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Tuesday’s presidential decree setting Cameroon’s presidential election for October 9 came five days to the deadline during which President Paul Biya is by law expected to have summoned the electorate to the polls.
According to Article 2 of the law of September 17, 1992 fixing the conditions for the election of the President of the Republic, “the interval between the signing of the decree convoking the electorate to the polls and the date of the election proper is 40 days”.
Article 3 of the newly amended law stipulates that the election takes place “at least 20 days or 50 days at most before the expiration of the mandate of the President of the Republic”.
Thus President Biya had up to September 4 to fix the date for the election since his current term expires on November 3, 2011.
Clearance certificates
Prospective presidential candidates now have only five days during which to file their candidature applications. This leaves most of the candidates in a tight corner because it would require a miracle for them to compile the many documents needed to complete their application files.
With several opposition parties having called for the postponement of the presidential election and the ruling CPDM party itself seeming like it was unprepared to go to the polls, many opposition candidates, declared or undeclared, had gone to sleep and had not prepared their candidature documents.
These include certified copies of birth certificates, national identity cards, non-conviction certificates, tax clearance certificates, residence certificate showing that prospective candidates have been residing in the country for upwards of five years, certificates of non-indebtedness, and so on.
All of these documents are issued by administrative offices run by Biya appointees. The five-day deadline is also prohibitive, not to mention that offices will remain closed on Wednesday (for the Muslim Idd-el Fitr holiday) and on Sunday.
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