In a landslide victory, President Paul Biya of Cameroon has been reelected for another seven-year term in office. With more than 77 percent scored, and closest challenger Ni John Fru Ndi, recouped a disappointing 10 percent. Garga Haman Adji of the ADD party had a meager 3 percent score and Adamou Adamu Ndam Njoya a consoling 1 percent. The results highlight the regional, tribal and sectarian holdings of the key opposition parties. The people of the Northwest region voted 54.7 percent for Mr Ni John Fru Ndi, what some analysts are refering to as a calculated political suicide for the region in association to resource politics as espoused in political science theories on reward and punishment for constituencies. The solemnity in Cameroon's supreme Court sitting in for the Constitutional Council over eight hours of a laborious exercise, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Alexis Depanda Mouelle went through all 58 divisions of Cameroon and foreign constituencies where voting took place. Details of the number of registered voters, abstentions, empty ballots and the findings in percentages were read out before scores attributed to each of the 23 candidates were read...More Results
Dr Ernest Molua, CPDM campaign team member, Communications Officer and Lecturer, University of Buea, spoke to Recorder Editor Christopher Ambe after a village - to- village campaign in Buea subdivision for CPDM Candidate, Paul Biya, for the coming October 9 presidential poll. Below are excerpts:
Dr.Ernest Molua, you are member of the CPDM campaign teams in the Southwest region, especially Buea subdivision. Campaigns are almost coming to an end. What is your assessment of the general conduct of the exercise this far?
We of the CPDM believe very strongly that we have to take our campaign message right to the grassroots .So since the commencement of campaigns for the coming presidential election we have organized ourselves in such as way that, various parts of the regions have been divided into zones and resource persons have been assigned to these zones. And they have gone down to serious work. That means meeting family heads, grassroots militants and sympathizers and taking the message to them and also encouraging them to talk to their neighbors, friends, families, groups etc on the importance of re-electing President Paul Biya.
What particular message is the CPDM taking to the electorate? First, the consolidation of peace in Cameroon. No prosperity can be achieved in war, and Mr. Biya since assuming office as president of Cameroon in 1982, has ensured that his primary focus on governance is peace. In addition to ensuring constant peace, he has put in place laws and policies that allow Cameroonians to freely express themselves.
So, there are two things we take to the people for them to be able to appreciate Cameroon vis-à-vis other countries in the sub-region: the peace that we have enjoyed in Cameroon that have allowed them to excel in what ever they are doing; the development that has taken place and the potentials Mr. Biya has to achieve more in the coming years.
Peter Mafany Musonge,Southwest Regional Campaign team leader and Grand Chancellor of the National Order,has stated that no one ever wins an election in advance because certain forces can make it possible for one to fail. Musonge was speaking recently in Bokova,in one of a series of CPDM campaign tours, which brought together traditional rulers of the Bonavada area,Buea Divisional campaign team leaders, militants and sympathisers of CPDM. ''The only thing is that no one wins an election in advance because certain things can happen which can make it possible for one to fail,''Musonge stressed. He however enjoined the youths of the Bonavada community to direct the elderly persons in the community, on polling day, to be able to recognise the image of their candidate Paul Biya, and not to cast their votes to the wrong candidates.
Buea subdivision with a population of about 200,000 people, is highly cosmopolitan and has various political parties functioning there ,with two having their headquarters there.They are the Social Liberal Congress (SLC) of Professor George Nyamndi and Liberal Democratic Alliance (LDA) of Mola Njoh Litumbe. But the ruling CPDM appears bent on projecting the subdivision as its bastion. Since the official launching of presidential campaigns last September 24, Buea CPDM officials and militants have embarked on a daily aggressive door-to door campaign, visiting all the nucks and crannies of the subdivision in a bid to win more - if not all registered voters on the side of Presidential Candidate Paul Biya. Frontline Buea CPDM campaigners include: Hon Emilia Lifaka Monjowa, Vice President of Cameroon's National Assembly, Hon Meoto Paul Njie, and former Director of Cabinet at the Prime Ministry; Mayor Charles Mbella Moki, Hannah Etonde Mbua, Buea WCPDM President; Mbome Motomby Emmanuel, Buea YCPDM president; Paramount Chief of Buea, SML Endeley, Dr. Amos Namanga Ngongi, and Dr. Ernest Molua, of the University of Buea.
With a population of about 20 million inhabitants, the Republic of Cameroon is set to organise another Presidential elections on October 9, 2011 in its peaceful tradition of voting for who occupies the highest executive and administrative office in the land. Shortly after the elections were announced, more than 50 persons submitted documents to the country's independent election commission ELECAM. while there is no better indicator for freedom of expression as it is in the relatively small country's 270 registered political parties and a press that prides itself on who can shout the loudest insults, 50 presidential candidates is a barometer for the inherent impossibilities that characterise the Cameroon landscape. On Friday, September 9, 2011, ELECAM reviewed and approved the application files of 21 aspirants. The list published on Saturday morning shows a pack of candidates with an average age of 65 years. Whilst the other 31 rejected presidential applicants are huffing-and-puffing and 18 of them have submitted appeals to the Supreme Court sitting for the constitutional court, the huge attraction of who wants to be Mr President has not only stupefied Cameroon's electorate, but has rendered them spoilt for choice and frightened at the inexplicability of being tormented in the polling both to select a candidate from the pack. In the meantime, the incumbent H.E President Paul Biya has launched his campaign online attracting millions of hits. Who shall be elected President on October 9, 2011?
Presidential elections are planned for October 2011 in Cameroon. Mindful of the challenges observed in Ivory Coast, Cameroon has moved swiftly with constitutional and electoral law ammendments. An extra ordinary session of parliament in early April 2011 saw the effective passing into law a bill to amend the 2006 law to set up and lay down the organisation and functioning of Elections Cameroon - the nation's independent election commission. During a plenary sitting another bill was examined and voted into law, amending the 1992 law to lay down the conditions governing the vacancy of and election to the presidency of the Republic. The following changes in Cameroon's election law have thus been effected:
The authors revisit hometown associations in Cameroon, and argue that notions of autochthony remain central in understanding Cameroonian politics. They also argue that some of the claims about home, belonging and politics are difficult to reconcile with the hazier reality observed on the ground. They rebuff any universal, inevitable or overly tidy segue between questions of belonging and claims of political segmentation. Too often the existing literature moves too quickly to an analysis that foregrounds only the worrisome dimensions of a politics of belonging, thus leaving little space for other interpretations. To explore this dilemma the authors explore a land dispute in Bali Nyonga, north-west Cameroon; and show (1) how ideas of belonging remain central to the practice of politics; (2) how the politics of belonging has changed over time; and (3) how it is possible to foreground an alternative ‘politics of conviviality’, which would otherwise be shaded out by the dominance of the politics of belonging...More
The Union of the Populations of Cameroon, UPC has celebrated the martyrs’ week. The UPC was founded on April 10, 1948, as an anti-colonialist party which struggled for unification of both Cameroons and for independence. It was outlawed in 1955. A colonial war then ensued and lasted for almost ten years, against the French colonialists and their surrogates leading to a harsh repression of the movement. Despite the requests by Rubem Um Nyobe, then head of the UPC, the colonial government refused to legalize the UPC. Um Nyobé was killed by French commandos on September 13, 1958. The successor of Nyobé, Félix-Roland Moumié, was assassinated in 1960 in Geneva by French secret services.
Obliterate the Outdated Tribal Concept of Land Possession Forever!
By Emmanuel Konde
Political discrimination is a cancer that is eating deep into the fabric of many African societies. This form of discrimination is exacerbated by the political irrationality of tribal ancestral lands within the modern state structures of Africa. In this brief “exegesis,” I use the Bassa of Limbe in the South West region of Cameroon as entry point into a discourse that seeks to illuminate the social problem inherent in the application of an untenable concept that denies a huge segment of society the right to full political participation and the enjoyment of citizenship rights in the communities in which they were born.
The Bassa in Cameroon’s South West region detest the political discrimination that they have been made to suffer in English-speaking Cameroon since the 1950s. Few people know that Bassa, Bamileke, Duala, Beti, and other Cameroonian settlers in British Southern Cameroons were disfranchised during the 1961 Plebiscite. They were denied the vote by the political leaders of Southern Cameroons. That was wrong. It should never happen again, especially to “Bassa ba Limbe” who, as first inhabitants of sections of contemporary Limbe, began transforming that town in pre-colonial times with their cutlasses by felling huge forest trees and opening up much of the town for human habitation.
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