Cabinet Reshuffle: Inoni is New PM
By Francis Wache, Postnewsline.com, 12/09/2004
For over a month now, since Mr. Biya was sworn in as Cameroon’s President, Cameroonians have been living in a state of psychosis as national life virtually ground to a standstill with speculations running riot about the new cabinet.
Yesterday, Mr. Biya, finally stunned Cameroonians and most observers when, rather than search for a broad-based consensus, he took the same old brooms to usher what he trumpeted during the elections as “greater achievements” (grandes ambitions).
The biggest casualty was Mr. Peter Mafany Musonge, who lost the post of Prime Minister to a fellow tribesman, Mr. Ephraim Inoni.
Although Mr. Musonge served as Biya’s Campaign Manager during the last presidential election and the “brilliant election results” could, to a large extent, be attributed to him, most observers were surprised that Biya could dump him so soon after such a performance.
Musonge had been Prime Minister for the last eight years and remains the longest serving Prime Minister, so far.
He was generally believed to tackle his job with so much seriousness that the toll was beginning to tell on him. In fact, once during a public occasion, he collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital for urgent attention. The illness? Fatigue, his medics said.
In a sense, then, he is proceeding, as they say, to a well-earned rest.
Furthermore, in appointing Inoni, Biya seems, somewhat, to have compensated Musonge.
For like Musonge, Inoni is of the Bakweri tribe. A question of saying that power has, as it were, remained in the house. Inoni, however, is considered in most circles as a workaholic and an unflinchingly loyal Biyaist, who deserved rising on his own merits.
After the election, Biya had been expected to stretch a hand to the hardcore opposition and independent personalities from the civil society. He ignored them and turned, once more, to old time cronies to help him accomplish what, together, they have failed to achieve in the last 22 years.
It is difficult to figure out, for instance, how people with such entrenched mindsets like Amadou Ali, Laurent Esso, and others could change their way of doing things and give Cameroon a fresh start.
True, baobabs like the unshakable Joseph Owona, Hamadjoda Adjoudji and Meva’ a m’Eboutou have been booted out.
They were replaced, invariably, by successors of their ilk.
In essence, the rulership of the country has been confiscated by the Grand North and the Grand Centre.
The North, for example, has a Speaker of the National Assembly, a Deputy Prime Minister and a Minister of State. For delivering the crucial North to Biya, they have, by all standards, been more than compensated.
Besides, the manner in which the Betis and the Northerners have carved the cake seems to lend credence to an entente cordiale whereby, after Biya’s septennat, power will shift back to Ahidjo’s Northern fief.
Otherwise, how else can you geopolitically explain that the Betis have carted the Lion’s share of about 20 ministerial positions with the Northerners clutching an astronomical 17?
Globally, between them they share a hefty 65 percent of the total cabinet.
Nonetheless, in the distribution of Ministerial posts, it is quite difficult to say who was punished and who was rewarded, after all, from the results of the last Presidential polls, Biya won - everywhere.
Even the fractious Northwest and the bastion of the SDF, was not left in the cold, because although Kibuh was fired from Mines and Power, Philemon Yang, who spent 19 uninterrupted years as Cameroon’s Ambassador to Canada, moved to the arguably strategic position as Deputy Secretary General in the Presidency.
However, some critics point out that, as an Anglophone, he could only be an Assistant.
As in the past, Anglophones have fared poorly in the present cabinet. Overall, they have merely harvested 12.5 percent of the ministerial portfolios. Yet, other commentators argue that with the post of Prime Minister and the influential position of Assistant Secretary General in the Presidency, they don’t have much to whine about.
Over a decade ago, when Anglophones assembled in Buea for the historic All Anglophone Conference, they denounced the fact that, “For 32 years since reunification, Ministries such as those in charge of Territorial Administration, the Armed Forces, Education, Finance, Commercial and Industrial Development, Foreign Affairs, etc., have never been headed by Anglophones…
when the office [of Prime Minister] comes to an Anglophone, he is hedged in between a Francophone Secretary General at the Presidency and another at the Prime Minister’s office.”
Today – 43 years after Reunification – the situation is as grim as it was painted at Mount Mary in 1993. In reality, Anglophones are still wandering in the political wilderness.
In the current cabinet, as in previous ones, they received a raw deal. What positions they have been offered are nothing but Ministerial crumbs. This confirms the point that certain positions are taboo for them.
If Biya’s December 8 cabinet reshuffle is anything to go by, it would appear that what he has done is nothing more and nothing less than the Biblical putting of new wine into old wineskins.
In other words, in carrying out what is clearly a cosmetic cabinet shake-up Biya seems to confirm his critics who maintain that his recent incantations about change are nothing but a chimera that would lead, ineluctably, to deeper delusions rather than his much trumpeted grandes ambitions.
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