Gov’t holds back constitutional amendment bill

Against expectations, the first ordinary Parliamentary session ended last week without receiving any bill on constitutional amendment.
Before the session that began on March 10, 2016, the press was awash with reports that Government was going to table the bill, craving for a constitutional amendment.

Talk was rife that the amendment would border on the reduction of the presidential mandate from seven to five years. Such an amendment, Government sources indicated, was going to provide for the organisation of an earlyPresidential election to hearken to the demand of some bigwigs of the ruling party.

It was equally speculated that the amendment will institute the post of the Vice-President of the Republic.

The government tabled no such bill. Analysts now hold that the violent reaction of the civil society and opposition parties to such a proposed amendment might have caused Government to postpone the bid.

For one thing, the leading opposition Chieftain, Ni John Fru Ndi, declared that Cameroon would be plunged into a civil war if Government attempts to organise an early Presidential election. He warned that his party would no longer allow President Biya and his lackeys to toy with the constitution the way they did in 2008.

In an interview with The Post recently, one of the Vice Speakers of the National Assembly, Hon. Joseph Mbah Ndam, said the organisation of early Presidential election was a legal impossibility.

He said the constitution does not allow a sitting President to either abridge or prolong his mandate. To the MP cum lawyer, even talk about the institution of the post of the Vice President of the Republic, is a legal fallacy. If Government wants to embark on such a bid, he went on; it must consult the Cameroonian people through a referendum.
Mbah Ndam remarked that, despite the upsurge of calls on the President to organise early elections and be candidate, Biya will not do anything to frontally violate the constitution.

In an earlier reaction on the internet, the Advocate General of the Supreme Court, Justice Paul Ayah, said journalists who were speculating that there would be early Presidential election in 2016 were actually portraying their ignorance.

To the man of law, only three hypotheses can militate for early Presidential election. He said anearly Presidential is only legally possible if the President of the Republic dies, resigns or if the Constitutional Council declares that he is incapable of performing functions.
Only under such conditions, Ayah stated, can the organisation of an early Presidential election be constitutionally possible.
Some observers hold that such strong legal arguments might have forced the authorities to reconsider its resolve to push through such a constitutional amendment.

Moreover, a group of opposition parties led by Kah Walla’s CPP and Prof. Maurice Kamto’s MRC, was already stoking the fires of demonstrations in the country.

TheGovernment might have noticed that the waters were too hot for such a constitutional adventure and decided to postpone it to when the atmosphere will be more enabling.
Thus, only six bills that bordered mostly on the ratification ofconventions and modification of certain laws were adopted in Parliament.

Ordinary MPS Obtain Car Repair Allowances

After so much protest and threats of boycott, ordinary members of the National Assembly were finally paid their car repair allowances. Henceforth, every ordinary MP would have a car repair allowance of FCFA 3 million for the mandate.

The boycott came after the MPs turned the heat on the authorities of the National Assembly, threatening to boycott the closing ceremony of the session on April 8.

Early on Thursday, April 7, ordinary MPS of the CPDM Parliamentary group gathered at the third floor of the National Assembly preparing to start a protest march. But the authorities cornered them in to a hall and gave in to their demands.

The conflict exacerbated recently when the President of the Republic gave FCFA 600 million to the MPs as their car allowance. It is alleged that members of the Bureau of the National Assembly shared the money only among themselves without caring a damn about the ordinary MPs.

The ordinary MPs had also written a strongly worded petition to the authorities on the issue.