Snapshots: An X-ray of Cameroon�s Democracy, Governance and Unification

36. Will Fru Ndi short-circuit political career?

137 36 Will Fru Ndi short-circuit political career? Monday May 17, 2004 As the opposition National Coalition for Reconciliation and Reconstruction NCRR, steps up its campaign to gain support for its platform, advocates of change are mainly preoccupied with the question of a single candidate to challenge the incumbent. Concern for a single candidate is based on the realization that the opposition does not stand a ghost of chance if it went to the October presidential election in dispersed ranks as it did in 1992. The cliché about history repeating itself is a valid pointer to the way forward and it will be quite in order to revisit the circumstances surrounding the failure of the opposition to deliver the goods in 1992. At the time, there were five groupings to challenge the incumbent and the Fru Ndi-led coalition is widely believed to have won the election by a slim margin; a victory that was eventually hijacked by the ruling CPDM with the complicity of the Supreme Court. If claims of victory by the opposition were anything to go by, one must admit that Fru Ndi’s margin of victory was slim (35.9% for Fru Ndi and 33.9% for the incumbent CPDM-led alliance. This ratio was reversed by the Supreme Court in favour of the incumbent). If, for the sake of argument, we agree that Fru Ndi’s coalition won by less than 40% of the votes, we must also admit that the score fell far short of advanced democratic standards that require a 50+1% majority. In effect, no contestant had a majority score, and to be fair to the opposition, a second round of voting was imperative to achieve that goal, but alas! The electoral code was deliberately tailored to prevent that possibility. The clause in the draft code providing for a second round of balloting was defeated on the floor of parliament, thanks to Bouba Bello of the UNDP who teamed up with the ruling CPDM to suppress that clause. An intense horse trading in which Mr. 138 Bello joined the vote against a second round in exchange for reducing the five-year residency requirement for presidential candidates to one year, was orchestrated to the detriment of healthy democratic practice. Mr. Bello had just returned from exile and would not have met the residency requirements when he put up his candidature for the presidential election. Despite these flaws, it still came as a surprise that the Fru Ndi-led coalition failed to achieve a landslide score. His charisma and popularity were sufficient to guarantee such a score, but it would seem, paradoxically, that his coalition did not achieve the expected majority vote because of his charismatic profile. The opposition electoral platform today, as it was in 1992, seeks to flush out the incumbent, set up a transitional government that would level the playground for future elections by drawing up a genuine democratic constitution, an impartial electoral code and carrying out wide ranging institutional reforms. To ensure an unbiased transitional leadership, it is widely agreed that the leader of such a transition shall not be eligible for the subsequent presidential election. The problem in 1992 was to find a candidate amongst the presidential hopefuls with a profile that cut across the various political divides, who was modest enough to set aside personal ambition for the common good and who was prepared to be guided by a broad-based collegial leadership of political heavy weights. The opposition was expected to find and present such a person to the electorate instead of going their individual ways. This was not done. Sceptics felt that Fru Ndi did not fill the bill because they could not imagine a man of mystified proportions would be modest enough to respect the terms of the transition. The Fru Ndi myth which was an asset for the forces of change became a liability and sceptics as well as the undecided segment of the electorate preferred, so to speak, to vote for the devil they knew rather than the angel they did not know. No doubt, the Fru Ndi myth has inevitably suffered the effect of political erosion with time and the image of intransigence painted by his critics has equally suffered some erosion. Does it mean he stands 139 a better chance today to lead the proposed transition? It all depends on him and his cronies. The implication of accepting...