In a 88 page document, Maurice Kamto outlines what he intends to achieve or do for Cameroon if he wins the October 7 elections. His program is divided into 5 different sections or what he calls projects. He has:-
- The Institutional and Political Project - The Youth and Education Project - The Economy and Production Project - The Social and Solidarity Project - The Project of External Relations
In this article, I want to pick out the parts of the 88 page document which I think are of importance to us all. I will looking the program to find what is concrete, what is overly ambitious and what I find to be mere political campaign rhetoric.
PROJECT ONE: POLITICAL/INSTITUTIONAL PROGRAM
- He talks of introducing policy that makes sure the different arms of the government (Parliament, Executive, and Judicial are completely independent.)
- He plans to address the anglophone crises but is not clear on whether he will form a federation or not. When he talks of rebalancing power within the country he says “…and finally between the State and the Regions or the Federated States if this is the choice of Cameroonians.” He is clearly not making any promise on turning Cameroon into a federated state so we should not expect that to happen under his governance. Is he saying we are going to have referendums on all these things? Such a plan should be proposing his solution as a visionary leader rather than playing the political classic response of “what the people want.”
- Presidential terms will be 5 years and renewable once. There will also be two rounds of elections; which I find to be the real solution to what we are all fighting for now - a coalition between opposition leaders. In a two round elections, all the opposition leaders run against themselves and the winner runs against the incumbent. Kamto plans to reduce the voting age to 18 which to me is not necessary. In my opinion, the average 18 year old Cameroonian has not enough responsibility to be able to know what kind of leadership will help society as a whole. I personally think age is not a good measure of a person’s ability to chose a good leader. I would prefer we use other metrics that include level of education and contribution to the economy or society.
- In specific relation to the Anglophone crises, he agrees there is one and disagrees with the measures that have been taken thus far to address it. He blames the current regime for the current state of conflict and he plans to open up dialogue. Still no concrete solution by his own judgement. He hangs on the overused call for dialogue which has thus far yielded no fruits.
- He wants to institute a new national language for Cameroon that will most likely be chosen from one of the already spoken local languages. He does not have any of the local languages in mind but promises to speak with language experts to find one that has the syntax and lexicon that can make it pedagogically friendly. I find this to be totally unnecessary; it might even backfire. We risk even starting a whole new internal conflict by attempting this. What are the risks that the tribe that gets its language chosen automatically get a superiority badge and an unfair advantage to posts or functions that require mastery of that language? I believe we should be more focused on moving forward rather than going back to precolonial times. English is the most economically justified language for us to learn. He should rather focus on making Cameroonians purely bilingual in English and French and only encourage them to learn their local languages and languages like Mandarin to prepare for renegotiating our loans and deals with China.
- He promises extensive adoption of information technology in what he calls E-governance, E-services, and E-democracy. I think technology can go a long way onto increasing our efficiency and cutting corruption. There are obvious security concerns when it come to digital information systems. This would work if we put in place a system that hires professionals and finally walk away from the man know man business which is now the order to the day in this country. I personally have a background in information technology management and I have identified many sectors of our government and economy that can benefit immensely from the introduction of information technologies to manage processes.
PROJECT TWO: YOUTH AND EDUCATION
Since he has a part that addresses social changes, I do not think he needed to have something specifically for the youth. Most of this section seems to exist only to try and paint an image of someone who cares particularly for the youth since we all know the youth of Cameroon are at the receiving end of all the punches that bad governance by the incumbent president dishes out daily.
Besides the general free education for all talk, he wants to build an education system that focuses on hard skills rather than soft knowledge. Most of his plan talks about opening up training centers in all regions of the country that cater to different technical needs and to people with different levels of education.
Besides the idea of rewarding excellence, there is no clear objective or focus. It seems to be a plan to cast a wide net for anything that sticks and it is going to be expensive with little promise of real results. His plan also gives no credit to the fact that there are already many skilled young people who are being neglected. It furthers the rhetoric that the youth are “inexperienced” - not good.
A good plan for youth and education should be centered around industries in which the country plans to invest in. If we are going to invest in agriculture and produce more cotton, then we have to train people who can work in textile manufacturing etc. He mentions this approach but plans to implement it only from the university level which I find to be rather too late in the process. We need to be sparking interests earlier than that. He seems to completely ignore the human factor of education. You know the saying you can take a horse to the stream but you cannot force it to drink water.
Like I said in the beginning, I find no particular need to focus on the youth. If you make the right choices for the country as a whole, it is going to trickle down.
The part that stands out for me here is the idea of making Cameroon the leader in the panafricanism movement by creating the Federalist Youth Movement of Central Africa and inviting other countries to participate, as a precursor to the a United States of Africa.
PROJECT 3: ECONOMY AND PRODUCTION
Summarily, his plan is to increase production and productivity across the board while also working to make Cameroon attractive to foreign investors. The plan includes:-
- Modernizing and strengthening the Douala Stock Exchange to make it “a real instrument for financing the national economy.”
- Tapping into the financial liquidity of Cameroonians in the diaspora by offering safe ways for them to invest their money back home.
- Economic policy reform to ease the process of starting and running a business, owning fixed capital, and also tax reform to provide incentives for investors. He proposes tax equalization which “is based on a limitative list of two major blocks of taxes and a constitutionally regulated distribution of the national budget between the State and the Regions (or federated entities).” Basically, the state gets corporation tax, customs duties, Personal income tax, VAT, Major Social Solidarity Tax, while the local governments get to keep property tax, housing tax, business contributions to local development. I find this a big step towards decentralization but I think personal income tax should be collected locally. That is you pay your personal income tax to the region where you claim residency. Laws can then be set in place as to what qualifies one for residency in a particular region and how you can change your residency status.
- Land reform is a big number for Kamto. His plans include proper zoning and clear land ownership procedures. This also includes the creation of functional cities. He plans to build a CITY OF THE FUTURE in the centre of the country at the southern limit of Adamawa and the north of Mbam-et-Kim, in a very sparsely populated area. This new city, a place of innovation par excellence, will be a city of the future, the place where Cameroon will discover talents and our projection towards the technological future. It will be located on the axis of the railway linking the South to the North of the country and will be connected to other major cities of the country as Douala or Yaoundé by highways.
- Reconvert Douala and shift most of the port activities to Kribi. The port of Douala will be transformed into a marina and a small cabotage port. We will especially make Douala the financial and business capital, the Manhattan of Central Africa. Industries in Douala will also be moved gradually to Edea. Yaounde will remain the political capital with an additional role as a cultural capital. Yaounde will as a result be home to a large library of the black world and the African diaspora, a world-class opera and a national academy of arts and culture.
- A newindustrial zone to be built between the CITY OF FUTURE and Ngaoundéré which will become the main industrial platform in the northern Cameroon. Ngaoundere will therefore be the crossroads from which Cameroo- nian products will go to the North and Chad, to the East and to the Central African Republic, to the West in Nigeria. Another industrial zone will be developed in the agricultural basin between Foumbot, Bafoussam and Bamenda.
- Improving money exchange mechanism to make it easier to move funds within the country and also in and out of the country.
- Review international trade agreements and opt out of those that suffer our economy.
- Increase productivity by implementing and enforcing a 40-50hour work week; this is also in a bid to attract foreign investors and increase competitiveness.
- Incorporating the informal sector into the national economy and stimulating the growth of small and medium sized enterprises.
- Heavy investments in companies operating in Agriculture, ICT, and Biotechnology. This will see a total revamp of Silicon mountain in Buea.
- Leave the CFA Franc and create our own currency. He however is unsure of how this will happen and begs to proceed with caution.
- Reduce government spending by auditing and consolidating the state salary file. Also, reducing privileges of government official and exercising more control over things like administrative vehicles and mission allowances.
- The final part of the plan has to do with improving the quality of urban life by improving transport and logistic infrastructure, the access and quality of social amenities like water and electricity and implementing proper waste and sewage management systems.
Of all the different sectors, Kamto’s Economic plan is solid and visionary. With proper prioritization, even if he does not achieve all of his plans in the span of his presidency, his economic plan can set the pace for the future economic climate in Cameroon which will be a robust one.
PROJECT FOUR:
Kamto’s social life program is very elaborate and also visionary. Some major aspects include:-
- Women Empowerment - Provision of basic healthcare and regulation of supplementary healthcare provisions - Improvement of local health and drug management facilities - More health regulation of food products. - Expansion of social housing - sustainable Social Security
Kamto shows he is a visionary leader with his plans of improving medical education in Cameroon with the goal of making Cameroon a “pole of excellence in health care in certain disciplines and ensure that the country becomes a destination for health tourism.”
Another visionary idea is that of making Cameroon a nation of athletes which he plans to achieve by improving sports education and sporting facilities.
PROJECT FIVE: FOREIGN POLICY AND DIASPORA
- Allow dual nationality - Make the Cameroonian diaspora a significant player in national development something he plans to achieve through a National Agency of Cameroonians Abroad (NACA) - Encourage high skilled professional Cameroonians abroad to return home and use their knowledge to serve in the development project for the country - Transform our embassies abroad and make them a real home for Cameroonians in other countries. - Improve diplomacy
CONCLUSION
Kamto’s has a solid plan that is likely to boost the economy of the country and improve social standards. However, the vagueness in the political program and the weak handshake to the youth leaves room for questions.
We are all aware that most of our current problems stem from the political and institutional level. Looking at Kamto’s plans for the economy and social structures, there is not much in there that we can say is totally unheard of in Cameroon. We all know most of the projects he talks about already exist on paper but the politics of the stomach as we call it here has made sure that those projects remain only on paper.
I can say at this point we have the guy that can manage our economy. As we dissect the programs of the other candidates, we will be on the lookout for the one that can hold a tight grip at the political and institutional level.
- Tino Foy