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Cameroon: Ndam Njoya Proposes Constitutional Amendment Without Article 6(2)
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The Post (Buea)
30 March 2008
Posted to the web 30 March 2008
Kini Nsom
The Chairman of the Cameroon Democratic Union, CDU, Hon. Adamou Ndam Njoya, has recommended the amendment of the 1996 Constitution without Article 6(2).
This recommendation is one of the main substances of a private member's bill CDU submitted at the National Assembly last week. The bill that has 22 articles and 12 titles, stipulates that the country's institutions should be fine-tuned to respond to the aspirations of Cameroonians and not an individual or a group of people.
From this perspective, the draft law admonishes that Article 6(2) that has been the apple of agitations in Cameroon should not be tampered with. In the preamble of the draft, the CDU states that the state will ensure the protection of the minority and preserve the rights of the indigenous populations.
It further stipulates that the state shall ensure the integration of the population with respect to their linguistic and cultural diversity and their rights to ancestral heritage. The bill calls for the creation of the Audit Court to replace the present Audit Bench of the Supreme Court, whose creation was stipulated by the 1996 Constitution.
The CDU draft law provides for a two-round presidential election. It holds that the President of the Republic should be elected for a five-year term renewable once. In case of any vacancy at the helm of the state, elections for a new president shall be conducted between 30 to 60 days. This provision makes nonsense of the 20 to 40 days period as the 1996 Constitution provides.
The draft law also proposes the empowerment of the prime minister to share the power of appointments of civil and military personnel with the head of state. It equally provides that the Supreme Court shall be the highest jurisdiction on judicial and administrative matters. In the same vein, the CDU bill holds that the Audit Court should be the highest jurisdiction in matters of accountability and management.
The CDU draft bill runs counter to the manoeuvres of the officials of the CPDM party whose main aim is to amend the constitution to give President Paul Biya another opportunity to run for elections in 2011. Many of them think that it will be useless for them to amend the constitution without article 6(2).
Fate Of Private Member's Bill
Observers are quite pessimistic that the CDU bill, like many other private member bills, will end up in the drawers of the National Assembly. No serious private members bill has ever gone through the House.
According to the standing others of the House, any MP tabling a private member's bill should be backed by one third of the 180 MPs. In this perspective, the CDU MP, Hon. Victorine Ndam Njoya, who submitted the draft law, needs the signatures of 59 other MPs for the bill to sail through the plenary sitting of the House for debate.
If such a bill is rejected by the chairmen's conference, its initiator would need the signatures of 66 other MPs to submit a complaint to the Constitutional Council.Of the 180 MPs at the National Assembly, the ruling CPDM party has an overwhelming majority. And since debates in the House are tethered to the strings of party discipline, observers hold that it is difficult for any private member's bill to sail through if government does not want it.
The opposition parties in the National Assembly amount only to a numerical dwarf in the face of the giant ruling CPDM party. After the death of Hon. Nkelle Palmy of Kumba Urban constituency shortly after the twin elections, the SDF is now left with 15 MPs. The National Union for Democracy and Progress, NUDP, has six while the CDU has four. Jean Jacques Ekindi's Progressive Movement, MP, has one MP at the Glass House.
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It is clear that even if the parliamentary opposition were to rally behind the CDU bill, they will only have 26 signatures which are not enough to let the bill sail through to parliamentary scrutiny. This means that the bill can only go through if some independent minded and progressive CPDM MPs make nonsense of the so-called party discipline.
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