Prez Biya wants "National Mandate" abolished for "Imperative Mandate"

The third and final yearly session of the National Assembly holds in November and as the month draws nearer, speculations are rife that a bill to harmonize the electoral code of Cameroon, which was first mooted in 2012, would be presented during the November session.

Veteran Cameroonian Journalist and Publisher Chief Bisong Etah Oben reports that Cameroon may indeed be another flash point in the coming months or years.

Sources at the General Inspectorate in charge of Elections Affairs in the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, which contributed most to drafting the new electoral code, told Cameroon Concord that one of the articles in the code that would surely raise a lot of controversy is that abolishing the “national mandate” for elected parliamentarians and councillors to be replaced by an “imperative mandate”.

The new proviso, according to our source that elected for anonymity because he is not authorised to speak on behalf of the ministry, stipulates that “Any parliamentarian or municipal councillor who resigns or is excluded from his party can no longer hold a seat in parliament or municipal council”.

Should this proviso in the new harmonised electoral code be passed into law, as it would surely be if presented, because of the crushing majority of the ruling party in parliament, then it would contradict the Constitution which in its Article 15, lines 2 and 3 stipulates in part that “Each parliamentarian represents the whole nation”.

Political observers here who have caught wind of the intention to end the “national mandate” for an “imperative mandate” see this move as a desperate attempt by the ruling CPDM to rein in some of its militants in constituencies where the party is popular who are scheming to use the party platform to get elected into parliament and the councils then resign to become independent parliamentarians or join other parties where they can freely express their ideas.

“Being a CPDM parliamentarian or councillor is like becoming a prisoner of the party and its barons who initiate unpopular legislation and use party discipline to force its elected representatives to vote for such legislation against the interests of the masses”, declared one CPDM MP who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals from the party.

“They are afraid some popular and liberal MPs may follow the path of Hon. Ayah Paul Abine who resigned from the party in 2010 because he disagreed with President Biya’s attempt to revise the constitution and eliminate term limits to enable him continue in power until death takes him away”, one senior MP and ruling party bigwig hinted Cameroon Concord last night.

It should be noted that since resigning from the ruling CPDM in 2010, Hon. Ayah Paul who is a High Court judge has been the most virulent critic of the Biya government and its propensity to break laws it enacted itself. He was a candidate during the October 9, 2011 presidential election and placed 5th among the 23 candidates.

The CPDM government introduced the “national mandate” clause in the electoral law and constitution at a time when the leading opposition SDF party was facing dissention within its ranks and government wanted to encourage MPs and councillors who wanted to defect from the party but were afraid of being unseated by their party if they did so.

It was on the strength of the “national mandate” clause that one of the SDF’s most popular MPs Hon. Tchoua Maurice resigned from the party and still retained his seat in the National Assembly.

“This clause now seems to be returning to haunt the ruling CPDM because it is facing an implosion within its own ranks, thus the attempt to turn MPs and councillors from ‘national representatives’ to ‘party representatives’.

If this is not blackmail, I doubt what blackmail can possibly be”, an SDF MP declares. Should the harmonised electoral code be passed into law thus instituting an “imperative mandate” then the constitution would necessarily be amended again to remove the “national mandate” proviso in its Article 15.