Election monitors worried by delays

Officials at Cameroon's Observatoire national des elections (ONEL - National election observatory) are worried. Legislative and municipal elections are billed for 23 June but preparations for the polls are way behind schedule, not least because political parties have failed to meet the deadline for submitting their candidates. ONEL's Deputy Chairperson Diana Acha Morfaw complained at a news conference on 21 May that political parties had not submitted their lists of candidates by 14 May deadline. "All political parties are in a situation of illegality," she added. ONEL, whose septuagenarian chairman Enoch Kwayeb has been undergoing medical treatment in France for some three months now, has been tasked by the state with supervising and monitoring the elections, which are being organised by the Ministry of Territorial Administration. Morfaw added that the authorities in the various prefectures had until 21 May to accept or reject candidates submitted to them but were still receiving candidates lists. "If the elections were to be held today there would be no polling in some communes because there are no candidates there," she said. The Ministry of Territorial Administration should publish the candidates lists by 3 June and the election campaign should start on 8 June. However, an official of its Political Affairs Division said that, because of the delays in the submission of the lists, the ministry did not yet know how many candidates and parties were contesting the elections. As a result, this could delay the manufacture of ballot papers. Observers feel the problems stem in part from the fact that political parties were caught napping when the election date was announced in mid-March, giving them just three months to prepare. However, they also attribute the delays to disagreements within some parties over the selection of candidates. The ruling Rassemblement democratique du peuple camerounais (RDPC - Cameroon Democratic People's Rally) is no exception. Sources close to the RDPC said that the list drawn up following primaries held on 7-11 May has to be approved or amended by the party's leader, President Paul Biya, before it is submitted to the Ministry of Territorial Administration. "Everything that's happening now is illegal, but we prefer this illegality if it's for preserving peace," law expert Nicole Claire Ndocko, ONEL's coordinator in the Littoral Province, told the press. ONEL is also worried that the official number of voters and polling stations has not yet been announced by the Ministry of Territorial Administration. There were 19,000 polling stations in similar elections in 1997 and an ONEL member estimated that this year there will be more. In a recent memorandum, opposition parties had called for the polls to be postponed because only four million voters had been registered while they estimated that there were eight million Cameroonians of voting age. However, "a new postponement of the elections is not on the cards," Ndocko said. The opposition had also asked ONEL to make sure that voting no longer takes place in the residences of traditional chiefs and in military barracks, which they see as structures close to the government. ONEL's Morfaw agreed that "in the past, certain traditional chiefs mixed up their traditional responsibilities and their political role". She feels that "to resolve this recurrent problem, Cameroonians should decide that the residences of traditional chiefs are no longer public places and find new, viable locations for polling operations." However, she said voters should not be worried since the ONEL would have an observer in all polling stations. ONEL has 2,116 members throughout the country. All have followed training seminars on election monitoring. They have also sworn before a judge to ensure that the law is respected and that the elections are transparent.