Re: Governance and Inquiries

This piece is a nice piece if only those who it is meant for will read it and understand the message. However, I do not see what it has to do with Southern Cameroon. If La Republic wants to set up a commission of enquiry on FACAFOOT/world cup in Brazil that is their business. Why should get involve in a mess of their own doing. As you make your bed so shall you lie on it.



--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 3/7/14, 'Asonganyi Tazoacha' via ambasbay <ambasbay@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Subject: Governance and Inquiries
To: "asontaz4919@yahoo.com" <asontaz4919@yahoo.com>
Date: Thursday, 3 July, 2014, 16:03




Governance and
Inquiries


Before the demise of the
venerable Bishop Verdzekof, he wrote a little manuscript
titled "Running on the
wrong road?" In it, he reminds us of a 1961 editorial of
The Daily Times
Newspaper about the reunification process, brought to his
attention by Dr
Anthony Ndi, which went as follows "We are bringing
into this union a
great inheritance, viz., Democracy; the English have not
given us fine roads
and fine buildings but they have given something far more
valuable: a democratic
way of thinking…With this inheritance we need not be
afraid to meet our
brethren across the border for we are not coming empty
handed."


These high expectations were because
the
political class in West Cameroon hoped that the best they
were bringing along
would be married with the best from East Cameroon, to
produce "common values,
common understanding and common aspirations." They
surely had good
intentions, but they suffered from a misunderstanding of
human nature and the nature
of power. 


In any case, human beings always view
their deprivation as relative, since they tend to compare
themselves with
people they are in the same boat with. That is why the north
west region always
compares itself to the south west region, and vice versa;
and West Cameroon
always compares itself with East Cameroun. It is through
such lenses that historical
outcomes and evolutions are usually evaluated, judged and
dealt with. It is
with such a lens that we here examine Paul Biya's decreed
"inquiry" into the
Lions' debacle in Brazil.


Probing into different compartments of
the
state to find out what is going wrong in order to look for
the right solutions
is an approach usually used to earn legitimacy from the
people and ensure their
obedience of state authority. A "democratic way of
thinking" means that rules
and rational principles matter, but more importantly, the
thousands of small
things that those in power do or fail to do to establish
their legitimacy also
matter a great deal. The West Cameroon Commission of Inquiry
Ordinance (Cap. 36
of the 1958 laws) was therefore meant to ensure legitimacy
in the exercise of
power by those who were delegated the power of the
people.
And so on 01 April, 1967, the West
Cameroon Gazette no. 13, volume 7, published as notice no.
90, a decision of
the Prime Minister appointing a Commission of Inquiry into
the Department of
Lands and Surveys, West Cameroon. On 27 March, 1968, the
West Cameroon Gazette
no. 14, vol. 8, published as notice no. 61, a decision of
the Prime Minister
appointing a Commission of Inquiry into the activities of
the West Cameroon
Development Agency, as from 1959. Further, on 30 April,
1968, the West Cameroon
Gazette no. 20, volume 8, published as notice no. 98, a
decision of the Prime
Minister appointing a Commission of Inquiry into the West
Cameroon Electricity
Corporation.


The commissions were usually headed by
a
respectable person of the law profession and had four or
five other members of
integrity. These people of integrity were imbued with
capacities that can be described
as Verdzekof's three steps: (1) discerning what is
right and wrong; (2) acting on what you have discerned, even
at personal cost;
and (3) saying openly that you are acting on your
understanding of right and
wrong.


Each decision to create a commission
of
inquiry always had very clear terms of reference, and the
following paragraph:
"The sessions of the commission will be open to members of
the public. Any
person who has any information that may be of assistance to
the Commission
should communicate such information to the Secretary to the
Commission. Any
person who wishes to give evidence to the Commission should
also contact the
Secretary to the Commission."


The Commissions did their work
diligently
and always ended up with a voluminous report, copies of
which they sold to the
public at a token price. The report belonged to the people,
and the court of
public opinion was there to follow up the implementation of
the findings by
state authority.


With the "Yang Inquiry" commission
that Paul
Biya has decreed, many people are thinking about the
humiliation Philemon Yang
suffered in the hands of the Lions, and wondering how much
he can be
dispassionate in his "inquiries." He may be thinking
that this is the time to
use his authority to respond to the disobedience of the
Lions. It may not occur
to him that disobedience can also be a response to
authority; that if a
government does not do its job well, citizens can become
disobedient. Following
his flag experience with the Lions, no one needs to remind
him that obedience
is linked to how people in authority behave.


The government is the principal
culprit
in the Lions' debacle in Brazil. The "Yang Inquiry"
may only bring out – or choose
to hide - what everybody already knows. What we need now is
not some emotional
reaction to seek individual culprits for punishment. We need
a thorough and
dispassionate internal and external evaluation of football
in Cameroon to seek
a more productive approach that can generate positive
results in future. We
need a strategic vision, a clearly set goal, to ensure that
all efforts at
achieving success in future will be geared towards that
goal. We need a
strategic vision that ties down all future corrective acts
to the achievement
of the set goal. Without such a well publicized strategic
vision, all "inquiries"
and strategic planning will be worthless.

 

Tazoacha Asonganyi

Yaounde.




--

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/d/optout.


--
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/d/optout.