Senator Musonge versus SDF in Kumba

Sometimes I am tempted to share with some high profile political thinkers in their assertion that democracy is noisy, but it is the sound of the spirit. The noise in this case refers to the liberty that democracy offers for people to speak out freely no matter what they say or how they say it.

This means that even if the other person’s views do not tally with your own, the rules demand that you have to tolerate people’s opinions. This is what makes democracy noisy.

The sound of the spirit on the other hand, is the ultimate convergence of these multiple views into a debate from which the substance is selected from the chaffs and this is therefore the spirit which the sound has produced. Which therefore means that the spirit of democracy must reside in the fine mind; the minds of people who see through concrete walls as though these walls were made of fragile transparent material.

Unfortunately democracy happens to fall within the spacious premises of politics and in politics the truth can be distorted at will and politicians will get the applause, not because those who offer the applause are the ones who directly gain from this distortion of the reality, but simply because they have been rendered hopeless by those who receive the applauses.

But if by any chance the game of politics is played with some small measure of compassion, and a readiness on the part of the politician to feel for the welfare of the people as a whole, then those who handle the business of politics will let their scheming pass through the grill, the world of politics will certainly be like the paradise the human race lost in the days of Adam and Eve.

Now let us go straight to the point. On the front page of their issue of Monday June 23, 2014, there was this lead story with the caption SUFFOCATE SDF-RUN COUNCILS –Musonge Tells Government Delegate. This being just the headline, the main story itself was on page seven.

When I finally got to page seven, the opening paragraph was quoting Senator Peter Mafany Musonge, telling the Government Delegate to the Kumba City Council, Victor Nkelle Ngoh to suffocate the SDF-Run councils in Kumba so that they will be unable to deliver on their campaign promises.

Elsewhere in the story another CPDM Senator, Nfon Victor Mukete lamented that the CPDM party in Meme was on its knees and hasn’t the necessary wherewithal to pull crowds for mass rallies.

Even though the venue where the two leaders aired their views about the state of the party in Meme was appropriate enough, because it happened to be a South West Regional information seminar for CPDM mayors, the approach, especially that of Senator Musonge, ought not to have been one designed to punish a rival political party who must have committed no crime other than that they made campaign promises that endeared the minds of an electorate that decided to give the SDF a chance.

Nfon Mukete was just being honest enough as an elderly Statesman, to admit that the CPDM is on its knees in Meme because they have reached a point, the lowest point of their popularity and they can no longer pull the crowd even for their rallies.

Of course there was a time the party did pull the crowd in Meme, which gave the CPDM their own opportunity to hold their crowd intact. They ran the councils in Kumba all along.

But when the last elections came, they lost three of the four councils to the opposition. It was an open challenge which allows that the loser must, in good faith accept the defeat, but also has the right to go back to the drawing board, see where they missed the track and start work immediately to make amends. Senator Musonge’s reactions only seem to suggest that either the SDF committed a crime through which they won the elections, or that politics in his opinion means ignoring the right of the people to elect those of their choice, or that change in politics is a crime.

Whatever it means, Senator Musonge believes the Government Delegate should apply to suffocate his opponents, it is only obvious from his advice to the government delegate that he means what he says “You are the one sharing the resources. You have to look for a way to handle the problem”. Those were the exact words of the senator.