par Louis-Marie Kakdeu | SDF Shadow Minister Economy, Finance, Trade

In terms of budgetary policy, the DOB is the opportunity given to elected officials (and by extension to the people) to express their opinion on the BIG LINES of the national budget. Simply put, this is the time to fight by ALL MEANS to have the concerns of the people ("of their village or region") included in the budget. However, people, including the CPDM, ignore this, which is a major political error in the life of the Nation. A NORMAL country does not manage itself by imploring each time the magnanimity of "His Excellency Paul Biya" or "his high instructions" which constitute in matters of Finance what should be called "budgetary indiscipline". A President of the Republic cannot VALUABLY give instructions that go EVERY TIME against the budgetary lines decided (strangely by himself who has the "comfortable majority"). It is this budgetary disorder that keeps us in the IMF whose main mission is nothing else but to ensure BUDGETARY DISCIPLINE. It is as if you organized the disorder at home and then paid for the services of a Consultant in charge of bringing order. This is the Cameroonian paradox! All this is because we do not understand public finance on the one hand and the role of a Parliament on the other. Even the Executive has every interest in favoring the DOB to be sure that during the year, a legitimate social demand will not come to impose budgetary indiscipline on the government as is always the case in Cameroon. It is hard to imagine that anything that happens to the economy and finance will not happen. Even the external shock that we are experiencing today was largely predictable with the extroverted nature of our economy.

I would like to say that it is because the budget orientation is poorly done that we often hear complaints of "tribalism", "exclusion" or marginalization in Cameroon. In the NORMALITY of things, the DOB makes it possible to achieve 4 things: (1) The evaluation of the revenues and expenditures of the State. Otherwise, how can you be relevant in your claims, within the power in place as well as the opposition or the civil society, if you do not know the POSSIBILITIES of the State? (2) The evaluation of the budget balance: It is the question of knowing if the budget will be viable. Will the state make MEANS POLICY? (3) Assessing debt levels: Will the state's debt be sustainable? Is it normal to double the country's debt in less than 5 years, as is currently the case? (4) The planning and programming of the country's investments: In view of the above, what can be done or not done? You understand that people are used to discussing without understanding. Especially since the occasion of this DOB was to discuss the 3-year program budget (2023-2025). This means that if we stick to the logic of BUDGETARY DISCIPLINE, then we will have to respect the budget lines adopted this year until 2025. Unfortunately, the IMF is here and we will have no choice but to be austere! Already, the arrival of "performance contracts" has been announced! We'll come back to that.

So we often joke about important issues. The deputies of the Union for Change (UPC) played their part. They were entirely in their role. To each his role! Why only now? But what a question! We all said it had to start, right? By the time the budget is voted on in November 2022, I expect that "POSITIVE Tribalism" will be truly expressed across the country that the WE that some like to embody must ensure that their concerns have been incorporated into the program budget. I will cite two examples (in the Far North and Southwest):

In the city of Maroua where I teach, I am not sure that we have 10 km of paved road. Question: How can we understand that the Diamare deputies have acclaimed this unfair text to the point of threatening the Honorable Joshua Osih who led the resistance? If Cavaye Yégué himself, the PAN, were a true politician at the service of his people (and not of his personal interests and those of his family), then he would have done the ponce-pilatism (to escape the alleged discipline of his party) by "dismissing/condemning" MINFI and its text. Then you will hear that the North does not have the power or that the South does not like the North. Who has this budgetary power and does not know how to exercise it for the 30 years he has been in office?

Let's go to the Southwest and take the department where the country gets its oil: Ndian. In 2022, I am not sure that there will be a single kilometer of paved road in this department. Between Kumba and Ekondo Titi, there are 50 km of unpaved roads. I am not even talking about the capital Mudemba, which is 80 km away. Explained like this, one does not perceive the discrimination well. In fact, when we leave Kumba, the tar stops and we continue in the mud to go to the land that provides us with oil, the money of which is managed by the famous SNH in Yaoundé (everyone is now talking about the GLEENCORE affair, hoping that it will bring down the regime). This is the face of discrimination. And then we will say that the citizens who are indignant at the local level are terrorists. And then we will spend hundreds of billions of CFA francs to fight against this terrorism. What a waste! And then you will hear the OPPORTUNISTS even in the opposition say that they love the "Anglophones": with their mouths? Or that they need dialogue: Dialogue in a vacuum? ZERO DIALOGUE TO BE DONE WITHOUT POLICY OF INCLUSION! If you love Anglophones so much (more than Anglophones themselves), then you must ensure that their basic concerns have been integrated into the national budget and that they will enjoy their rights (by law) without having to lose their DIGNITY (through clientelism or imposed griotism). That is all they ask! AND IT IS DURING THE DOB THAT WE MUST SHOW THIS GOODWILL TO SUPPORT THE ANGLOPHONES, NOT WHEN THE ARMY HAS MADE A BAVRURE which can happen in a war! I could have talked about the real concerns in the South, East, Coast, etc.

Let's get serious! If we want a country where the dignity of citizens is guaranteed (i.e., a country where people do not need to compromise themselves to exist), then we must now make the DOB more incisive than what we have seen in the Assembly. And WE HAVE 4 MORE MONTHS TO GET THROUGH THE BUDGET VOTE IN NOVEMBER 2022. As it is, it seems that some in the government are preparing a "coup d'état" as the issue of the high cost of living has not been addressed. The country's economy is extraverted and the production deficit is very large: 700,000 tons of corn production deficit, 1.1 million tons of rice deficit, 3 million tons of cassava deficit, 1 million tons of palm oil deficit, 350,000 tons of fish deficit, 900,000 tons of wheat deficit, etc. The food crisis in Cameroon is guaranteed to happen soon. The country imports 100% of its wheat needs, 97% of its rice needs, 90% of its milk needs, etc. Worse, more than 90% of the economic activity is informal. You understand that the situation is untenable! And curiously, the government has not planned anything relevant to boost local production considerably, given the fluctuations observed on the international market. It is observed that to save the POWER in place, the "high instructions of the presidency" have seen themselves being forced in the wake of the DOB to proceed by way of "SUBSIDY" to encourage the cultivation of wheat. The things of this country. What incongruity!

Let's get serious! If we want a country where the dignity of citizens is guaranteed (i.e., a country where people do not need to compromise themselves to exist), then we must now make the DOB more incisive than what we have seen in the Assembly. And WE HAVE 4 MORE MONTHS TO GET THROUGH THE BUDGET VOTE IN NOVEMBER 2022. As it is, it seems that some in the government are preparing a "coup d'état" as the issue of the high cost of living has not been addressed. The country's economy is extraverted and the production deficit is very large: 700,000 tons of corn production deficit, 1.1 million tons of rice deficit, 3 million tons of cassava deficit, 1 million tons of palm oil deficit, 350,000 tons of fish deficit, 900,000 tons of wheat deficit, etc. The food crisis in Cameroon is guaranteed to happen soon. The country imports 100% of its wheat needs, 97% of its rice needs, 90% of its milk needs, etc. Worse, more than 90% of the economic activity is informal. You understand that the situation is untenable! And curiously, the government has not planned anything relevant to boost local production considerably, given the fluctuations observed on the international market. It is observed that to save the POWER in place, the "high instructions of the presidency" have seen themselves being forced in the wake of the DOB to proceed by way of "SUBSIDY" to encourage the cultivation of wheat. The things of this country. What incongruity!

Let us choose the path of dignity and reason to develop our country. Let's reject emotion, radical extremism or indoctrination that serve the CAUSE. We cannot leave the bush on the Right to enter the bush on the Left because we are already on the Left. Anyone who drives knows that the ravine can be on the Left or the Right! We must stay on the GOOD PATH to our emergence. It is in the law that it happens. It is in Parliament that it happens.

A normal MINFI should be happy to appear before the representatives of the people in Parliament not to do a "seminar" and receive "acclamations" but, to collect the concerns of our local populations and our citizens of the diaspora in order to propose at the end an INCLUSIVE FINANCE LAW. This is a requirement of GOOD GOVERNANCE. This is what we will do when the time comes and this is what it is all about!

Louis-Marie Kakdeu
Shadow Minister Economy, Finance, Trade.
SDF

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