“Swiss-Process”: Nothing has happened…

Crying over spilt milk

The old saying goes, paraphrased, “No good crying over spilt milk”. It is much less good crying over someone else’s spilt milk or spilt milk that one never had … or over only a mirage of spilt milk.

There has been a rush to claim wisdom and good judgement with hindsight for not being intimately involved with the “process”. Some who could not cope with team work may now seek to extol their prophetic instincts in not taking the “process” seriously and point fingers at others for being naïve in giving the “process” higher importance than it deserved. Whatever the case, Ambazonia News never expected Ambazonia to come of out the “process” with any favourable or advantageous positions or genuine acquisitions at this stage of the struggle with the current balance of power. Certainly much less so, at the time of the setup of the “process” when Ambazonia was much less powerful, to pursue the power-balance argument. As always suspected, LRC, certainly, and possibly the “misunderstood partners”, were playing for time with the hope that wariness would account for the Ambazonia Liberation struggle and that “normalcy” would return and they would not have to do anything profound.

Shooting into school-run traffic: act of a party who wants to negotiate?

During the time of the “process” La Republique du Cameroun has continued to burn villages and massacre civilians in Ambazonia. They have continued their 60-year practice of cattling [this is not a word but expresses the idea!] the people of Ambazonia with armed check-points every mile of “road”. One of these check-points was actually constructed and inaugurated during this period in Bafut, to believe the reports at the time! The high-profile acts on these check-points in recent times were the killings of the two school girls with weeks of each other in Buea and then in Bamenda. In addition to these constant visual tools of intimidation and extortion on Ambazonian citizens generally and stealthily taxing them to pay for the militias to oppress them, La Republique du Cameroun also went even further and orchestrated massacres in villages. These were direct assaults by their militias, which were first denied and then acknowledged as “bavures” committed by individual militiamen or commanders. Do any of these acts, in their sheer volume and frequency, speak to a party that has any intention of a peaceful negotiated resolution? Has La Republique du Cameroun ever previously stated for the record anywhere that they were engaged in any “contacts”?

Why Now? What should Ambazonia do?

Having never acknowledged any engagement, and in fact denied for the record in the past, why is La Republique du Cameroun now making a big circus of “withdrawing from the Swiss-Process”? What conditions have aligned to convince their strategists that now is the time to break cover about playing for time? This acknowledgement, even by the peripheral figure of Mr JD Momo, went into boastful details of how Mr Biya had cleverly played the Ambazonian “Leaders” and eased the pressure from International partners. So the sage of Etoudi managed, to believe Mr Momo’s analysis (boasts), to out-wit all the parties who allowed their names to be associated with the “process”, viz. Canada, Switzerland, UK, USA and others. Really!

Ambazonia News believes that the international partners who “backed” the process probably had a self-interest in seeing the “crisis” die of wariness if it could. They certainly were not “played” by the clever Mr Biya, who couldn’t “play” a primary school child if he wanted, given his state of health over this period! Ambazonia should understand that those parties have no interest one way or the other and are not against Ambazonia per se. Neither are they against or for La Republique du Cameroun!

La Republique du Cameroun has used up that card now and burnt bridges with the “victim” International Partners so Ambazonia should take advantage. Ambazonian Leaders have always insisted we wanted independence but been nudged towards the possibility of a peaceful negotiated settlement, which, being a negotiation, would inevitably accrue only a lesser position! Ambazonian Leaders would not expect LRC to come to negotiate and agree to independence for Ambazonia! Now that Mr Momo has made it clear that the international partners cannot take Mr Biya’s or LRC’s word and declared LRC is not interested in a negotiation, Ambazonia’s position is strengthened when it comes to any considerations about possible negotiations.

For now Ambazonians on the ground should continue to exercise and enjoy their dignity. They should collaborate with the Restoration Forces and among themselves to live independence and dignity. They should engage with Community Education that they control for the true benefit of their children. That is a key and important milestone in breaking the colonialism that is the link with LA Republique du Cameroun. Ambazonian children will gain certificates which give them true access to social advancement, unlike the current racket which La Republique runs where parents have to pay bribes for the right to access an inadequate education, gain value-less certificates and then become unemployed and excluded unless their parents make additional financial sacrifices in pseudo competitions that the Ambazonia children should have won fairly.

Viability of Negotiations and when

La Republique du Cameroun is very unlikely to come to the negotiation table except at the very last opportunity. The legal positions militate against LRC. There is no union treaty so LRC is only exercising de fact authority over Ambazonia. As soon as any negotiations kick off, LRC has acknowledged Ambazonian sovereignty and the notion of granting any favours to Ambazonia would dissipate. LRC knows this and most international partners know it. They just hope that time will account for our Liberation struggle and that the de facto status quo would prevail.

To change this fate, Ambazonia must continue to expel all vestiges of LRC influence from our land and “behave” and “live” free.

The Most High God is the Watch Man of Our Nation!

This prayer is answered every time there is any slight doubt. Ambazonia’s focus now is on the one course to freedom – the forcible ejection of LRC from our lives and lands. There is no need to pause to say “I knew” or “I told you so!”. To quote Jimmy Cliff, “Our hearts are set; Our minds made up; We’ll never stop; Our faith will see us through”.