By Joe Dinga Pefok
 

CameroonPostline.com -- Douala-based Hon. Albert Dzongang’s party, La Dynamique, is to fuse with the leading opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF. “We are formalising a merger between La Dynamique and the SDF.

The whole Executive Directorate of La Dynamique will be entering the SDF in  the coming days,” the 1st Vice National Chairman of the SDF, Joshua Nabangi Osih, disclosed to The Post in Douala on May 13, 2013. He, however, did not give further details. The Post learnt that the merger deal was discussed at the meeting of the National Executive

Committee, NEC, of the SDF, which held in Bamenda on May 11, 2013.
On May 15, Dzongang confirmed that things were in progress for the party to fuse with the SDF.
He called on other ‘small parties’ to either come along, or group themselves and form big parties. He was, however, quick to caution that such political groupings should not be on tribal lines. “Cameroon does not need 250 political parties”, he stressed. More so, he went on, a large majority of the so-called political parties in the country exist only on paper.
 

Dzongang said one of the major setbacks in Cameroon politics is that everybody wants to be the president of a party, and that every president of a party wants to be the president of the Republic. “If everybody becomes the president of a political party, who will then be the ordinary militants of those parties,” he said.
 

SDF Is Well Implanted

Asked why he has decided to merge his party with the SDF, Dzongang said he is a humble person by nature, and thus is humble enough to acknowledge that the SDF is an older party, it is a big party, it is a party that is well implanted in the country, and it is a party that is truly representative of the Cameroonian people.
 

He also noted that the leadership of the SDF is really dynamic, and that as a dynamic party, it is just normal that La Dynamic is attracted to the party. He explained that in Cameroon, the law prohibits alliances by political parties at elections. He said there can be nothing like SDF-La Dynamique jointly going in for elections.
 

The two parties must either go under the SDF or under La Dynamique. It is the same thing for the long existing CPDM-NUDP alliance, where the two parties cannot go in for elections together on the same ticket. They can go in for elections either in the name of the CPDM or the NUDP. Dzongang came sixth of the 23 candidates at the October 9, 2011 Presidential Election.

SDF Needs To Be Reinforced
 

Meanwhile, Dzongang said he does not believe that the SDF has gone into an alliance with the CPDM, as some political parties like the Cameroon Democratic Union, CDU, headed by Dr. Adamou Ndam Njoya, are alleging. He said he has also come to be closer to the SDF leader, John Fru Ndi, and knows the huge challenges that face him everyday.  “Those who think that Mr. Fru Ndi is enjoying are either ignorant of the reality, or are simply being of bad faith,” Dzongang said.
 

As to whether the newfound friendship between the CPDM and the SDF does not worry him, Dzongang said he does not think there is a friendship between the two parties. “But knowing the CPDM well, I do advise my elder brother (Fru Ndi), who fortunately gives me his ears, to always bear in mind that when they are discussing anything with the CPDM, the party is very dangerous. It is a party full of intrigues. It is a party that has the tradition of always ending up destroying its friend.” 
 

Dzongang said the SDF is a political party that is out to bring real change to Cameroon, and thus better the lives of the Cameroonian people. He said any meaningful political party or individuals need to join hands to reinforce the SDF, and not instead to try to destroy the party. According to Dzongang, it is an open secret that the Biya regime does not have good intentions towards the SDF.                   

Spokesman of Defunct G7
 

The SDF and La Dynamique were both members of the SDF initiative; the G7 platform. Dzongang became the spokesman of G7 apparently when he developed a warm relationship with the SDF leadership, during the period of G7.
 

He hosted one of the few G7 meetings that Fru Ndi attended in person. When G7 collapsed last year, following the abrupt breakaway by Ndam Njoya’s CDU, together with a two other members, Dzongang refused to follow the new group that Ndam Njoya created.
Rather, he stayed by Fru Ndi and the SDF.
 

Dzongang’s party did not go in for the April 14 Senatorial Elections, but he was conspicuously seen in the company of the SDF leader, when he went to campaign in the West Region, which is Dzongang’s region of origin. It is worth recalling that Hon. Dzongang was the Mayor of the then Douala III Council (now Douala III and IV Councils) in the 80s. He was a CPDM MP in the 1992 to 1997 mandate, after which he created his own party.

First published in The Post print edition no 01431