Opposition wants elections annulled

Church leaders and opposition politicians have described legislative and municipal elections held in Cameroon on 30 June as flawed. The politicians have also called for the polls to be annulled. The bishops said in a communique published by the Cameroonian press on Friday that many irregularities marred the polls. Their assessment was based on reports from election monitors deployed by the church. Cameroon’s churches had organised training in election monitoring for more than 3,000 local observers. The government accredited 50 for the polls. According to the bishops, the monitors reported "serious and multiple violations of our citizens’ freedom of voting by means of corruption through vote-buying, by setting up bogus polling stations, or through a system of selective registration on voters' lists and selective issuing of voter's cards". The monitors had noticed the flaws, which "call into question the results of the polls, on 23 June and had brought them to the attention of the authorities before 30 June", according to the communique, signed on their behalf by Msgr Patrick Lafon, secretary-general of the National Episcopal Conference of Cameroon. They added that the irregularities had been perpetrated, as in previous elections, by "members of the elite", traditional chiefs, local territorial administration officials and members of rival political parties. "Such acts emanating from malevolent individuals devoid of any sense of the common good tarnish the image of our country and deal a severe blow to the democratic process," the bishops said. On Tuesday, leaders of six political parties made a similar denunciation. In addition to the stuffing of ballot boxes and the use of bogus ones, they denounced intimidation by traditional chiefs, bussing of voters, multiple voting, voting by minors (minimum voting age is 20 years), and discriminatory voter registration to the detriment of the opposition. They called on Cameroonian President Paul Biya to "use his constitutional prerogatives to annul the double elections of 30 June", whose results they said they would not accept. Purporting to speak "on behalf of the majority of Cameroonians deprived of their right to vote", the parties also said they would "not sit in the National Assembly nor in municipal councils as determined by the double polls of 30 June 2002". The protesting parties include the: Social Democratic Front; Union nationale pour la democratie et le progress; Union des forces démocratiques du Cameroun; Union démocratique du Cameroun; La Dynamique; and Mouvement pour la libération du Cameroun. Elections in Cameroon have routinely been marred by claims of irregularities. Throughout the 1990s, the country's bishops had often called on political leaders to agree on a body of rules for guiding Cameroon towards "true democracy". In Tuesday's statement, the party leaders said government and the opposition needed to start a dialogue "with a view to creating conditions for organising really free, transparent and fair elections". They said they were willing to meet Biya at any time for this purpose. In the past, the government has rejected successive calls to that effect. The parties also asked their representatives to withdraw from monitoring and vote-counting commissions. They suggested that the Union nationale pour la democratie et le progress scrap an agreement it has with the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Rally and leave the coalition government it joined in 1997. The opposition leaders also called on their supporters "to be in readiness to defend their civic rights by all the means that we shall indicate to them at the right moment". Partial results released by the ministry of territorial administration showed the ruling party leading by a wide margin in almost all constituencies in the legislative election. It was also leading in more than one-third of the country's 336 local councils, including some that had gone to the opposition in 1996 in Cameroon's first multiparty municipal polls. In a press communique on Wednesday, Minister of Communication Jacques Fame Ndongo called for calm and peace. He also rejected the opposition's claims. "The legislative elections took place in calm, serenity and strict respect for the rules of transparency," he said, accusing the opposition of wanting to discredit Cameroon. He also recalled that Biya had called for all involved to respect the verdict of the ballot, when he announced the postponement of the polls, which had been scheduled for 23 June. The special envoy of the UN Secretary-General to Cameroon, Seydou Elimane Diarra, said in a press communique published on Wednesday, just before his departure from Yaounde, that the postponement had been for the better since it enabled the state to "alleviate certain shortcomings and facilitate the conduct of the elections in serenity”. "The calm that marked these elections, despite a few incidents, proves the political maturity of the Cameroonian people and Cameroon's irreversible commitment to democratisation," Diarra said. He then stressed the need to "remain aware that the culture of dialogue is essential for the deepening of democracy". Diarra also called for an improvement in the functioning of the national election observatory and the strengthening of its capacity to intervene in the electoral process. He suggested that the voters' roll and cards should be computerised.