Of Expensive Holidays and Uncommon Men

By Tazoacha Asonganyi in Yaounde

While he lived, Charles de Gaulle, whom many of our leaders admire and imitate, wrote and lectured about the public persona of a leader. He highlighted the public reality of life as a statesman and the private reality of life as a husband, father and grandfather.

Unfortunately for his heirs, modern democratic politics cannot separate leaders’ private from public life. The people always want to know all about their leaders in order to gain inspiration from them and place them appropriately in history. The media would be doing a disservice to the people if they raised a curtain between the private lives and the public roles their leaders are called upon to play. The confusion revelations about Paul Biya’s holiday transactions in France generated and the regime insiders’ response only highlighted the sins of hubris and undermined the decency the sovereign people deserve from their leaders.

Political communication is always about influencing citizen perceptions, persuading public opinion and desires in a manner conducive to the mission of a regime and satisfying citizens’ desires. In a country like ours, citizens’ overwhelming desire is to be involved in nation building. Promotion of patriotism – love for country – is crucial in mobilising the people to action in the business of nation building.

Signals that are sent and received from the top about corruption, selflessness, use of public funds, management of equality of opportunity, of equity and much more; by the right examples that are set from the top, always greatly help in promoting  patriotism. Fine speeches, pledges and admonitions of all kinds are of no use if these signals from the top are perceived as negative signals.

Chinua Achebe tells of the patriotic pride Tanzanians felt when news went around Tanzania that their President, Julius Nyerere, after paying his children’s school fees at the start of a new school year, proceeded to beg his bankers to give him a few months' grace on the mortgage repayment  on his personal house. This can be compared to the type of signal sent by a gigantic house being built near the American Embassy in Yaounde; or news about the wastage of taxpayers’ money in expensive hotels in France! Between Nyerere’s Tanzania and Paul Biya’s Cameroon that both end up "begging" for development funds, which would enjoy "national prestige"? Who of Nyerere’s Tanzanian and Paul Biya’s Cameroonian, receiving these contrasting signals from the top is bolstered by patriotic pride to work hard for nation building?

Communication ability of the top usually greatly influences inspirational signals; indeed, effective communication is the secret of inspirational leadership. Leaders are supposed to regularly face the people themselves, rather than leave the management of news of their activities to self-seeking subordinates. It is not for nothing that since Barack Obama got into the White House, he regularly uses town-hall meetings, prime-time press conferences, weekly addresses, media interviews, and online messages and opinions to clarify his policies and keep in touch with the people.

Before Paul Biya’s surrogates rush to compare his holiday bills to those of Obama and Sarkozy, they should remember that they belong to completely different leagues, and think about the alienating effects of Paul Biya’s deaf-and-dumb-cum-discreet approach to governance that his "biographers" like Boniface Nkobenah and François Mathei present as a source of his "strength"!

When a gossip Website nearly changed the course of history by blowing the top off a Clinton-Lewinsky relationship before investigative journalists finished their work, it became absolutely clear that the communication genie had since got out of the bottle! And it was the power of communication that forced public opinion to tilt in favour of Clinton by imprinting in the minds of Senators that it was a relationship between the President and a consenting adult; the Senators were forced to let go the accused!

This illustrates that communication is no longer about blaming people for what they say; it is about persuading public opinion by the quality of information served to the people: giving convincing information to the people. Paul Biya may be an "uncommon" man; he may be "royalty", hardworking, or have the right to take a rest: but convincing numbers and figures about his holiday in France must be given before we are told that they are "big" because he is an "uncommon" man.

Short of this, our "uncommon" communicators should do the people some good by shutting their traps and keeping their fingers off their keyboards!