Cameroon: Why So Many Political Parties (207)?

By Dibussi Tande

According to the website of Cameroon’s Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization (MINATD), 45 political partieswill take part in the July 22, 2007 legislative elections, while 33 will take part in municipal elections also scheduled for the same day. (An earlier communiqué published by the same ministry on May 31, mentioned 22 and 18 parties respectively).

To the casual observer, this would seem like a lot of political parties for a country with the size and population of Cameroon. However, these figures pale in comparison to the actual number of registered political parties in the country – a whopping 207 as of June 1, 2007! (See official list of registered political parties at the end of this posting).

Even though these political parties exist on paper, most of them are completely absent from the national and local political landscape. In fact, since the reinstitution of political pluralism in Cameroon in 1990, there has never been an election in which all registered parties participated:

• In 1992, 32 of the 69 registered political parties in the country took part in the legislative elections, while five political parties took part in the presidential election;
• In 1996, 36 of the 123 political parties took part in municipal elections. Councilors from 15 parties were elected into local councils;
• In 1997, 9 of the 152 political parties each fielded a candidate in the presidential election while  72 political parties registered to take part in legislative elections (only 44 eventually participated). The National Assembly which came out of the elections consisted of MPs from seven political parties;
• In the 2002 legislative elections, only 48 of the 178 political parties in existence participated, with five ending up in parliament;
• In the 2004 presidential elections, candidates representing 16 of the 188 political parties participated;
• And now in the 2007, a miserly 45 political parties, out of 207 will take part in both legislative and municipal elections.

It should be noted that in all the above mentioned elections, many of the participating parties could only compete in just one constituency. For example in 1996, 13 of the 36 parties that took part in municipal elections competed only in a single constituency.

Evidently, quantity is not a problem when it comes to the number of political parties in Cameroon. However, quality is a very scarce commodity with very few viable parties that can effectively compete and win elections at the national and local levels.

So what explains the very high number of political parties in Cameroon, and their evident inability to take part in the political process and compete in elections which is the essence of political parties?

Integral Multipartyism
The law governing political parties in Cameroon (Law no. 90/56 of 19 December 1990) allows for an unlimited number of political parties – what has been described as “Le multipartisme integral”. Creating a political party is a fairly easy and inexpensive administrative process in Cameroon. It is even less cumbersome than creating a Not-for-Profit organization. Officially, this is to give every Cameroonian the chance to have a voice in the country’s political process if he or she so desires.

Conventional wisdom, however, holds that the Biya regime crafted Cameroon’s multiparty law in 1990 with an eye on (opposition) party multiplication and fragmentation as a means to perpetuate the CPDM’s grip on the political process and system. As Francis Nyamnjoh has argued (in Africa's Media: Democracy And The Politics  Of Belonging), “The Multiplicity of parties, most of which had no existence outside the personality of their founders, can be explained partly by the government’s interest in dissipating real democratic opposition…” (113).

The CPDM is routinely accused of sponsoring the creation of dummy parties whose role is to muddy the political waters, serve as relay points for the government’s unpopular positions issues of the day, and dilute the strength and votes of the opposition. In fact, many of the political parties created during the early years of Cameroon’s multiparty experience (1991-1992) were suspected of being CPDM moles charged with either infiltrating opposition groupings such as the National Coordination of Opposition Parties (NCOPA), or passing off as the “responsible opposition” constantly challenging the “radical and irrational” policies of the “hard-line opposition”. Virtually all of these parties eventually joined what became known as the “Majorité présidentielle”. To this day, many political analysts still insist that Dakole Daisalla’s Movement for the Defense of the Republic (MDR), which teamed up with Biya in 1992 to give the latter a parliamentary majority in 1992, was in fact created by the regime.

Nyamjoh adds an ethnic explanation to the debate by pointing out that “in a plural society like Cameroon, it was difficult for any one political party, founded on ethnic, linguistic or religious lines, to cater for every  group’s interest. (113). Hence every ethnic group or region sought to have its own political party which increased its chance of getting a share of the national pie.

No Independent Candidates
Other seasoned observers of the Cameroon political scene such as Churchill Ewumbue-Monono (in Men of Courage: The Participation of Independent and Civil Society Candidates in the Electoral Process in Cameroon) have attributed the plethora of political parties to (a) the “extreme partitisation” of Cameroonian politics symbolized by the rejection of independent candidates in municipal and legislative elections on the one hand, and the largely unfulfillable conditions for running as an independent in presidential elections on the other, and (2) the administrative and political harassment of civil society organizations that are interested in politics.

According the laws governing elections in Cameroon, independent candidates are barely tolerated (presidential elections) or simply outlawed (legislative and municipal elections). In fact, the conditions for running as an independent in presidential elections are so stringent that no candidate has ever been able to fulfill them since the reinstitution of multiparty elections. Candidates are required to furnish  signatures from 300 “grand electors” (i.e., Members of Parliament, Councilors, First Class Chiefs, etc., ), 30 from each of the 10 provinces.

Political parties are therefore the only form of legitimate political expression in Cameroon. And, individuals who would normally participate in the political process or contest elections as independents are forced to create political parties. Ewumbue-Monono highlights the fact that “the electoral behavior and capacity pf most of the political parties in Cameroon have been similar to those of independent candidates who could present lists or candidates in only one constituency” (p. 180). In short, the majority of political parties in Cameroon are “independents in party garments, and which cannot present candidates or lists in more than one constituency” (p. 181).

Little tolerance for civil society participation in political process
Ewumbue-Monono also points out that “In Cameroon, when a political party is criticizing the Government, it is seen as constructive, but when such criticism comes from the civil society it is seen as subversive”. A good example was the July 1991 banning of six civil society organizations for allying with the NCOPA to promote the Villes Mortes and support calls for a Sovereign National Conference. No political party suffered a similar fate for the same crimes. Ewumbue-Monono therefore argues that,

To avoid harassment, therefore, most civil society organizations have merely registered as political parties. In effect, over 70% of the registered political parties in Cameroon as of 2004 are nothing short of  civil society organizations in scope of activities and objectives dressed in party uniforms. Many civil society  organizations aimed at empowering vulnerable groups like the youth, women, children and the handicapped, the elderly, and workers have been registered pure and simple as political parties, which explain the high number of parties in the country. (p. 137).

The result has been the “partitisation” of the civil society as civil society organizations simply morph into political parties in order to survive. This is the case, for example, of Fritz Pierre Ngo’s Cameroon Ecological Movement (environment), Tchoungui Francois-Xavier’s, Movement for Justice and Freedom (human rights), and Boniface Fobin’s Justice and Development Party (Anglophone minority rights).

Conclusion
Whatever the original intentions of the various laws that govern political parties and elections in Cameroon, the outcome has been a political landscape that promotes the mushrooming of non-viable political parties, many of whose entire membership can fit in a phone booth, as they say in Cameroon. Worse, these laws exclude huge segments of Cameroonian society from the political process. As the head of the OAU election monitoring team for the 2002 municipal and legislative elections stated,

The texts of the law which do not permit independent candidatures have prevented many  competent citizens of the civil and society from participating in the management of municipal and parliamentary  affairs.

Click here to print or download complete list of registered political parties in Cameroon (pdf).

References:

Churchill Ewumbue-Monono. Men of Courage: The Participation of Independent and Civil Society Candidates in the Electoral Process in Cameroon. A Historical Perspective, 1945-2004. Limbe; Design House, 2006. 237 pages.

Francis B Nyamnjoh. Africa's Media: Democracy And The Politics  Of Belonging. London, ZED Books; Pretoria, UNISA Press, 2005. 308 pages.

Comments

[Nga Adolph]

Every political system or government should be a portrait in miniature of the society as a whole,reflecting divergent groups,opinions and traits.A real representative assembly takes into account questions of geography and demography not politics and ideology.A political system that fails to take into consideration the needs of particular groups based on linguistic,ethnic,religious lines or otherwise is simply unrepresentative and cannot deliver.
The Cameroon government paints a false image to the international community of the real political demands of its people.Today,anglophones have totally been relegated to the peripheries of the country's political life, reason for the incessant cries of marginalisation and the whole issue of the anglophone problem.Even the political parties themselves are totally unrepresentative of the people.The SDF party for example whenever it comes under attack by the CPDM as being a regional party tries to desperately prove that it is a 'national'party.This is sheer ignorance and naivity, because no one will deny the fact that the bastion of the SDF party is the NW and to a lesser extent the SW province all anglophone regions.What is wrong for a party to represent the the anglophones of Cameroon?I believe it is time for more anglophone parties to be formed if that system wishes to paint a more positive image of itself as a representative system.
Just taking a look at the partitioning of government positions in Cameroon,anyone will know that the whole political set up in Cameroon is totally unrepresentative because anglophones are totally under_represented.Government policy in development and employment shows how the system has totally sidelined the anglophones..Anglophone parties in government and parliament will help to break down ignorance and intolerance as regards the Anglophone problem and help to dissipate the feeling of marginalisation.Ofcourse,the CPDM government will adamantly reject such moves because of the fear that anglophones may nuture secession tendencies.But aren't they already?A government which doesnot have the interest of its people at heart, will continue to lead Cameroon on the road to disaster and mayhem because in doing everything to prevent a proper representation of the different component parts of Cameroon,will only lead many to develop the feeling of not belonging.

Nga Adolph.
Leuven(Belgium)

[Nga Adolph]

It is surprising that in 2007,Cameroonians are still regarding Independent candidates as a new phenomenon when in 1993 Swaziland had 30 independents,Rwandan local gov't elections of 2000 had independent candidates.Meanwhile countries like Mali and Benin in 2002 and 2006 respectively voted independent candidates as presidents.The merits of independent candidates is that it enlarges democratic space,focuses on personal merits,addresses specific issues and opens up the political landscape for young men and women to participate in politics.

[Onesone Ebude]

Independent candidates are as old as politics in Southern and French Cameroons. laws governing Southern Cameroons elections already made room for independent candidates in 1956. In the 1957 elections, there were 7 independents. In French Cameroon, independents were already accepted as early as 1947 and Daniel Kemajou actually got elected into the French Union Assembly as an independent.

The acceptance of independent candidates ended with the advent of the one-party system in 1966. So the call for independents today is simply a call for a return to the status quo ante.