Paul Biya’s appointment of Mochiggle Vanigansen as senator revives internal divisions
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Loading... - Jean Adamou
- 07 Apr 2023
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In the letter, Nguidjol Ngan, who is in charge of media in the Cabinet, said the nomination of Mochiggle Vanigansen, an active SDF activist, as a senator has provoked “a lively debate” within the party.
“We therefore call on all our comrades in the interior as well as those in the Diaspora to remain calm and we reassure them that the official position of our party, the SDF, will be made public in due course,” Nguidjol Ngan wrote in the hope of relieving the pressure.
But all is not so simple. For, this zone of turbulence that the SDF is going through is nothing more than the continuation of the quarrel of chapel that has divided this opposition party for several years already. On the one hand, there is the hard wing, whose face is the deputy Jean Michel Nintcheu. Those who claim to be part of this group within the SDF suspect the leader John Fru Ndi and the first vice-president, Deputy Joshua Osih, of having diluted the influence of the party by surreptitiously moving closer to the ruling party, the Rally for the CPDM.
It is this hard-line wing that is strongly critical of the appointment of Mochiggle Vanigansen. This is a gift from Paul Biya, which is presented as one of the witnesses of an unassumed convenience between the main leaders of the SDF and the CPDM. This situation has not failed to embarrass the party’s nomenklatura, which has given itself time to reflect before ratifying the appointment of Mochiggle Vanigansen or simply declining the president’s offer.
The SDF has still not managed to exorcise its old demons. Jean Michel Nintcheu and about twenty other leaders were expelled from the party last February. Tired of being heard, they went to war with the SDF leadership by boycotting a political meeting and taking legal action to reverse a series of decisions taken by John Fru Ndi. But obviously, these expulsions were not enough to demolish the hard wing. It continues to exist to the extent that it is fuelling this ‘heated debate’ over the appointment of Mochiggle Vanigansen. Read More..
