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President announces decentralisation project

Cameroonian President Paul Biya said on Wednesday that his government would embark on a vast project of decentralisation to complete a democratisation process ushered in by parliamentary and municipal elections last June. In a new year address to the nation, Biya said: "We will thus be ensuring at the level of local communities a better participation of citizens in public affairs." He said that by participating directly in the daily management of the affairs of their communities, Cameroonians would better understand the purpose of the ongoing change in their society and would be more involved in it. According to Biya, the country's economic recovery was being pursued with the implementation of a three-year economic and financial programme. With regards to education and health, his government had been making considerable efforts over the years with the support of donors and friendly countries so that majority of citizens could have access to them, he noted. The government had also launched a "real crusade" against the HIV/AIDS scourge with assistance from leading medical experts in the field, Biya said, adding that the most effective therapies had already been made available to the majority of the patients. "The modernisation of our society was first of all that of our political system. It is admittedly already fairly well advanced," Biya said. "It is also that of the administration which has not always known how to adapt to the new democratic dispensation by maintaining a rather authoritarian attitude. The administration must be at the service of the people and not otherwise," he added. Mordernisation, he said, was the act of the State assuming its incentive, regulatory or even arbitration role, but then leaving private initiative to bloom, especially in the economic sector. He, however, stated that public authorities should be the driving force of this policy. Biya said the democratic option the country had chosen afforded citizens the chance to express their opinions and choose their representatives. They were also free to defend their rights through a judiciary independent of political power. On the issue of the oil-rich Bakassi peninsula, claimed by both Cameroon and its neighbour Nigeria, Biya said that with the assistance of the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, he and his Nigerian counterpart Olusegun Obasanjo had laid down procedures that would in the long run strengthen cooperation and friendship between "two brotherly people who have a lot in common". "Hence we believe we have contributed to creating a climate of peace and calm conducive to easing our relations with our neighbour and to ensuring our own development," he added. The June 2002 elections were described as flawed by both the church and opposition politicians who urged that they be annulled. The irregularities, they said, included vote-buying, the stuffing of ballot boxes, intimidation, multiple voting and discriminatory voting to the detriment of the opposition. The country's supreme court annulled results in four constituencies and ordered fresh elections which were held in September. The ruling party won 16 out of 17 parliamentary seats in the re-run.

This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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