opposition Social Democratic Front and the ruling Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement of President Paul Biya announced that at least 27 candidates for the elections have resigned.

Maurice Tangem, candidate for Parliament in the English-speaking town of Mbengwi is among those who resigned. He doubts elections can be successful under the prevailing security situation in the English-speaking regions.

“Considering the failure by the president of the republic to create an enabling atmosphere for such elections, considering the ongoing extrajudicial killings in the Anglophone regions, I now officially withdraw from the said elections, which will be nothing but a sham if they [the elections] at all hold amidst prevailing circumstances,” he said.

Cameroon’s territorial administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji, insisted that in spite of the threats, the elections will still take place. He said security in the crisis zones must be improved and called on residents in those areas to work with the military and the administration by reporting suspected separatists in their towns and villages.

“In the northwest and southwest, the head of state has given firm instructions that we have to do everything for this elections to hold properly,” he said. “The security services must protect the electorate, protect those who are going to vote, protect the system and protect all the structures put in place to conduct free and fair elections.”

Separatists have been fighting since 2017 to detach English-speaking northwest and southwest Cameroon from the rest of the country and its French-speaking majority. The government organized what it called a “grand national dialogue” to solve the crisis. 

The dialogue suggested a special status for the two English-speaking regions, with elected presidents and vice presidents and additional powers given to mayors, but the separatists rejected that proposal, saying they want nothing but an independent state. 

The crisis has killed at least 3,000 people and displaced over 500,000 according to the United Nations.

Source: VOA

Lawmakers in French Cameroun on Wednesday adopted a draft law on decentralization granting special status to the country’s two English-speaking regions, where a deadly conflict between the army and separatists has been going on for more than two years, according to national radio.

The Cameroonian radio station explained that if the law is approved by the Senate and promulgated, the regions will be allowed to develop public policies in the areas of education and justice.

This special status was the main recommendation agreed upon by the participants at the Grand National Dialogue convened by President Paul Biya in early October to end this crisis, which has left more than 3,000 people dead.

At a time when many voices were being raised to criticise the limited legislative follow-up to this major dialogue, the National Assembly met in extraordinary session on Friday to finally examine this bill.

Most of Cameroon’s Anglophones live in these regions, who consider themselves disadvantaged compared to the country’s Francophone majority. The crisis began in November 2016, with mainly demands from teachers or lawyers, calling for more representativeness for Anglophones. Most of them called for a return to federalism, but a minority demanded independence and the proclamation of a new state, Ambazonia.

But in the face of Yaoundé‘s intransigence and the repression of peaceful demonstrations, the conflict has intensified. At the end of 2017, some of the separatists took up arms.

Since then, fighting has been raging between the army and these armed groups, taking the population in hand. Over the past two years, more than 700,000 people have had to flee their homes.

After more than two years of conflict, Yaoundé decided at the end of September, under international pressure, to organize this dialogue to resolve the crisis.

Will a special status resolve crisis?

The boycott of this meeting by the main pro-independence leaders did not prevent the participants from advocating decentralization through the creation of this “special status”. A proposal far removed from federalist aspirations, for the most moderate, and independenceist for armed groups, but which had raised hopes of a return to the price after two years of inaction.

However, these discussions have so far not been successful in bringing peace. Worse still, fighting and violence against civilians have intensified, several NGOs reported in early December.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in Cameroon in February 2020, but the two main opposition parties have announced their intention to boycott the elections, which they consider to be unrealistic due to the fighting in these two regions.

AFP with additional editing from Camcordnews