Theist, democrat, pan-Africanist, nationalist, honest and visionary, that’s all Olivier Bilé there. We are not going, by economy of words, to cut off its attributes. Once upon a time… about 12 years ago, Olivier Bilé asserted himself as a theoretician and revealed his thinking in what he called political faithism. The man meant by this concept that it was imperative to consider a new way of doing politics; he poses in his manifesto that faith in moral, religious and spiritual values in particular should serve as a source of inspiration for the tribunes of our time, as well as for the managers of the affairs of the city. For Olivier Bilé (who is also inspired by Plato), a proper and transcendent politics is in the order of the possible. This discourse, one imagines, cannot please those who, out of opportunism, are content to fly very low in search of food, even if they have to go get it in the manure. Dishonor: Uswan! Nothing stops them anymore; they have trampled on the cannons of society, walked on the Cross to excavate spoils from the most infamous depths. Pragmatism, they say. A strange noble caste than that of corrupting-corrupt politicians who believe in nothing, except in a few hollow aphorisms that are spouted according to circumstances. Weary of the struggle, the populations turned away from politics; Olivier Bilé noted it not without regret, the word politics is today assimilated to pejorative terms such as fraud, scheming, hypocrisy, maraboutism. Antonym of probity, the word politics is almost akin to insult in our families. Perhaps we should try to speak to us with the spirit of religion, to show that the politician is not necessarily the devil himself? This is Olivier Bile’s bet. Let’s see if he can convince the electorate.
At the present time, if we want to speak of faith to Cameroonians of Christian obedience, for example, it must be pure and hard Gospel, as in the large improvised sheds of the so-called churches of awakening, where one acclaims and glorifies in a trance the name of Christ, since he alone can bless and give food and drink and fortune. The proof, the pastor is already rich and fat, he eats to satiety, his faithful provide for it, in the name of Jesus!… Faithism, what good is it?
“All means are good when they are effective”: did the philosopher really mean it when he made his character say it? Debatable, if one refers to the reply which followed: “So by what right do you condemn the policy of the regent? Because he could not have been without knowing it, Sartre, a man of his intelligence, that in the reality of things, these supposedly pragmatic politicians do not have the interests of the city as a priority in their to-do list. Basically, they abuse the powers vested in them, if not their charisma, their influence on the unfortunate people who listen to them, these fox-politicians; they work on their own account to the detriment of the populations they govern or aspire to govern. They maneuver without scruples to position themselves, and once they are there, in business, they distract the budgets and plunder the public treasury, by ego-nkapism (meaning here this unhealthy obsession with wanting to keep all the money for oneself) . Babyla! Wèkè! The tears of the mbolé, the lamentations of a tearful youth struggling to emerge. Old people don’t let go… Cry, Valsero!
Thus in 2011, already, Olivier Bilé is a candidate in the presidential elections. Candidacy accepted, marathon run, but in the end a soybean time, a few snippets of percent. What went wrong, ah Olivier?… Allow me to answer for you: Obviously, the people in their overwhelming majority are more sensitive to populist slogans, precisely, rather than to theories principles (ideas here are all hot air). Confers “Biya must go”, the magic formula of Fru Ndi who with his fist touched the sky (Power!), it has now entered the annals; three lapidary and discourteous words will have been enough to shake the Renewal regime and to galvanize the Cameroonian people, us usually so little sensitive to political electricity, asleep like an insulating body. It was in the 1990s… Strictly speaking, if you don’t have the inspiration of hard-hitting slogans, there is a code (not the Biya code of François Mattéi), the one that some have called bread -sardine: the people understand this language too.
The intellectuals of the cradle of our ancestors, themselves, in their majority, seem to have attached themselves to this reality. Belly politics, they say, also called “The politics of money” on the side of neighboring Nigeria: “Nowadays, it is the politics of money that dominates Nigeria” (read somewhere). The evil seems to be rampant on a continental scale, with a few exceptions, according to Olivier Bilé (Ghana, Rwanda, Botswana). The pompous and grandiloquent speeches, let them henceforth be left in the books, the amphitheaters and the cozy conference rooms. Out there, it’s the money and the position that speak. Olivier Bilé deplores it in a forum, this “screaming lack of ideological cadastres among political actors. The latter behave more like opportunists just interested in the positions of power and fortune to which they can access. As a result, over the years we have succeeded in building “A monumental system of political and electoral corruption and open-air buying of consciences, causing a terrible political and social curse on the whole country. »
Men like Olivier Bilé have become a rare breed, we are hopeful that they will inspire others. Ignored or very little listened to today, they are nevertheless the future, the great men of tomorrow, because people evolve, mentalities and opinions with them. The camp of the gentiles grows, it grows as citizens free themselves from the materialistic grips that fuel political charlatanism. Atangana, Kamdem, Bouba, Amôt, Aloga, Sango a’ mboa and we Cameroonians of all persuasions are beginning to understand that money is not everything, and that we cannot afford to buy everything; especially not our conscience, our most basic civil rights, our pride as a man of integrity. Olivier Bilé knows it, the fight is not won in advance. This is why, after having taken the time to convey the postulate of his thought, political faithism, he comes back to us as a man of action. There is an urgent need to liberate the Cameroonian people. Hence his new project called “The Liberators”, or even “The Libs”, another cool little name for improvement, which appeals to young people who are awake and aware of the political issues that will determine their future. There is urgency, claims Olivier Bilé: “the categorical imperative to promote the completion of our Liberation processes on the spiritual and philosophical, political and democratic, monetary and economic, social and cultural levels”. It’s urgent. EMERGENCY. And that doesn’t translate to Emergence…
Teacher, academic, political leader, Olivier Bilé is also a man of letters, author of several books. He was a member of the Jury at the 2016 edition of the GPAL (Grands Prix des Associations Littéraires)