The Tunisian Effect: Can it happen in Cameroon?

For twenty-three years, the Tunisian people hoped to see their country progress. For twenty-three years, what they saw was oppression and stifled growth. They were denied the opportunity to grow financially.

As anyone who has lived under a repressive regime will tell you, when you halt a people's economic empowerment, you make them hungry, and hungry people are more concerned with finding the next meal, not dissecting the intricacies of where their tax money goes.

So, in typical autocratic fashion, with an African flavor, Mr Ben Ali held his people to ransom for two decades. Unbeknownst to him, books he banned or made difficult to import could be read on the internet. People could bypass his state controlled media and organize in a dispersed way.

And so, the culmination of his rule came this week and was greeted with joy and festivities. He will see the potential and enterprise of a people unleashed from his sumptuous surroundings in Saudi Arabia to which he has been exiled.

Now, could the same thing happen in Cameroon? Could the Cameroonian people rally as one and march to Etoudi to demand Biya's departure?

Conditions in both countries are very similar. The is a large population of youths looking for jobs, both countries have had only two presidents since independence, there is widespread corruption and the president recently instituted the life presidency in Cameroon, something that does not happen in modern societies.

In Tunisia, it was a University graduate who could not find work who set himself on fire, triggering the chain reaction that led to Ben Ali's ouster. The same kind of protests spilled over to neighboring Algeria.

It should be recalled that similar protests occurred in Cameroon in 2008 and led to the arrest of one of Cameroon's foremost artists, Lapiro de Mbanga who is still languishing in jail. He is no doubt subjected a regular passage on the balancoir, Cameroon's fearful version of extraordinary rendition.

Today, it just needs one overzealous policeman to harass a taxi driver or bend skin rider. That will ignite the keg, and Biya will wonder whoever told him the Cameroonian people loved him when he will be watching people dancing for joy on the streets of Yaounde and Douala from his safe haven in Switzerland.

Yes, what happened in Tunisia may happen in Cameroon. It will take much less than someone setting themselves on fire, and yes, there will be a very huge crowd in all the streets, all across the country to mark the end of twenty-nine years of oppression.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T