Cameroon’s Constitutional Council, after scrutinising all the 13 petitions deposited by some political parties that are vying for the March 12 Senatorial elections, has rejected them.
The petitions were filed following the publication of a list of parties and candidates to contest for the election by Cameroon’s election management body, ELECAM.
After examining the files on Wednesday, February 15, members of the Council headed by its president, Clement Atangana rejected the petitions for not complying with the laws governing elections in the country.
For instance, the petition against the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM party’s list in the Northwest region was rejected. The complainant was the Social Democratic Front, SDF Party candidate in the region, Vanigansen Mochiggle. To him, the CPDM list did not respect the sociological representation as stipulated in article 218 of the electoral code. The article states that “where several lists have the same average for the award of the last seat, the seat shall be awarded to the list having obtained the highest number of votes. Where there is a tie in the number of votes obtained, the seat shall be awarded to the eldest candidate”
ELECAM stakeholders working on upcoming Senatorial Elections elections- Photo Credits -CRTV
However, the Council rejected the petition because it was submitted after the deadline. The law says that after the publication of the list by ELELCAM, parties have 48 hours to table the complaints to the Council. In this case, the deadline was February 9 after the publication of the list on February 7. SDF according to the Council did not respect that.
Also, some petitions tabled by the CPDM party against some political parties were rejected for lack of evidence.
On February 7, ELECAM published a list of 10 political parties that will be vying for the March 12 Senatorial elections in all 10 regions of Cameroon. They are CPDM, SDF, UDC, UMS, MDR, PCRN, FDC, UNDP, ANDP and FNSC.
As per the list, CPDM will be contesting unopposed in the Southwest and South regions.
70 Senators will be elected while the President of the Republic, Paul Biya will appoint 30 others.
