Taking the route of inviting a repressive wing of the police to intervene and harass lecturers is a grave mistake for which those who initiated the process will come to regret. From a legal perspective, I still have not figured out what forms of criminal participation can be alleged against these University lecturers and professors. Advising striking students and helping them to write out their grievances in an attempt to resolve the University crisis to me is not a criminal offense. Even advising students to assert a constitutional right by going on strike to press their demands is again not criminal. A strike action is not per se criminal. What is criminal are the crimes perpetrated in the course of asserting a right afforded by law. The report from which I am making this observation has not alleged that the lecturers are accused of any form of accomplice criminal liability and charged as such with the alleged principal perpetrators. The allegations made by one Ako Eno in his internet posting are crimes which if proved are crimes against the security of the state and can hardly be placed within the context of the University of Buea. From the forms of participation alleged, those that come close to fitting would have been aiding and abating and conspiracy to commit the crimes alleged against the 26 students who are standing trial. They cannot be stand alone crimes as such within this context. As I have done in previous postings on this matter, the VC and persons driving her agenda in initiating this process may have ignorantly provided a tribune for students and lecturers to ridicule her, and exposed the matters that for years have been kept under a seal of confidentiality at the University of Buea. In this perspective every theory may be explored and private and public lives torn apart. The losers may not be these lecturers and students after all, because many of them will walk home free as a matter of law. The loser will be the University of Buea administration officials who by this action may have invited many cases against them as individuals and in their official capacity. With this ill-advised court process, the doors to the University of Buea may as well be shut to make room for a long and painful court process while lecturers and university administrators spare it in the courts; a manner of legitimizing the strike action subject of the cases afterall. In a posting in another forum, I stated that the goings on in the University of Buea is an indictment of University and Faculty Administration in Cameroun. It is indeed an indictment of the political system that pays lip service to its own laws and text governing public administration. It is the bane of the Camerounese prison Republic and system of governance in which individuals are appointed at the pleasure of the President and once so appointed they install a system of impunity using the repressive powers of the state to impose rules that are inconsistent with the laws of the Republic that sword to defend and protect. The system of appointment is inherently criminal and corrupt. Inherent in all these repressive acts is the intension to control, administer and syphon as much money from the budget of the institution(s) as much as possible. And this can only be possible by violating all mechanisms of transparency, checks and control and free and critical thinking. This explains why when ever some one is appointed to a position of responsibility in Cameroun, tribal hordes, families and friends come out dancing and even send motions of thanks to the President. This is also provides the framework of tribalism, favoritism and nepotism. Once the individual losses favor with the appointing authority or is arrested and imprisoned, the same tribal sycophants quickly abandon him/her and do as much as possible to work to keep the person(s) in jail as long as possible. This reality is playing in our very faces even now. In an interview I granted the Washington Post with James Rupert of the West African Bureau in 1996, I aptly pointed to a system of governance where all appointments to government institutions and public institutions from village level start and end with a criteria of subservience to the President as the fundamental foundation on which the crime syndicate that reigns in Cameroun is established. The overseers of this system are trained in an ideological school called ENAM and for several years now, University lecturers were coopted into this class. The easy way to promotion was for compliant stooges appointed to administer public institutions to paint their colleagues who exhibited signs of critical thinking and academic freedom as enemies of the regime. This blackmail succeeded to the extent that an appointment as a VC provided easy passage to Ministerial appointments. But few have ever asked themselves what became of several Cameroun ministers who abandoned academic freedom for a career in political cannibalism. Some were among the best brains the nation had but their sad end should be a warning to the uninformed and those seeking a career path that the evidence shows leads to destruction. For the Camerounese nation to be rescued from self destruction, the system of paternalistic and opportunistic appointments that promotes corruption, ineptitude, mediocrity and vengeful proclivities must be eliminated. Foremost, ENAM must be declared public enemy number 1 and banished forthwith. To conclude, I advise once more that these senseless cases should be withdrawn and those saddled with the administration of this institution should initiate a peaceful approach to resolving the crisis afflicting UB. The court process cannot and will not impose peace. It has never done so under any circumstances. This case will inconvenience some people but it is unwinnable in a credible free and fair court process. If any thing, the state will abandon this process once its potential for violating fundamental human rights is exposed as it seems already to have done. That way, the battleground will shift to international institutions at a time Cameroun is sensitive to international criticism of its appalling human rights record. The UB may in the process lose worthy partners in distant and foreign lands and some of those who initiated the vast human rights violations that are highlighted increasingly in and out of court will lose their international academic credentials. I advise that it is not late even now to withdraw these ill-advised cases and senseless investigations and settle this within a the University family. Chief C. Taku --- On Tue, 6/4/13, solomon atanga <soloamabo@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
|
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ambasbay" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ambasbay+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
No comments:
Post a Comment