When egoistic Anglophone legislators take debates to streets.

Parliament is derived from the French word "parler", meaning to speak out and discuss issues in the Assembly to effect change for the common good. 

For seven years running, a brutal conflict has been raging in the North West and South West Regions, which the Cameroon government has classified as “risk zones”.

While the barbarism has on humanitarian grounds has been debated in other parliaments in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, etc, it has been a taboo issue in the Cameroon National Assembly.

Even when the SDF parliamentarians in the November session of 2017 wanted it put on debate, they were quickly hushed by the obsessed CPDM majority, led by the Speaker of the National Assembly, Rt Hon Cavaye Yeguie Djibril. 

In protest, opposition party members threatened to halt business in the house till the Anglophone crisis was tabled for debate. 

Amid chanting of slogans and singing, the protesting MPs asked how many more people were going to be killed before the government flagged down the indiscriminate killings. 

At the last count early this year, given that there are no current figures, several international organisations, including the Canadian government, put the number of those killed at over 6,000. 

Today, it should be more, based on the daily reports of dreaded separatist fighters being neutralised, civilians publicly executed and Improvised Explosive Devices, IEDs, taking a fatal toll on defence and security forces like the recent case in Lebialem.

While the world is traumatised and shaken by the recent execution of two innocent civilians in Widikum, North West Region, CPDM Members of Parliament from the Region, like honorary precursors the culture of contemporary “greed is good”, were protesting about their personal benefits from the national tax basket.

Seventeen of the 18 North West CPDM parliamentarians sent a memo to the House Speaker, Hon Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, protesting their blatant marginalisation and maltreatment in the House.

In the petition, they lamented that they were being sidelined in the National Assembly with none of them in the inter-parliamentary unions and other regional and international missions organised by the National Assembly. 

They also pointed out their absence in Committees and juicy offices at the National Assembly. 

Those are purely personal interests, parochial and do not reflect their claims of representing a people smeared in the lurch of insecurity, poverty and atrocities.

If 17 of them can sit down to write a petition about their marginalisation in parliament, what stops them from tabling the conflict in their Region, which is of national and international ramifications, to the house for a solution? 

If they must play stomach politics, why didn't they raise the issue of their marginalisation in session? Did they consult their South West Region peers who, probably, are in the same spool like them to form a united front and table an inclusive complaint to the house for debate and consideration?

There are speculations in the social media that 40 million FCFA will be offered to them to withdraw the petition. If that is true, we urge them to reject any monetary offer and insist on putting their egocentric grievances together with that of the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions, during the November session, for debate.

While CPDM parliamentarians often dance to the music played by their hierarchy, we see nothing wrong in holding a debate to find a way out of the insecurity in the two Anglophone Regions, rather than the delusive slogan of "normalcy returning". 

The powers that be in parliament could have rejected the proposal of the opposition to table the debate just for fear that it will give the SDF credit.

We can say without fear of contradiction that CPDM legislators have been eager and anxious to talk about the conflict, but surprisingly always outside parliament.  

The evidence is that they scampered for the Major National Dialogue and at every given opportunity, they made their views, often from the sublime to the ridiculous in the media.

Take the case of Senator Mbella Moki, for example. In one of his recent outings in Buea, he recommended that as a solution to the conflict, the population should "terrorise the terrorists". Quote of the century! How do the electorate descend to the nadir of terrorists? Who will train civilians living in fear as the chicken-hearted flee to become terrorists? 

Where do they get guns to terrorise the terrorists? If Mbella Moki was serious, are senators with their immunity not well placed to "terrorise the terrorists"?

Those are questions we hope would have been answered in legislative debates rather than taking debates to the quarters with weird recommendations.

Some of the legislators have even joined their traditional leaders to pour fetish libations as a path to bring peace in the two warring Regions.

Legislators, be they parliamentarians or senators, represent their constituents, not themselves. They have immunity which allows them to speak in parliament without fear for the interest of the people they represent. 

Honourable, a title bestowed on them in expectation of the common good, requires that they put their egocentric interests aside for the general good, posterity and history. 

But can they, led by the 17 North West MPs, do that at the November session, by calling for a debate on the way towards bringing peace and security to the North West and South West Regions?