President Paul Biya celebrates 32 years in power

Politics is described in the Oxford Universal Dictionary as "The Science and Art of Government; the Science of dealing with the form, organization and administration of a State on the one part and its relations with other States.

So politics is not a game. However, there is no doubt that President Biya and his acolytes who have collaborated for the last 32 years and shared the booty of stolen and corrupt money believe that politics is a game. For 32 years politics has been a game of thieves and robbers, manipulators and scammers. A game in the words of former Prime Minister Achidi Achu, "a game of scratch my back and I'll scratch yours".

When Cameroon Bank, Credit Agricole Bank, BICIC Bank, Solidarity Savings and Loans Limited, NISCAM Bank and Meridien BIAO Bank all went bankrupt because of mismanagement by President Biya's appointees, banks such as the Meridien BIAO owed approximately one hundred billion CFA francs to about five hundred thousand Cameroonians.

Till today these creditors are still to be paid their money. Some of the creditors who were businessmen and women lost everything and their businesses failed. Individuals with savings accounts watched their savings varnished and have no one to turn to. So for 32 years as Head of State, we of Cameroon Concord are joining President Biya to celebrate his method of creating poverty.

Another classic example which calls for more celebration is the Cameroon Post Office Saving Bank.The special role a Post Office Saving Bank plays in the life of civilize societies around the world is well known.

Many Cameroonian workers and citizens put their money in Post Bank because they were sure that it was one hundred percent government protected establishment. Under the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo you were proud to tell someone that you are a member of the Post Bank family.

Under President Biya, Post Bank is run by a crime syndicate and citizens who put their money there, in case of the rainy day, cannot get it out even to treat a sick child, spouse or relative.

The Cameroon Development Corporation once employed more that eighteen thousand workers. President Biya implemented a corrupt privatization and Structural Adjustment Programmes which have reduced the number of people working in CDC to less than eighteen thousand.

About ten thousand poorly paid agricultural manual workers lost their jobs in the process. Taking into consideration that each worker had about five mouth to feeds, the result is that about fifty thousand people lost the source of livelihood. Another scourge which has become an almost incurable abscess in Biya's Cameroon economic, political and social life is the embezzlement of public funds by Francophone Beti-Ewondo politicians.

As President Biya celebrates, most Cameroonians do not understand how one person can embezzle one billion francs CFA not to talk of ten billion, thirty-five billion or fifty billion. Stay with Cameroon Concord as our US Bureau Chief Bertrand Ekukeni Agbaw-Ebai tells the story of Biya's 32 years in office in a soul-searching pattern by mid night Yaounde time.