July 12, 2014 SUICIDAL BY AYAH P ABINE What was pivotal to the creation of the European Union was that the economies of individual European countries were not more than foils to the might of the United States’ economy. That situation was worsened by the higher rates of agricultural subsidies accorded by the US government to their farmers. Produce by those farmers were necessarily cheaper, and therefore outsold European produce. As individual countries, European countries could not stand up to the mighty US effectively. For its own survival, Europe had to buy the ideal of a union. Even as the “war” of agricultural subsidies has survived to date, be it more timidly, Europe does threaten the US nowadays with non-negligible effect. Curiously, the very Europe that did see the merit of size in prosecuting their economic war against the US has now turned to Africa to sell the fallacious ideology of “regional grouping”, yet with considerable success. In the same manner that Europe had arbitrarily and unilaterally partitioned Africa into weak colonies in the main, they are using African leaders this time around to edify economically weak water-tight regions in West Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa and East Africa. With those rival and at times hostile groupings in place, cunning Europe has tendered the bait: for rapid economic growth, each group should enter into an economic partnership agreement with the European Union for the free movement of goods – (to the exclusion of the free movement of persons). Fear should be out of the question as there is a magic wand! The European Union shall upgrade the groupings’ economies before the coming into force of the agreements. Our leaders should bank on trust instead of asking questions in superfluity. … And so it is! Therefore was o question raised as to how even all the agrarian African economies together could stand up to the European Union’s combined economies. Few African leaders sought to know how African peasant farmers, armed with cutlasses and hoes, without agricultural subsidies and in dispersed ranks, could stand tall side by side the European farmers propped up by mechanized agriculture, and enjoying subsidized mass agricultural production. No thought led our leaders to question how subsistence farmers would fairly compete with the European industrialists? Our leaders lightly believed the ready European answer that the African economies would first be upgraded. Who by? was unimportant and irrelevant! Look at the bitter truth today, staring us in the face: the truth that the so-called economic partnership agreements do constitute but the recolonization of Africa – this time via economic strangling. Of course, yes! In the first place, African countries will lose revenue from the abolition of custom duties. Secondly, the African continent would be the dumping ground par excellence. The balance of payment will ever be in favour of the European developed economies. And the European promised investments will sap the local economies completely dry through the purchase of equipment from Europe; and the transfer back home to Europe of profits. In the end, the ordinary Africans would be poorer from exploitation much more than they are now! The case of Cameroun is all the worse! Much as they pride themselves with such hollow epithets as the giant of CEMAC, Cameroun has the lowest guaranteed minimum wage in the region. Its road infrastructure is the least developed. It has the lowest sense of patriotism. Its society is the least organized. The government is most inefficient, the most corrupt in the region! … Above all, Cameroun, in her characteristic absence of vision, has betrayed the CEMAC region without introspection or foresight. Even as the European Union did offer to treat with regional groupings together, Cameroun is going it sole. This irresponsible leap in the dark will be much more than a disaster! Firstly, it is treacherous of Cameroun to depart from the draft terms providing that the European Union would deal with the groupings as entities. Secondly, whether it is applicable yet or not, there is an international instrument in force for the free movement of persons and goods within the CEMAC zone to which Cameroun is a signatory. Signing another agreement with the Europen Union for the free movement of goods automatically affects the rest of CEMAC since by the instrument already in force those goods would enter the other CEMAC countries that are not privy to Cameroun’s agreement with the European Union. This is more than co-terminus with treachery: it directly vitiates the sovereignty of the other CEMAC countries. Again, Mr. Biya knows just too well that his country’s only industries are the breweries that are actively encouraged to debilitate the youth, and intellectually incapacitate them from excogitating any plans that can positively shape the future of their country to the benefit of the ordinary citizens. Aside from that, Mr. Biya alone knows which industries have been upgraded as a condition precedent to the signing of the agreement as stipulated by the draft agreement itself. For the ordinary persons that we are, there is no apparent justification for this reckless breach of trust and solidarity in CEMAC? It only does illustrate nonchalance and, perhaps, palpable bad governance. One may not be far from the truth in surmising that this ultimate step is the premature twin brother of the bogus jest christened “Horison 2035”! After everything, it seems that, as there are conspicuous signs that only the names of Mr. Biya and his contemporaries will be executed by the cruel judgment of posterity, European Union is a desired contemporary shock absorber. For those Camerounese of tomorrow, this thoughtless adventure is wholly suicidal!
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 15:48:46 +0000
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