Publicité
A number of ideas have been floated, which include the possibility of introducing the position of Vice-President. Others have mentioned introducing a system of two rounds of voting.
Can you explain to our readers what the situation is now? If the President were to be indisposed, what would happen?
If there is a vacancy, the constitution provides in Section 6 (4) that the President of the Senate shall, as of right, act as interim President of the Republic until the new President of the Republic is elected. You know of course that the duties of the Senate are for the time being exercised by the National Assembly, which means the National Assembly President would be interim President in the event of a vacancy.
Why would it be necessary for these aspects of the constitution to be changed?
Some keen observers of the Cameroonian political scene take the view that the period of 40 days is not long enough. I share this view. Many experts took the same view when the bill to amend the 1972 Constitution was being debated before Parliament in December 1995.
Some people have talked about independent presidential candidates. As far as this amendment is concerned, some have noted that there are more constituencies than MPs. What is your take on this?
For presidential elections, the law provides that there can be independent candidates on condition that the requisite number of signatures is obtained. With regard to parliamentary elections, our laws do not permit independent candidates. Concerning single member constituencies, this is the exception in Cameroon rather than the rule because some of the special constituencies have single members.
Such has been the case of Balikumbat over the years and others more recently like Mezam South (Santa), Jakiri, Momo West (Widikum), Kumba Urban. On the whole, MPs in our system are not elected to represent single constituencies. I do not know whether this is something which the constitutional amendment will address.
