By Dibussi Tande
Prior to the 1997 legislative elections, I wrote a special report for the Cameroon Post titled "The 1997 Legislative Elections in Cameroon - A Geo-strategic projection" which reviewed the law governing legislative elections in Cameroon and its impact on the chances of the contending parties (that is, beyond the issue of electoral fraud which invariably skews electoral outcomes). With legislative elections just around the corner, I am republishing parts of that article which are still relevant today. These excerpts will show how the laws in place give the ruling CPDM an undue advantage even in the hypothetical situation where there is absolutely no electoral fraud.
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Fo starters, it is necessary to first establish how the 180 parliamentary seats are currently distributed by province/region, and how these seats are distributed by political party. This will shed some light as to where the competing parties may maintain, gain or lose seats. For example, the Far North and South province provinces both have 29 and 11 seats respectively, none of which may go to the SDF. This means that barring any major electoral reversal, the SDF will be entering the race with minus 40 seats. The same goes for the CPDM in the Northwest province where at least 18 of province's 20 seats will most obviously revert to the SDF. Thus, the CPDM will be starting the race with less than 18 seats at least...
I - THE DISTRIBUTION OF SEATS BY PROVINCE
According to section 2 of Law no. 91-020 of 16 December 1991 governing the election of members of parliament, the Cameroonian National Assembly shall have 180 seats.
It is worth noting that while the number of seats was decided by Parliament and enshrined in a law adopted by the said body, the distribution of these seats by division and province was done by Presidential decree no. 92/013 of 15 Jan. 1992, with very arbitrary results. For example, the SDF stronghold of Mezam with a population of 430.136 inhabitants has five (5) members of Parliament (MPs)-- that is One MP for 86.027 inhabitants-- but the Biya stronghold of the South province has 11 (eleven) MPs with a population of only 373.798 inhabitants (One MP for every 33,982). This decree, therefore, ignores Section 4 of the 1991 law that stipulates that the distribution of seats shall take "into account the size and distribution of the population over the national territory."
Proponents of the current system of seat distribution argue that regional balance, and not political opportunism, was the driving force behind this arbitrary distribution of seats. They claim that the 180 seats available had to be distributed in such a way that each of the major geo-political regions of the country would be of comparatively equal strength. Thus, the Grand West has 75 seats (with the Anglophone section of this region composed of the Northwest and Southwest provinces, having 35 of these, and the Francophone section, made up of the Western and Littoral provinces, having the remaining 40); the Grand South (Centre, South and Eastern provinces) 50 seats; and the Grand North (North, Far North and Adamawa), 52.
It is argued, for example, that giving the Grand West (which has 45 per cent of Cameroon's population) 45 per cent of seats in Parliament would have sounded the death knell for Cameroonian democracy since this would have given whoever controlled that region virtual control of the National Assembly-- and without them even bothering to obtain any sizable support from the other two regions.
However, as we shall see later, this argument is not a very strong one because it ignores the fact that most of the main regions are not closed political entities neither are theyhomogeneous political voting blocs. This is particularly the case of the Grand West where the leading parties from the the other two regions, i.e., the CPDM and UNDP, have what may be termed "out-of -fiefdom" strongholds at the expense of the region's leading party, the SDF.
Furthermore, even if one party won all the seats in the Grand West and obtained control of 45 per cent of the seats in parliament, the parties from the other regions could still form a majority coalition with 55 per cent of the votes.
Whatever the case may be, we shall see in subsequent sections of this analysis that the the arbitrary distribution of parliamentary seats, the complex and unfair electoral law, and Cameroonian geopolitics have, to a large extent, determined the outcome of the legislative elections.
Click on image below to view complete table.
Distribution of Seats by Province
II- A COMPLEX AND UNFAIR ELECTORAL LAW
An insight into the prevailing electoral law is necessary because the possible number of seats to be won by the three leading parties shall be dictated in large part by this law.
According to Section 5(1) of the 1991 law, in constituencies where the list system is applicable (which is the case in practically all electoral constituencies), voters shall vote for a list of candidates without indicating any preference of candidates. The list that obtains an absolute majority of votes cast shall win ALL the seats available, Section 2 (b) (ii).
However, according to Section 6 (2) (ii), if no list obtains an absolute majority of votes cast, the seats shall be shared as follows:
- the list with the highest number of seats shall be allocated half of the seats rounded off, if need be, to the nearest whole number above; where there is a tie between two or more lists, the number of seats rounded off to the nearest whole number above shall be allocated to the list with the highest average age.
- the remaining seats shall be allocated to the other lists through the application of proportional representation to the lists with the highest votes ; where there is a tie in the number of votes, the seat(s) shall be allocated to the list with the highest average age.
And, according to Section 6(4), seats shall be allocated to candidates in the order in which they appear on each list. It is worth noting that lists that obtain less than 5% of the votes cast shall not be eligible for the proportional distribution of seats.
Also, this law stipulates that the electoral constituency is the administrative Division or Departement, although candidates always vie for parliamentary seats at the subdivisional rather than divisional level.
This law passed ostensibly to protect and give minorities a voice in the various constituencies has ended up producing some rather weird results.
In 1992, for example, the UNDP won a relative majority in Fako division with 48.84% of the total votes cast while the CPDM and UPC trailed behind with 35.85% and 11.73% respectively. As a result, the UNDP ended up with two of Fako's four parliamentary seats, while the other two went to the CPDM and UPC. And since Section 4 of the law states that seats shall be allocated to candidates in the order in which they appear on each party list, Mr. Ray Ikundi of Buea and Omar Betow of Tiko, who both lost in their respective subdivisions, ended in parliament just because they both were the first names on the CPDM and UPC lists respectively.
The unintended consequence of this democratic travesty was that both the loser and winner in Buea subdivision ended up in parliament (thus giving the subdivision two instead of one seat assigned to each subdivision) while both the winner and losers in the Muyuka subdivision race stayed home!! As a result, between 1992 and 1997, Fako division was represented in parliament by two individuals who lost the elections in their respective constituencies, while one of the division's sub-divisions has no MP to defend its interests in parliament!!
It is, therefore, evident that the number of seats available to the various parties will depend to a large extent on whether they win an absolute majority or not in the various electoral constituencies. If they fail to win that majority, strange things may happen...
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