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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Paul Biya's Cameroon, Jobs, and Big Government

The Republican Party in the United States appear to hold such a distaste for what they term "big government" that one may be forgiven for thinking that they hate poor people. Even though the Republican Party itself is a party of big government, one of the points which they decry effectively applies to Paul Biya's Cameroon: when the people of a country rely on the government to provide for them, that government will hold them as slaves. That is exactly what is going on in Cameroon where the main non-agricultural job provider has historically been the government. Thus, Paul Biya has used job provision to young people as a means to keep them in thrall. The most recent example is the paltry 25,000 job opening which the government announced, to the raucous excitement of many young people. So the government goes about creating a very inhospitable environment for individual initiative to flower (private businesses are hardly established in Cameroon because of high taxes) because it wants the people to rely on it. And the more the people rely on the government for jobs, the more, the government uses employment as a means to silence and control the people. In Cameroon, one can hardly work for the government if they do not openly profess to support the ruling party, even if they privately detest it. The Republican Party is correct: big government may lead to lack of freedom, as is the case in Cameroon, even though the Republican Party itself practices what it criticizes.

2 comments:

Kamdem Pascal said...

This is just a collection of nonsense put together. The government has never tried to act as sole job provider. If you are a lazy fellow then it is your personal problem. Lots of people have invested in the private sector and have succeeded and the government granted support to many.The government simply proposed jobs and those who were not interested did not apply. President Paul Biya himself who undertook the action of recruiting 25000 youths into the public service encourage and has been doing this for years now, the youths to taje up the challenge and self employ themselves and has always granted the necessary support. He called on youths to involve in agriculture and is making available all the necessary support. He himself said the employment of youths by the government was not a solution.If your brain is too tiny to think, create and innovate, have yourself to blame. You expect others to chew and you swallow.

David T. Ngong, Ph.D. said...

Kamdem Pascal, how many acres of cassava or coffee have you planted? What is the name of your company? Where is your farm located? You have none of these because you have joined Biya in his dictatorship and corruption. So you can sit in your air conditioned office and tell young people to go and work on the farm while old people like you stay in offices. You should be ashamed that you are passing down a hopeless country to your children.