History shows that the CPDM is actually the French created and ordained UC that was authorized by France to become the ruling party with Amadou Ahidjo as its first appointed leader. He was appointed to take over Cameroon from the last departing French governor. The CNU later became the successor political organization to the UC after Mr. Ahidjo successfully manipulated other political parties (mainly from the Southern Cameroons) to commit suicide. In 1982, Paul Biya was asked to take over from Amadou Ahidjo and in 1985 the CPDM became successor to the CNU. Behind the whole metamorphoses of UC, CNU and now CPDM and all the black faces that have come and gone (there have only been two for 47 years now and the second, Paul Biya is still in place after 25 years in power and counting. The first, Amadou Ahidjo, was in power for 22 years) France remains in control in Cameroon and the Cameroonian people remain colonial subjects, with rights that are more akin to the rights of plantation workers than those of a sovereign people.

The one question to the CPDM and the Nkwains who serve it is what has changed to make them believe that something new will now happen that could not have happened in its 91 years of colonial existence? This is not a rhetorical question because in 91 years India has suffered as a colony, come out of colonization, became independent and today she is poised to become the next big thing in political and economic terms. India had no more opportunities to accomplish this status than Cameroon, except that she had honest people who used the institution of government to provide leadership that guided the people of India to create what India has today. Cameroon and Cameroonians have never been allowed any opportunity to do better because collaborators have manned their government, acting as willing partners to the continuous colonization of Cameroon. The CPDM is the plantation watchdogs for France in Cameroon and the only invitation they have for their so called new MPs is an invitation to partake in the payoff they get from looted colonial proceeds. Their only job is to make sure that Cameroon has no “possibility of evolution outside the French bloc of the empire,” as stated in a Conference in Brazzaville, Congo in 1944.

The CPDM and Paul Biya are to the French in la République du Cameroun what the Nazi installed Vichy government in France, under Marshall Petain was to Nazi Germany. It is a vehicle of mass mobilization, this time not to seize power, but to maintain it for a thousand years, equipped with its storm troopers, propaganda machinery and its scientists of death in every discipline. Like the Vichy government in France, the CPDM serves only one master, Paul Biya at the fore front and French colonial interest in reality. That is why they speak without specifics, using phrases like “courageous to do the work” and “those who know what must be done.”  What work and why should only some “know what must be done”? Is it because the work is assigned from somewhere else and not from the people of Cameroon?

A few years ago lawyer Gorji Dinka made a presentation in which he said, “politicians everywhere tell lies but these lies are intended for the people to believe not themselves. Cameroun is built on lies” he said “so much so that the politicians believe in their own lies.” Reading about CPDM victory proclamations and celebrations, especially in the NWP, and the posturing by people like Mr. Nkwain, brings home the words of Lawyer Dinka and one could hear him saying “this is what I told you”. Mr. Nkwain is not a politician, there was no vision articulated to the people to score his so called victory, the elections were neither free nor fair, the turn out was low and insignificant and the legislature his MPs are elected to makes no laws. Cameroon itself is neither sovereign nor independent and the lives of the people who he claimed voted for his so called party would remain miserable with no chance of ever improving their lives. This makes the CPDM something other than a genuine political party.

The history of the CPDM dictatorships started with French colonial governors. They ruled la République du Cameroun without the consent of the people and with the expressed goal of assimilating Cameroonians to become French. As late as 1944 the French declared in a historic conference in Brazzaville, Congo that “The goal of the task of civilization accomplished by France in her colonies rule out any idea of autonomy, any possibility of evolution outside the French bloc of the empire.” This was not going to be true only for the colonial period, as the declaration was made in opposition to President Franklin Roosevelt of the United States’ refusal to limit future human freedoms, as stated in the Atlantic Charter of August 1941, to only the axis powers (as request by Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle). The French declaration was unequivocal; “the eventual creation, even in the distant future, of [self-government] for the colonies is to be set aside.” Commentators on this declaration, like Professor Henry Wilson of the University of York, have noted that “…the symbolic refusal even to translate [self-government] isolated as a quaint Anglo-Saxonism from the body of the text, eloquently underlined the point that French discourse, especially Gaullist discourse, on Africa was quite distinct.”