Post-Election Arrests and Gov’t Intimidation: Let’s Face It, We’re Living in a Dictatorship

By Hans Ngala

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines a “dictator” as “a political leader who has complete power over a country…” while Canadian scholar and professor of economics, Ronald Wintrobe gives a more in-depth definition of the term, stating that “The standard view of the difference between democracy and dictatorship in political science (e.g., Friedrich and Brzezinski, 1965) is that dictators can use the tool of repression to stay in power.” He goes further to list some tactics which dictators across the world typically employ, to stay in power: “Thus dictators typically impose restrictions on the rights of citizens to criticize the government, restrictions on the freedom of the press, restrictions on the rights of opposition parties to campaign against the government, or, as is common under totalitarian dictatorship, simply prohibit groups, associations, or political parties opposed to the government.” All of the above points are glaringly true of Cameroon under Paul Biya. Secondly, Wintrobe argues that “To be effective, these restrictions must be accompanied by monitoring of the population, and by sanctions for disobedience. The existence of a political police force and of extremely severe sanctions for expressing and especially for organizing opposition to the government, such as imprisonment, internment in mental hospitals, torture, and execution, is the hallmark of dictatorships of all stripes.” Again, the above points are also true of Cameroon for the most part where we see Paul Atanga Nji using his office to threaten Cameroonians with sanctions for daring to question anything the government does. Effectively, Atanga Nji and the government he is a part of are supposed to simply dictate, and Cameroonians are supposed to sheepishly obey.
With this understanding of what characterizes a dictatorship (restrictions on press freedom, restrictions on the rights of citizens to criticize the government, constant surveillance by state police, constant threats from the government, and restrictions on opposition parties to campaign against the government) it is safe to state categorically that we can no longer pretend to be a democracy. Cameroon is falling apart economically in real time before our very eyes, but Atanga Nji does not want any Cameroonians to dare speak up. This is wrong. A government that refuses to be accountable to its people is not democratic, and in which Biya controls all the levers of power with absolutely no checks and balances from the various branches of government, thus making him a dictator. Biya rules like a dictator by decrees which have never been challenged by any other arm of government or any law courts in the land, thus proving the point in both the lexical definition and Wintrobe’s, that he has total and absolute power in the land and is above the law, and the word for that is – dictatorship.
Last night, we saw an aspect of this dictatorship come into full display as opposition candidates were arrested for daring to voice support for Issa Tchiroma. Tchiroma himself has said that the regime, after failing to convince him to take the offer for the position of Prime Minister, resorted to threats of arrest on his person, remaining defiant and daring the powers that be to arrest him. This is shameful for a country that claims its leader is “the people’s choice” who was (in the CPDM’s own language), “voted massively” by the people. If this is in fact the case, then what is the regime trying so desperately to contain? Wouldn’t it be logical that if (or since) the CPDM claims that Biya is so admired by voters, does it not only make sense that those voters will naturally be happy that he won, so what is the regime so panicky about?
At this juncture and with the regime’s heavy-handedness in trying to quash citizens’ voices, it seems Cameroon is not a democracy but a dictatorship. And the thing with dictatorships is that they start to irritate the public at some point.