2011 MINCAM Elections: As I see them

For any aspiring political scientist, the ongoing fight for supremacy at the helm of MINCAM makes for an interesting study. There is no gainsaying that beneath most leadership aspirations there lurks a debilitating virus of the moral fiber: pride. For the ancient Greeks it is hubris. Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with having that self assurance that you do something for your fellow men and women by aiming to be the very least amongst them: the servant. The question then is: are the present candidates aiming to serve or to lead? Those who aim to serve do so in the humble belief that if given the opportunity, they’ll give the people nothing short of the very best without waiting to be praised. While it is true that many strive to lead at all cost, it is also true that they may sometimes even with audacity do so with the best of intentions. So should the fight for the presidency of MINCAM be anything but vitriolic? Yes, it certainly can be if this association is really out to make a difference in the community - the Minnesota community where niceness is the defining character of the people. Why then do Cameroonians, most Cameroonians, and other immigrant populations find it difficult to be part of, continue to remain outsiders to this emblematic culture of civility, and demonstrate at nearly all instances that no matter the number years they have lived here or been educated here they harbor a nearly irredeemable uncouthness; a complete lack of savoir faire that not even exorcism can remove. You only need to read the email exchanges and find therein that what emerges is a character portrait of a people that is “atypical” of Cameroonians! Not that we should be anything else but haven’t we learnt anything from our travels? Haven’t we achieved anything from the intellectual peregrination that brought most of us here about from the titles that we are wont to yearn and still cling to, longingly?

Yes, what is emerging is a character portrait that has once been ingeniously attributed to Cameroonians by the disreputable former Central African dictator Jean Felix Patasse. As the political empire he once built cascaded into an abyss and he receded into oblivion, his death wish was that were he to be born again it should be as a Cameroonian! The people to him were/are hospital, loved food, good food; then drinks and more drinks; epicurean true disciples who were too full of good humor to bother the lives of despots.

Can Cameroonians as a people be summed up by their love of abdominal politics? Is it a love to serve the Cameroon community in Minnesota, the zeal to create a difference, to divulge themselves of the self for the good of others that is driving these political aspirants? Or is it just sheer ambition driven by pride that is embryonic of this surge to do good for and by MINCAM? Maybe yes or maybe no! Let’s take a look at the two main candidates of the upcoming MINCAM elections: Robert and Mike. What do we know of them? As the elections draw “dangerously” nearer, this is how I see them.

Robert is a well educated middle age man, a well meaning Minnesota Cameroonian who is planning to take MINCAM into a new phase. He has a manifesto to boost his intentions. This is his debut on the MINCAM stage as he was very busy with school, and work to actively volunteer and/or take a noticeable part in MINCAM past community events. What with an engaging career as a pharmacist and an uncontrollable posting out of town. His employers have planned to promote and relocate him to the Cities and as such he can carve out sometime to be an active member of MINCAM or should I say her president.

Mike is also a well educated middle age man who is a well meaning Minnesota Cameroonian who is not only planning to bring MINCAM to heights yet to be seen. He is the very reason that MINCAM is what it is today. For recent settlers like me, MINCAM is synonymous to Mike. He is one of the foremost brains in the founding of MINCAM. At the verge of launching Robert wanted questioned the rationale behind the timing and call for a postponement; other elders presently pushing for his candidacy skeptically threw scornful satirical jabs at the very idea of Cameroonians coming together for a common good and loudly purported that such an exercise would end in ignominy. They questioned how anyone could dare to call for Cameroonians to come together when the community was grieving; the community is grieving now and the campaigns are more heated than ever.

What experience/contributions have both men garnered with MINCAM or generally within the community? Robert takes his membership within his Nkwen Cultural association seriously and is generally available to sacrifice his time for the good of his association when work and other engagements are not in the way. Even though the Nkwen Cultural association is yet to take part in MINCAM organized events, he is committed to making sure that this is a reality. After all, doesn’t charity begin at home? As for contributions towards MINCAM, he may not have been a relatively active member in the past (school, work, family etc.) but since his decision to become president, he has personally financed the membership of scores of Cameroonians. This hitherto, dormant members of our community will NOT follow his example and wait until they want to become president before they become active members but rather share in his vision of how to reform MINCAM so that occasions are put on the calendar with accuracy and rapidity while at the same time ensuring that not two occasions fall on the same weekend. He has yet undisclosed means by which he’ll build a community center. Even though he has no experience on what it has taken to bring MINCAM up her present state, he is a quick study. After all, was Obama not only a community organizer and is now the president of the US? Robert plans to learn what it means to be a community organizer at the same time learning what it means to lead a vibrant and diverse community. He is counting on the Cameroon community in Minnesota to gamble with MINCAM leadership. It may be a sure bet for history abounds with example of successful leaders who have appeared like interns on the outset and gone forward to do great things. Even though many of his ardent supporters are using highly odious and divisive language, it would be saddening to imagine that that reflects what Robert stands for. It doesn’t!

While Robert brings hope of a better MINCAM to the table, Mike represents what is already good about MINCAM. He is an embodiment of aspiration made real. Three or four years ago, he and others thought of making the presence of Cameroonians felt in the Twin Cities. The idea of forming an association was received with askance in many quarters and rightfully so for by our very nature we take solace in the status quo remaining unchanged. With an unflinching believe in the righteousness of this endeavor, (call it sanctimony for good effect) he embarked on an Obama-style community organizing and together with other founding fathers, invited heads of associations to sell this idea. He talked to people wherever and whenever about importance of MINCAM. The singularity of the message of solidarity, of togetherness and neighborliness, and above all his persistent if not aggressive call for Cameroonians to converge as a family – a kind of modern day Julius Nyerere's Ujamaa, began to take root and blossom. He drafted the articles of association, worked with the founding fathers of MINCAM to create every facet of MINCAM as we know it today. His uncanny ability to glean instructive information from multiple sources, sensitize the community on current and upcoming events soon earned him the title of Town Crier. That MINCAM has reached an epoch in her short history at which the campaign for her leaders is nearly viral is a testament not to a lack of success of the incumbent president and its EXCO but on how far their leadership has brought organization. So what does Mike bring to the table? Simple: MINCAM, her past, present, and undoubted vision of a more solid, a more united, a more diverse association that will continue to “make a difference in our society.”With an up and running website, a yahoo mailing group, up and functioning discussion charts, reform is not only being promised, it is already here. If the president airs, correct him/her in real time. Events, not on the calendar, call for them to put up in real time. Engaging debates on issues, even if there is no consensus ad idem, the process itself becomes part of our body polity – that a people can co-exist despite ideological incompatibilities. Mike has demonstrated over the years that he can balance his job (without a boss breathing down his neck), a supportive family (a wife who like him is present in nearly all MINCAM and community functions) and at active participation in his Lebialem group, Bui Family Union, the Cameroon Choir. His experience includes but not limited to the fact he is the former president of SOBA America and president of LECDA MN, Current president of LECUDEM USA, Vice President & Secretary of Minnesota Black Chamber of Commerce, Member of ALANA, Member of OneMinnesota, Board Member Cameroon Professional Society (That recently gave an award to Melissa Nambangi) amongst others. He is an undoubted man of the people whose energy resources have been tested by time.

What personality/leadership traits have these men been known to portray? Robert has a charming unassuming personality. He is the kind of guy that is so approachable that when you get to talk to, you feel like you can trust him with your secrets. Robert is presidential. If some distinguished persons with flowing titles have termed his political opponent a dictator it could be taken to mean that Robert is either timid or meek. This is not to suggest weakness or effeteness. After all, Christ the meek Lamb of God resorted to violence of necessity to drive people out of the temple. Yes, if Mike is a dictator then Robert must be the true egalitarian. His leadership would be that in which all decisions are reached by consensus at all times because for the president to decide for the people is anathema. It portends therefore, that to be a president is only to have a presidential personage and not to exert the powers that come with the office. Never! Not even for the good of those one has been privileged to lead. That would be dictatorship! Such an acclaimed genteel personality that is portrayed as a foil to Mike fearfully borders on effeminacy.

Mike is a dictator! Aha! Who is a dictator? A man with absolute powers who is tyrannical and abusive with impunity…. No! To term Mike a dictator is not only a misnomer, but outrageous and sickeningly repugnant. While others who have poised Robert on the winning pedestal and showcased him around B. Park circles can unashamedly go to such lengths to paint such an unrecognizable caricature of a distinguished member of our community in order to win an election, let me just state that this is unpardonable. What character does Mike portray? A critical inquiry into Mike’s sojourn with MINCAM can be summed up in one word: unyielding. Pushed away, shunned, even scorned by prophets of doomed, he never yielded. To bring the idea of MINCAM to fruition he demonstrated what can be termed a force of character so great that it pushed many including myself from our individual existence, sometimes but not always in tribal and regional groups into a new dispensation; the very beginnings of a collective, more like the founding of a new nation. It is true that for men and women whose love for political advantage is defined by their love also for demagogy, Mike must have been the undying and unrelenting midget and not the poetic gadfly that he is. Whether he used icy water to wake people out of their infinite shade of slumber into a state of unmitigated ‘awakeness’ and awareness of their place in the community they now call home can be seen in steady grow of MINCAM. As is always the case, the very people that have been saved from sinking into political and social obscurantism are libeling Mike’s dynamism as dictatorship. As a full registered member of MINCAM I find this offensive. To admit this of Mike is to equally admit that MINCAM members either from sheer terror or unquestionable ignorance have been cowed into docility by Mike. What Mike has demonstrated in his quest to promote the Cameroon brand and bring our people together is laudable. I may shy away from the Biya controlled Cameroon, but I don’t shy away from MINCAM under his charge. Without turning this posting into neither a panegyric nor an encomium, Mike portraiture as a leader fits squarely in the construct best described by Frederick Forsyth, the renowned writer of the The Day of the Jackal, Dogs of War, The Fist of God etc., in his biography of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. According to Forsyth a true leader should possess compassion without sentimentality, intelligence without pedantry and courage without priggishness. Apart from these he should possess even something more, an indescribable quality that makes people want to follow him. Mike may neither be Ben Gurion nor Winston Churchill, but what he has been able to achieve, is worth of praise worthy and deserving of the following he has generated.

The Campaigns! Robert is pretty good at this game. After what appears like the bestowing of confidence by the king makers that be, he quickly propounded his manifesto and threw a good barbecue party. This ability to tap into the very essence of Cameroonian politics- abdominal gratification should be taken in no light manner by any aspiring political scientist. They remain in us Cameroonians, the unchecked tendency to welcome free food and booze and then praise the hand that giveth. There is therefore no doubt that Robert is a savvy politician who understands what would get some of his supporters shouting that he is the man! The tactic of financing the registration of members who had no time for MINCAM before now, and who will come, vote for him, and then sink into oblivion until the next election cycle when someone affluent enough can provide them chicken, beer and 10 bucks to register and become “bona fide” members of MINCAM is commendable. If rumbling rumors are anything to go by, he has slated another barbecue for Thursday! Is it that Cameroonians cannot afford good barbecue or is it that the idea of free food is so entrenched in our psyche that whosever offers it becomes to us the master and we the dogs who cannot but follow the one who deigns to feed us this well?

Where are Mike’s campaign slogan, flyers and barbecues being organized? Is that because he has never organized a far-flung campaign in the past and therefore knows not how to organize it now? No! I think he relies on his achievement, his drive to raise MINCAM from the doldrums to this state of unchecked frenzy. I’m nearly certain he is knocking on doors or not knocking at doors at all and hoping that the Cameroon community in Minnesota can vote by the power of their intellectual dictates and not by how well the food tasted and/or how chilled the beer was. If I were his campaign consultant I’ll advise him against embarking on abdominal or should I say barbecue politics. I’m by no means saying that he should throw a party once in a while to shake things up and get people together. For those who have not been active in MINCAM, a question and answer session may be a useful tool but they also need to look at, in addition, the website, the mature and illuminating emails that decry the tone and insinuations of the campaigns to tell how low people are willing to sink. Yes, the absence of an organized campaign is neither a sign of the foreboding times nor a capitulation. It is the sign of a humble trust that the people within this community will rise above petty mindedness and unbridled complacency and vote according to their gut instincts. Mike also need to take responsibility of all the past shortcomings of his EXCO and make a solemn promise to the people that we’re he to win their confidence once more; he’ll oversee all operations and guarantee that they are hitch-free. He has to be careful here lest he again gets termed as a dictator!

So, this is how I see them. When things are not yet going very well, disassociation is a safe policy; when there is success in the air, bystanders are apt to find fault and without ceremony hang those who dared to work for the success of the coveted object. The elections will come to pass but will MINCAM die with them, become a shell of its present self or remain untouched by the political excesses of our time? What I do see, however, is that it’ll be a stupendous task for Robert and his click, having either launched albeit inadvertently a divisive modus operandi to achieve hegemony, to bring the numerous active members together. I also trust that neither Robert nor Mike will take offence in the ramblings of an amateur blogger like me. After all, are politicians not known to have tortoise-shell like exteriors? I’m certain they will remain cool (kind of like Obama) and rethink their visions for MINCAM before casting their own votes. As for everyone else, it is okay if you vote for the person who helped register you, fed you and made you whole in body and spirit with food and beer. It is also okay for you to view such tactics as weird and even though on the face of things they appear innocuous, question what this investment all mean to the investor? It is also true that our people sometimes are sensible enough to see through chatter and make informed decisions. May the change we seek to bring to MINCAM be synonymous to that which we can and must bring to the Cameroons.

Disclaimer: I belong to no click and I’m yet to attend a barbecue at any of the presidential candidates. If you like you can curse me for writing this and break up any such social engagements you think I may no longer qualify to enjoy through your help.

May God continue to bless MINCAM and bring her to heights yet unknown.

Good luck Robert; good luck Mike. My prayers are with you both.

Brendan