Democracy, Cameroonian Style

The president of Cameroon is Paul Biya. He has been in power for 25 years, is 75 years old and has recently changed the constitution to enable him to stay in office for a further term. Announcement of this change was the spark that ignited the riots which caused our departure to Cameroon to be delayed, although there were already many underlying sources of grievance, including huge increases in food and fuel prices. The Government puts the number of deaths in the riots at 40 but NGOs say that the real number is greater than 100. I have heard it remarked that Biya wants to stay in office since he would be jailed for embezzlement if he resigned. There was a census in Cameroon in 2004 and the results have not yet been published – some allege that this is because its publication would make the rigging of elections more difficult.

Cameroon has an elected parliament and has provision for a senate but this has not been implemented. Parliament can make laws but many of them are ignored. The prime minister and all ministers are appointed by the president and don’t need to be members of parliament. The president also appoints the people who head up Cameroon’s 10 provinces, and these people have much more power than government ministers, the latter mainly filling an advisory and standard setting role. There is a cascade of appointments from provincial to divisional, sub-divisional, district and council level. The Sous-Préfet is at council level and is the most powerful person at that level. The councillors are elected and they in turn elect the mayor. The mayor appoints deputies from among the councillors to form his Executive. Apart from this he inherits his management team. There is a Secretary General at council level who is appointed by the Sous-Préfet but is a member of the mayor’s team. In practice he is the most powerful person on the mayor’s team, and there are a number of other state appointments on the mayor’s team. Thus the mayor needs to achieve things by influencing rather than by authority. Laws providing for decentralisation of responsibilities were published in 2004 but they have not been enacted, and a further law which is to provide for transfer of resources to councils to enable them to fulfil the new responsibilities has not yet been published. Thus councils are in the invidious position of being expected by their electorate to provide water, schools, health centres, roads and many other services but they don’t have the means to provide them. Meanwhile the state is not filling this gap. Maga’s 41 councillors are all from the opposition party. This is a result of a weird system where each party puts forward a list of candidates and the electorate vote for the lists. Maga’s councillors feel that they are marginalised by the state (ironically, in one of the villages that I visited the chief and his notables were government supporters and felt marginalised by the council).

The chiefs are traditional leaders from families on which their succession is based. There are lots of princes and princesses. Their local power on issues such as ownership of land cuts across state authority at times. They perform a bottom-up function for the state on matters where consultation is sought and they organise local committees to look after matters such as maintenance of wells and pumps. They also act as tax collectors for the councils and the state. The meeting in the Sultan’s palace referred to earlier was attended by all the chiefs in the area and at the meeting each chief was given pre-signed and pre-stamped receipts for taxes which are levied annually on all adults (around €2 per annum). Police frequently stop people to check on their identity cards and if they don’t have a receipt for tax payment presumably they will have to pay a higher bribe than would otherwise be the case.