In loving memory of the SDF (now SPDM)

 This appellation - SPDM - is not my invention. I am merely borrowing from one interviewee on STV's 'Journal du Bien'. At face value, it is just a layman’s take on political happenings in Cameroon but to those who have always placed their hope for change in the SDF, it is an indication that hope might be a luxury they can no longer afford.

After inheriting a one-party nation from Late President Amadou Ahidjo, President Paul Biya set about consolidating his hold on power. However proponents of multiparty politics thought the time had come for their long-suppressed yearnings to be heard and indulged by the rookie president. Their defiance despite oppression and repression culminated in the birth of the Social Democratic Front in Bamenda on May 26, 1990.

The party immediately appealed to and got the support of all Cameroonians, irrespective of their variegated religious, tribal or regional persuasions. Its death-defying charismatic leader Ni John Fru Ndi added additional appeal to the party and it suddenly crystallised the hopes and aspirations of Cameroonians seeking to discover the joys of change after decades of monotony. But after failing to wrest power from the clutches of the ruling CPDM party during the highly-contested 1992 presidential, the party has seen its sphere of influence and following dwindle progressively with each electoral contest. In fact each election be it legislative, municipal and presidential seems to have provided the party with an opportunity to lose political weight to the point where it has almost become anorexic. The new political dispensation triggered by the bi-cameral cravings of the 1996 constitution has provided the party with another golden opportunity to lose additional weight. In the wake of this new reality, some observers have even wondered loud whether after the next twin legislative/municipal slated for September 2013, the green and weight party will weigh anything on the Cameroonian political scale. The situation begs the question: what happened on the way to the Unity Palace for Ni’s party? From where I stand it is a matter of perception and credibility.

At birth the party was branded, and rightly so, as the party of the common man. It was the party that was willing and did shake things up. All they did back then labelled them as the antithesis of the ruling party; striking when prohibited, boycotting elections after saying they would and the list goes on and on.  But over time the party has lost that reputation and now has a striking resemblance with their sworn opposite; their chairman has been in power since the party’s creation just like the guy he is trying to unseat from the country’s presidency. This striking resemblance is nothing more than perception but somebody said perception is everything. Also this striking resemblance recently morphed into a conspiracy after the recent and first ever senate elections during which it is widely believed that the CPDM asked its councillors in the West region to vote for SDF senators. Viewed against the backdrop of the CPDM’s overwhelming victory in the SDF’s backyard, this perception of conspiracy became even stronger in people’s minds.

For a while now, the SDF has been dogged by facts and allegations of backdoor camaraderie, rapprochement and collusion with the CPDM it has been challenging so vigorously since its birth. All this has left the SDF with a credibility crisis which has long been in the making. The crisis has been brewing in a slurry of petite yet politically significant potpourri of rumours, perception and events:  Ni John Fru receiving money from Biya for his wife’s burial , the chairman’s continued stay at the helm of the party (23 years after its creation), the resounding hallowness of Ni John’s criticism of Biya’s grip to power, the dreaded article 8.2 of the party and its ostracising of prominent party members and their eventual creation of their parties as well as the smiles and handshakes between the Chairman and Paul Biya in Bamenda during the 50^th anniversary of the armed forces. Sure there is nothing wrong with courtesy between two politicians but it conjures images of back alley dealings. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with financially expressing your condolences with a friend but there is  something perceptually unsettling about this when both are political rivals and one has spent his life trying to deny any association whatsoever with the other. Simply put all these rumours, facts and events have unfortunately laid the groundwork for veracity in perceived or rumoured twinning between the SDF and the CPDM.

These rumours and allegations have made the SDF to look like an assembly of selfish quarreling power-mongers, light years away from the people’s party image of its formative years. The SDF today and the SDF of the 90s are two radically different parties; the latter reminiscent of hope and promise, the former conjuring regret and disappointment.

The diagnosis isn’t very comforting. Further scrutiny even makes one think while the CPDM has tried to become the SDF (with piecemeal borrowing of some concepts like primaries), the latter has let itself unconsciously become like the CPDM with natural candidates and defections. So what can the SDF do to remedy the situation? Simply put, return to basics with new faces and much more.