Law enforcement: A critical issue of responsibility and authority

Cameroon - Honor and Loyalty : Law enforcement: A critical issue of responsibility and authority

The return to a multi-party system in 1990 not only strengthened the right of citizens to express themselves freely on all issues affecting our society, including the management of public affairs, but also had a perverse effect. It is a matter of verbal violence, very often translated into its physical form, when the legitimate aspirations of citizens meet an unfair one-upmanship by the protagonists of the political scene.

Constantly agitated and confused by an endless stream of arguments, quibbles, truths and half-truths, accusations and counter-accusations, authentic accounts and dubious narratives, already impatient minds reach the point of overheating, and it is the street that is finally ignited. In this poisonous atmosphere, maintaining order becomes a crucial issue; responsibility for some, visibility for others.

Almost every time there is a public outcry, we witness scenes of urban guerrilla warfare in which gangs of thugs loot, ransack and set fire to public and private property in their path. Apart from these occasions, we have witnessed the planting of suspicious explosive devices in some of our cities, as well as the appearance, unusual to say the least, of hordes of teenage aggressors known as microbes.

For the time being, these are epiphenomena, but their potential for aggravation is proportional to the virulence of a stigmatising, superficial, reassuring and misleading discourse, a discourse deliberately designed to dazzle understanding, to discourage reasoning and to conceal the conceptual poverty of the social proposal put forward by its authors. They can be found in the political sphere, in economic and social entrepreneurship and in our many communities.

It is possible that some of these figures benefit from a climate of constant tension. But that would be to forget that we are all in the same boat and that none of us is guaranteed to survive if it sinks. We must not wait until we have reached such an extreme before we finally realise the collective suicide we are facing from the anti-civilisation drift that has begun in small steps.

This is a complex situation, if ever there was one, all the more so because it is no longer just a question of marking the presence of the forces of law and order on the ground, or even of monitoring peaceful demonstrations. It is now a matter of dealing with crowds made more violent by the presence within them of small groups of individuals whose methods are more akin to subversion than to protest.

The pressing question is how best to reconcile the exercise of rights with the enjoyment of freedoms and security, without which none of these popular social and legal prerogatives can be applied hitch-free. Operational concepts have been developed to achieve this. These include the iron fist in a velvet glove, policing with a human face, and now democratic crowd management. This humanistic approach to security has so far prevented disasters.

However, it is everyone’s duty and responsibility to watch over our society and to return urgently to much more orthodox customs, from the family to the public square. If, alas, education, sensitisation and admonition do not work in this rat race, then someone will have to take the initiative to restore law and order: For the peace and unity of this country!!!

Navy Captain,

ATONFACK GUEMO,

Head of Communication

Division - MINDEF

Derniers commentaires

06.12 | 17:52

Initiative à encourager. Merci et bravo aux promoteurs du mouvement 👏👏

03.12 | 09:31

Buenas tardes, encantado de saludarte. Soy Jose
Quería escribirte porque me ha parecido interesante comentar contigo la posibilidad de que tu negocio aparezca cada mes en periódicos digitales como not

30.11 | 11:53

Bonjour Mme et toutes mes félicitations,
Je suis à Douala, je suis à la recherche de votre tisane. Avez-vous une représentation à Douala. Sinon comment faire pour avoir régulièrement votre produit.

28.11 | 21:45

Vive la folie de la littérature

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