2013 LEGISLATIVE AND MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: OBSERVATIONS ON SOCIOLOGICAL COMPOSITION AND GENDER CONSIDERATION

By CANUTE TANGWA

This is the Republic of Cameroon’s would-be third experience with twin elections: legislative and municipal. The first initially slated for June 23, 2002 wobbled under the auspices of the then Minister of Territorial Administration (MINAT), Koungou Edima Ferdinand and a fledging Elections Observatory dubbed ONEL.

It was re-scheduled for June 30, 2002 with the following major and minor cosmetic casualties: dismissal of Mr Koungou (replaced by the latter-day jigger in the feet of the regime, Marafa Hamidou Yaya); sacking of the Director for Political Affairs at the MINAT as well as the Managing Director of the Cameroon Publishing Corporation (SOPECAM).

At that time the main official reason advanced by the Cameroonian authorities was the lack of voting materials that would have seriously undermined the smooth conduct of the elections. It was clear enough to those who pay lip service to free, fair and transparent elections (like the 2002 Francophonie and African Union observer missions)  but quite fuzzy to keen Cameroon watchers who understand the modus operandi of a fossilized political system since the  elections were organized without a consensual electoral framework and against a backdrop of foul play.

On 22 July 2007, Cameroon organized a second twin election that was bedevilled with low voter turnout (less than 45% for 22 July 2007 and 20% voter participation for twin re-run on 30 September 2007), irregularities (multiple voting, multiple registrations, and poor distribution of voters’ cards), gerrymandering, and a vague electoral law.  

Cameroonians will go to the polls on 30 September 2013 to elect MPs and councillors with a hotly disputed electoral code; an election organizing and coordinating body (ELECAM) that still begs for legitimacy though there are occasional flashes and flickers of independent-mindedness; unreliable or outdated population statistics; vague provisos in the electoral code like sociological component and gender consideration; no constitutional council as well as voter apathy. Going by the petitions lodged before the Supreme Court sitting as Constitutional Council by various political parties and persons, sociological composition and gender consideration featured prominently as grounds for rejection of most petitions.

Section 151 (3) and Section 246 (1) of the Electoral Code relating to provisions specific to the election of members of parliament as well as the election of regional councillors respectively stipulate  that “each list shall take into consideration the various sociological components of the constituency concerned. It shall also take into consideration gender aspects” and “the regional council shall reflect the various sociological components of the region and gender aspects.”

Observations: Sections 151 (3) and 246 (1) do not define sociological component or gender consideration when drawing up substantive and alternate electoral lists. In order to make up for this lacuna, Section 298 of the Electoral Code provides that “implementation arrangements (…) shall be specified, as necessary, by regulatory instruments.” Before convening electors to the polls on June 30, either by error or design, the President did not enact regulatory instruments clarifying and defining concepts such as sociological component or gender consideration.

However, sociological composition is understood as taking into consideration the various communities living in an electoral district when drawing up electoral lists. This is also based on legal precedence laid down by the Supreme Court of Cameroon in a matter pitting the SDF against the ruling CPDM party in 2007. This laid down precedence took a swiping by the Supreme Court when it recently dismissed petitions from the SDF and MRC relating to the CPDM electoral list of Wouri Centre that did not respect the sociological component of the electoral district in question!

Thus, are communities limited to ethnic or tribal groups? Does it also refer to the Anglophone and Francophone communities that live in rural and urban areas on both sides of the river Mungo? Apparently, without treading where wiser minds have not, the legislature seemingly had in mind concepts such as national unity, national integration and particularly the protection of minorities that is enshrined in the preamble of the 1996 Constitution of Cameroon.

However, when all these concepts or considerations are put on the balance and if the recent Supreme Court rulings are anything to go by, the protection of minorities outweighs all the other considerations. Also without a reliable population statistics, it would be quite difficult to determine the sociological component of an electoral constituency.

Gender consideration seeks to empower and encourage women, politically. There is no quarrel with that. It becomes a headache when establishing an electoral list since the law does not say whether gender should be taken into consideration for both substantive and alternate lists. The law does not also take into consideration certain historico-religio-cultural and traditional realities on the ground that was vividly highlighted by Garga Haman Adji before the Supreme Court. 

Since, all CPDM lists passed through the scrutiny of the Supreme Court, it can be inferred that gender consideration and sociological component can be defined through the prism of the CPDM’s National Chairman’s Circular No.03/RDPC/PN Of 05 July 2013.

It is settled in civilized climes that where the law is ambiguous, foggy and nebulous, the judge can either interpret the law “literally (using the words in the statute in their original signification), refer to various other documents around the statute such as the report of Parliamentary commission to aid understanding of the statute (golden rule) or figure out what mischief to the commonwealth the statute was intended  to address and then interpret in such a way so as to tackle the problem that the law was supposed to tackle.”

Law-making is arguably not within the province of judges but the Supreme Court of Cameroon can bank on the golden and mischief rules to adjudicate unequivocally on matters relating to sociological component and gender consideration, pending regulatory instruments.

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