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POLITICS-CAMEROON: Church Vows to Exorcise "Demons of Electoral Fraud"
By Sylvestre Tetchiada
YAOUNDE, June 7 (IPS) - As candidates in Cameroon square up to each other
for presidential elections in October, the Catholic Church is doing its best
to ensure that the poll will not be an occasion for 'politics as usual' in
the West African country.
"We're going to shine a spotlight on the need for free and transparent
elections in order to catch the attention of political decision makers,
especially those presently in power. No one should be able to say to the
winner that he stole the election," Joseph Tonye Bakot, the Archbishop of
Cameroon's capital - Yaounde - told the press recently.
Since the return of multiparty politics to Cameroon in 1991, there have
been serious irregularities in the elections (one municipal and legislative,
two presidential) that have been held in the country.
According to several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which
monitored the polls, vote-rigging tactics included the use of fictitious
voter lists, secret polling booths, stuffed ballot boxes and false voter
registration cards.
While courts have acknowledged the occurrence of improprieties, their
statements have only recently been matched with efforts to correct the
wrongdoing.
In April this year, the supreme court ruled that elections should be
re-held in six council areas in Cameroon to rectify irregularities from the
joint municipal and legislative election held in June 2002. (The country has
336 councils in all - and results were disputed in 17 of these.)
This decision upheld an earlier ruling by an administrative judge in
September 2002. The 2002 poll was won by the Democratic Union of the People
of Cameroon - formerly the National Union of Cameroon, which governed the
country before the return of pluralism.
Pressure from civil society, opposition parties and foreign governments
are all said to have played a role in bolstering the courts' new found
confidence in taking action against electoral fraud. The head of state, Paul
Biya - who won presidential elections in 1992 and 1996, and who has been in
power since 1982 - also appears less inclined to interfere in the affairs of
the judiciary.
Nonetheless, the fears of vote rigging sparked by previous events are not
easily allayed - and the Catholic Church is pressing ahead with its campaign
to prevent further instances of fraud come October.
"That's why the Church, which is concerned with preserving the civil
peace, intends to involve itself more fully in the electoral process," Titi
Nwel, coordinator for Catholic NGO Justice and Peace in Cameroon, told IPS.
Speaking in a telephone interview, he said the Church would "train
electoral observers who will monitor the conduct of the elections", as there
had previously been "a lack of truly neutral observers in the Cameroonian
election process."
Nwel said the Church would also "hold information, awareness, and
educational sessions prior to the elections about the ways polls have been
fixed."
Fears about the efficiency of election observers - even those from abroad
- appear to be widespread.
"The problem with foreign observers is that they don't spread out enough
in the back country where cheating takes place in plain view. For those
among them who fall into the government's trap of letting themselves be
wined and dined during their stay here, they quickly become very biased.
They become apologists for the government," Alain Didier Olinga, a professor
at the Institute of International Relations of Cameroon, told IPS.
In the face of the Church's campaign, Cameroon's electoral commission -
the National Election Observatory (ONEL), created in 2000 - is doing its
best to convince citizens that it has the best interests of the country at
heart.
ONEL Vice President Diana Acha Mofor told IPS, "We are sworn to (uphold)
transparency and equity...I understand that some compatriots think that
cheating, which used to be the norm in elections, will recur. But, they must
trust ONEL to be the guardian of transparency."
Although Cameroon is a secular state, the Church exerts some influence in
all ten of the country's provinces through its network of schools, training
centers - and a Catholic university. (Statistics on the number of people who
are Christian - and Catholic - are hard to come by.)
Nonetheless, certain observers remain sceptical of the Church's power to
affect political events in Cameroon.
"The functionaries, who are in charge of the electoral process, are
mainly interested in their career profiles. They're ready to provide
complete satisfaction to the person who appointed them," says Emmanuel
Akika, a professor in the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences at
Yaounde I University.
"The Church knows that it can't prevent police chiefs and assistant
police chiefs from cheating."
Akika adds, "The Church knows quite well that politicians, from the party
in power as well as in the opposition, will never renounce cheating in
elections - even if it strongly believes that the foundation of peace and
justice in this country depends on the ballot box."
As a result, some are more willing to put their faith in the powers of
digital technology, than the moral sway of religion. They hope the proposed
computerisation of certain aspects of the electoral process - the
overhauling of the voters' roll, for example - will limit opportunities for
fraud.
"Computerisation would bring important improvements in costs and data
reliability," says Alain Nkoyock, an information technology expert at the
Yaounde office of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.
However, the Senior Minister for Territorial Administration and
Decentralisation, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, warned after a recent tour of the
provinces that putting such a system in place might be too expensive. The
cost of the system is put at about 14.8 million dollars. This exceeds the 11
million dollars spent on the entire presidential election in 1997.
For Frederic Onguene, a priest in Melen, a suburb of Yaounde,
computerisation is a false god.
"The demons of electoral fraud will have to be exorcised by prayer and
continuous reminders to potential candidates," he told IPS.
(END/2004)
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