SDF: Opportunity for the rich!.

Even before the passage of the National Chairman of the Social Democratic Front, SDF, Ni John Fru Ndi, there was already a vicious internal war as to who will succeed him at the Elective Convention, that was slated for the end of July this year.

But after the National Executive Committee, NEC, meeting held in Yaounde at the weekend, the perceived heir apparent, Hon Osih Joshua, who is the First National Vice President, told reporters in Yaounde that the Elective Convention could be held "around the month of October".

Hon Osih explained that the NEC “meeting was essentially geared towards the funeral of our National Chairman. We had one point on the agenda which was looked at from different angles”.

One of the angles, as reported in the media, which Hon Osih, who is also a business tycoon in Douala, did not mention at the outing, was eligibility conditions for elective positions at the imminent convention.

Since the Chairman announced early last year that “at a certain age and at a certain point in life, you have to let the younger ones carry on", the nexus within SDF debates has been on who to succeed him.

In making the announcement, Fru Ndi had said his successor has "to take over when you're still around to see what they're doing, so you can direct them and correct them".

Fru Ndi had added that: "Politics is not about sitting in Yaounde or Bamenda. It's about reaching out to people and feeling them. And if I can't do it anymore, let someone else do it".

Far back in 2018, the Chairman had begun the process of relinquishing power. For the first time since the creation of the party in 1990, he stepped down for Osih to challenge incumbent Paul Biya at the 2018 presidential election. It was a dismal performance by Osih, with less than five percent of the votes cast, trailing Paul Biya, Maurice Kamto and Cabral Libii.

The result deeply discouraged SDF supporters, who started advocating a change of course and a return to the fundamentals of the party. At a NEC meeting in December 2020, outspoken Hon Jean-Michel Nintcheu, who was Chair of the party in the Littoral Region, called for the rejuvenation of executives.

A convention and renovation of the party were put on debate as Fru Ndi multiplied his gestures of devolution of power and appointed Paul Tchatchouang and Jean-Michel Nintcheu to head the newly created “reconciliation” and “action” commissions, as he worked to unite the divergent ranks of his political party. The party later organised a teamwork session with 50 young executives to discuss the future of the party.

Four people were on the party's radar for leadership; Osih, Nintcheu, Mbah Ndam and Joseph Banadzem, but after the death of Banadzem and Mbah Ndam in 2019, the battle ground for succession became narrow, vicious, divided and more fierce.

Last week's NEC meeting also narrowed the potential new contestants to succeed Fru Ndi as there are reports that at the Elective Convention, those aspiring to succeed Fru Ndi shall pay a deposit of seven million FCFA to the party. 

It is non-refundable, unlike in the case of those contesting elections to replace the President of the Republic, who deposit 30 million FCFA at the national treasury, which is refundable, if they score at least five percent of votes cast.

The SDF prides itself as a mass party of the people with "equal opportunities". To demand a tidy seven million FCFA deposit to aspire to the apex of its leadership, up from 50,000 FCFA, is to limit the opportunity to the rich.

Chairman John Fru Ndi played an emblematic role in the politics of Cameroon and the democratisation process when he took the bull by the horns to launch an opposition party at an era when it was a taboo in the one party dictatorship of the Biya regime.

The political dynamics on the terrain in Cameroon today is not as it was in the nineties. The SDF must, more than ever before, face competition, not just from the party in power, but other opposition parties like Prof Maurice Kamto's Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC, and challenges from separatist fighters in the North West and South West Regions, which form its main fief.

If there is any advice The Guardian Post can give the SDF leadership, it is to embrace reconciliation. After the demise of its National Chairman, the so-called SDF G-27+, a group of the party's bigwigs, which, in January this year, sued the leadership of the SDF, for expelling them, should issue a statement calling for reconciliation with the party.

They were expelled from the party using the obnoxious constitutional provision that expels supporters and officials suspected of "anti-party activities", without trial.

Asking potential aspirants in the race to succeed the Chairman to deposit seven million FCFA instead of 50,000 FCFA, as it had been the tradition while Fru Ndi was alive, is also as loathsome as Article 8.2 both of which, if maintained, do not augur well for the growth of the party, which should not be allowed to die with its Founding Fathers.