Road Companion to Democracy and Meritocracy: Further Essays from an African Perspective

24. Constitutional Council: Why we Are Worried

205 24 Constitutional Council: Why we Are Worried T he last (extraordinary) session of our now expired parliament was evidently not convened to create the (as yet) non-existent Constitutional Council. The Constitutional Council was already created by the new constitution on 18th January 1996. The functions of the Constitutional Council as promulgated envisaged in the above constitution are to ensure the regularity of elections as well as to proclaim the results. Left as it is in the January 1996 constitution, one could more easily believe Pa Andze Tsoungi’s claim that it is a cautious way of gradually working towards an independent electoral commission. The last very brief extraordinary session of parliament was evidently summoned to make the Constitutional Council the sole and only body to proclaim election results and to make such proclamation unchallengeable in any court of law or other putative jurisdiction. These specifications evidently have turned the as yet non-existent Constitutional Council into a putatively anti-democratic instrument that could possibly turn out to be the greatest retrogressive set-back to our struggling democracy. It is really amazing that our so-called people’s representatives could unthinkingly approve such amendments of the electoral law. What the recent amendments have done is to effectively put the Constitutional Council above the law. My first worry then is the same as that which led me to suggest to Honourable Bouba Bello Maigari that the title of the Private Members Bill that he and the U.N.D.P. party wanted to pass through parliament should be ‘‘Independent Electoral Commission” and not “Autonomous Electoral Commission” because it is undesirable to create any commission that would be a law-giver unto itself. How does the announcement of election results by the Divisional Supervisory Committees prevent the Constitutional Council from announcing and proclaiming the final overall results? Would such a procedure not be indisputably more transparent in that any objective neutral observer who cared to follow the Divisional results could simply 206 Road Companion to Democracy and Meritocracy compute them to confirm the veracity and validity of the pronouncements of the Constitutional Council unchallengeable in Law? Is that not to imbue the Constitutional Council with divine attributes and prerogatives? The answer to all these questions is blowing in the wind. We might have been less sceptical if the said Constitutional Council had already been created and if we knew that each and every one of its members was a Cameroonian of unquestionable integrity who can neither be bribed nor bullied. Do we have any good reason to believe that when the Constitutional Council comes to be created it would be composed of Cameroonians of such calibre? In fact, how many proven Cameroonians of such a descriptive calibre do we know to exist? To make things worse, the recent amendments have been spear-headed by none other than Honourable Pa Andze Tsoungi and Honourable Professor Augustine Kontchou Koumegni. We have not forgotten 1992 and the highly controversial Presidential Elections of that year nor the role played by the above duo in the eventual maintenance of the status quo. So how can we be assured? What reason do we have for supposing that they have not already cooked up in advance the results that the Constitutional Council would proclaim when it comes into being. Furthermore, it is worrying that the amendments ostensibly meant to make the elections more transparent have been accompanied by emphasis on and obsession with maintaining peace and order and containing any violence. One thing that is absolutely certain is that if the elections are free and fair and transparent, there would be no violence. If the will of the majority of Cameroonians is allowed to prevail in the forthcoming elections, then we are surely headed for peace and tranquillity and prosperity as we have never known before. If not, we are as surely headed in the opposite direction. Let us learn in good time the lessons that we ought to learn from South Africa, on the one hand, and Rwanda, Burundi and Zaire, on the other hand. Don’t get me wrong. I am a critic and sceptic, but not a pessimist. I have not said that the Constitutional Council will fail us. We cannot say that for sure in advance. But our premonitions are reasonable and justified. 207 Constitutional Council: Why we Are Worried We are no strangers to democratic rhetoric and bold pretences accompanied by...