Cameroon is on the brink of economic, political social, and cultural catastrophe – Maurice Kamto

By David Atangana

The leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM), has said Cameroon is at a standstill in most domains, with projections showing that some areas are likely to worsen in the coming years.

Law Professor Maurice Kamto made the statement Saturday, December 31, 2022, as he delivered a message to Cameroonians.

The opposition leader who is alleged to have come second in the last presidential elections revealed that there is no single part of Cameroon’s economic, political, social, and cultural life that is doing well.

Describing 2022 as a disastrous year for the country, he signaled that 2023 will be a more difficult year as the economy of the country heads for doom.

“For more than three years our country has again been placed under the financial supervision of the IMF, as during the dark twenty years of the structural adjustment plans,” Kamto said adding that, “the deficit of our trade balance has continued to widen, with a spectacular drop in the volume of certain export products such as bananas and coffee, to stand at approximately minus 1400 billion FCFA.”

Describing debts incurred by the government as ‘toxic debts’, he went to say, “State indebtedness continued to soar to reach almost 44% of Gross Domestic Product today, and it is not this rate in itself that is worrying, but the fact that it is is a toxic debt.”

Lambasting the regime for presiding over the rise in the prices of basic commodities, high cost of living, Kamto revealed that there has never been an increase in wages of Cameroonian workers.

“The unprecedented increase in taxes and duties within the framework of a crisis budget which sacrifices the most vulnerable sections of the population,” Kamto went on to add that:

“the cost of living has become unbearable for most of our compatriots, with a surge in inflation and the increase in the prices of all products, leading to a phenomenon of high prices of life that is violently felt by the population”

According to the CRM president, Cameroon’s minimum wage which is less than 37,000 FCFA is very low compared to some African countries which are between 60,000 and 75,000 FCFA.

“I recall that there has been no general increase in wages in Cameroon for several decades” he revealed.

On the political life of the country, he said the year 2022 saw many peaceful protesters of the CRM party arrested and tried before military tribunals across the country.

Describing the prosecution of his party members as a scandalous criminal act, he regretted that one of his militants Rodrigue Ndagueho Koufet died in detention at the New Bell prison in Douala.

Touching on the armed conflict in the English-speaking regions, Kamto Maurice noted that every year that goes by without the conflict being resolved is one year too many.

“Too many of our compatriots, civilians, and soldiers, died in this fratricidal conflict,” he lamented adding, “It is high time that all efforts be combined at the national and international levels to bring about a definitive political solution.”

According to the political leader, “the year 2022 is also the year in which the phenomena of insecurity have worsened, linked in particular to the difficult cohabitation between certain communities in our country, to traffic, to the social excesses caused by the growing precariousness of the poorest strata of our population, particularly in urban areas, and the lack of an adequate response to the chronic problem of youth unemployment and the social exclusion it engenders”

Criticising the country’s electoral system, he accused ELECAM of lying to Cameroonians by falsifying the actual number of registered voters in the country.

“For ten years, ELECAM, which by its composition resembles a subsection of the ruling party, the CPDM, has been lying to Cameroonians,” Kamto went on revealing that “This body created to guarantee the credibility of the elections in Cameroon multiplies the maneuvers to distort the real figures of the number of voters in the country”