Honorable Joshua Osih has declared himself responsible for the the SDF party’s dismal performance during the October 7th presidential election in Cameroon.
The flag bearer of the SDF was speaking during an enlarged National Executive committee meeting of the party in Yaounde Saturday, chaired by Ni John Fru Ndi.
“I totally take blame for the all the fallouts…not leaving out the fact that we have an epileptic electoral system in Cameroon today…” Honorable Joshua Osih told the press after the meeting which lasted for hours.
According to the SDF, the 2018 presidential election is history as party officials are now intensifying preparations ahead of legislative and municipal elections in 2019.
The SDF NEC meeting held at the time when some party officials, like the Mayor of Loum, called for the resignation of Joshua as SDF First Vice President and eventually dismissed from the party.
Joshua Osih responded: “party comrades are free to express their views and frustrations and I respect their opinions…But I was chosen by the people and I have a mandate to defend…”
The SDF will be unveiling it’s campaign strategy to the press in the days ahead.
The stormy National Executive
Committee, NEC, meeting of the Social Democratic
Front, SDF, follows the disastrous performance of the party’s flag bearer, Hon. Joshua Nambangi Osih at the Presidential election.
Osih got barely a total of 118,706 votes, giving him and the party the score of 3.35 percent, and the fourth position the worst score ever recorded in a Presidential election by the SDF, which, this year, was in its fifth participation.
In the previous three Presidential elections, the SDF flag bearer and National Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi, has, in the official results, always come second. At his last participation in the 2011 Presidential election, Fru Ndi received a total of 518, 175 votes, which was a score of 10.712%.
The anglophone Crisis:
There is no doubt that one of the major reasons for the poor performance
of the SDF flag bearer at the October 7
Presidential election was the fact that, the escalating Anglophone Crisis made the holding of the Presidential election impossible in two Anglophone Regions, the Northwest and the Southwest Regions, which are the traditional fief of the SDF.
To begin with, many political observers and analysts have been questioning whether it was a wise idea for the SDF to go for the 2018 Presidential election, considering the prevailing situation in its principal base, the Anglophone Regions.
Worth noting that, last May, the leader of PAP, Paul Ayah Abine, who was 5th out of 23 in the 2011 Presidential election, advanced two main reasons why his party would not participate in the 2018 Presidential election.
One of the reasons was that three Divisions, namely; Manyu, Lebialem and Kupe Muanenguba, all in the Southwest Region, which he said were his party’s fief, were all seriously affected or “destroyed’ by the escalating Anglophone Crisis.
Thus, he did not think that it would make any sense for PAP to go in for the election.
Another reason which Ayah raised was that he found it absurd for any Anglophone to talk of being a candidate in the 2018 Presidential election, considering the escalating Anglophone Crisis and Government’s persistent failure to resolve the crisis.
Looking at the official result of the 2011 Presidential election, for example, the SDF flag bearer, Ni John Fru Ndi, came first in one Region which was the Northwest where he received 230,784 votes, which was a score of 54.75%.
In the Southwest Region, he grabbed 78,549 votes, which was a score of 20.09%.
This means that Fru Ndi got a total of 309,333 votes, which was about 60 percent of the total
of 518,175 votes which he officially got from the two Anglophone Regions alone. This also means that Fru Ndi, at the election, got a total of 208,842 votes in the eight Francophone Regions and the Diaspora. In the three Regions of the Grand North, namely; Adamawa, Far North and North, Fru Ndi got a
total of 23,397 votes. Osih on his part got a total of 19,597 votes in the three Regions of the Grand North.
Shying away From reality:
The SDF leadership has, over the
years, been shying away from admit-
ting that the main base of the party is
what is commonly referred to as Anglo-
Bami. The Anglo-Bami population has,
since the creation of the SDF in 1990,
constituted the large majority of mili-
tants and sympathizers of the party.
All major political parties in the world have their main bases. For example, in the United States which many consider as the most advanced democracy in the world, the media as well as political parties and the entire population talk of Blue States which are traditional stronghold of the Democratic Party, and the Red States which are the main base of the Republic Party.
In Cameroon, it is no secret that a major political party like the NUDP of Bello Bouba Maigari, has its main base in the Grand North, and that the main base of Ndam Njoya’s CDU is the Bamoun land. As for the ruling CPDM, there is no doubt that its main base is the Beti land, and that if the party losses power today, it will become a Beti affair.
The youthful new comer to the Presidential election, Cabral Libii Ngue Ngue, even admitted after the election that he has come to realise that in Africa, the main bases of political parties generally have tribal connections.
After the SDF insisted to go in for the 2018 Presidential election, despite the escalating Anglophone Crisis, the party’s flag bearer, Hon. Osih, after the election, filed a petition at the Constitutional Council praying the Council to order for a total cancelation of the election, with the main reason being that election did not hold in the two Anglophone Regions because of the war there.
But the head of the CPDM delegation, Gregoire Owona, in his reaction, reminded the SDF at Constitutional Council on October 18, that before the party decided to go in for the election, they were certainly aware of the situation in the Northwest and Southwest
Regions, and thus ought not to complain after the election
MMI
