NEO Will Drag Election Riggers To Court -Acha Morfaw

By Kini Nsom

The Vice President of National Elections Observatory, NEO, Dr. Diane Acha Morfaw, has said the Observatory now has the powers to drag election riggers to court.

"We are prepared, better organised and, therefore, any official identified with electoral malpractices will be put under the wrath of the law," Dr. Morfaw told The Post in an exclusive interview over the weekend in Yaounde.

She said NEO will make everything possible to ensure that the upcoming twin elections in June are free and fair.Dr. Acha-Morfaw urged Cameroonians to have confidence in NEO, stating that after organising two elections, the Observatory now has the experience to organise free and fair elections.

She warned that any official(s) caught perpetrating electoral malpractices will not be tolerated. NEO will warn them to stop and will recommend administrative sanctions for the person(s) or drag them to court.

According to the NEO Vice President, the Observatory avoided taking some officials to court during the past elections because they rather tried to right the wrongs committed in order to ensure the smooth electoral process.

"This year, if we find such malpractices, we will make sure that its perpetrators are punished and the situation quickly corrected," she stated. Acha-Morfaw disagreed with some opposition parties that outrightly rejected NEO as an impotent outfit as far as ensuring free and fair elections is concerned.

To her, the rule of law and the present circumstances demand that NEO organise this year's elections. She argued that the mandate of the Parliamentarians and Councillors cannot be illegally extended for the newly created Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, to be put in place.

Acha-Morfaw said NEO members instigated the creation of ELECAM by recommending in their 2004 report that Government should create a body that would manage the entire electoral process.

She said NEO has reversed several situations in which administrative officials previously violated the people's right to vote. The NEO boss said they fought and caused the administrative officials to reverse a decision in which they had rejected the candidates' list for the SDF during the Council elections in 2002 in Lebialem, Kupe Muanenguba and the Mungo constituencies.

Said she: "We were focusing on getting these lists reinstated rather than going to court or focusing on sanctions and at the end of the day, our objective was to get those who wanted to participate in the elections to do so."

She recalled that in 2002, they had a list of administrative authorities were who were recommended for specific sanctions. She regretted that the officials could not be punished because before the lists were submitted to the competent authorities, appointments had already been made.

"And this is what disheartened most Cameroonians because they saw administrative authorities who behaved poorly being promoted. It was a matter of timing," she said.
The NEO boss said the next step for the Observatory to take will be to launch a civic education campaign and call administrative authorities to send the lists of various elections supervisory commissions.

However, she regretted that they are facing serious problems because political parties are not communicating the names of their commission members. She appealed to them to quickly send in the names of their representatives to the commissions so as to ensure transparency.

Computerisation Of Electoral Registers 

Acha-Morfaw told The Post that she recently attended a meeting in the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation in which they verified the progress of the computerisation of the electoral process with satisfaction.

One of the major preoccupations of NEO, she stated, is to ensure that registration is done in a coherent manner and in full respect of the law. She said they are pleading with political parties to maintain the commission members who were trained last year because if they take them off, that training would have been wasted.

She called on all Cameroonians of voting age to put their names in the electoral registers, noting that it is their civic responsibility to choose their leaders through the ballot box.

She also called on the media to do everything possible to inform Cameroonians about their civic responsibilities, especially those that border on the electoral process.

Comments

[Emah]

Acha Morfaw,

Does NEO OBSERVE or ORGANISE an election? You seem to think they are the same.

NEO instigated the CREATION of ELECAM, WHY?

How can you drag people to court when just an observer and what gives you more powers now and not before now?

Stop lying to yourself and your own very children.

[Aunty J.]

Dear Ma'am

NEO is just another toothless bull dog. You are just reiterating the fact that previous elections have always been rigged with impunity. Go sing those songs of sorrows to people of the 18th century if you can still find any alive. We are too smart for that kind of crap.

[JCKING]

Mami NEO,
Who will be your judges and where will they come from and what will they be judging and on who's favor? Hahahahahaha day dreamer. Stories of the 12th Century. The case will be null and void with tight hands. hahahahaha.

[Fon]

Pertinent questions there Emah,
"Dr. Acha-Morfaw urged Cameroonians to have confidence in NEO, stating that after organising two elections, the Observatory now has the experience to organise free and fair elections."
An observatory observing an election or an observatory organising an election??????
Does she even know the role of NEO?

Of course she must defend NEO and ask for another chance because she knows how much they will take home at the end of the day.
Shameless old woman

[Watesih]

Lie Lie Mami,
When judges sentence hardened criminals like Fon ,or is it the faded Fun Charles Taylor Doh of the Ndop Central prison,and justice is trampled upon,who does this lie lie Mami take Cameroonians for.When people were killed in Bepanda ,nobody was brought to Justice,When students were slained in UB nobody was brought face to face with the strong arm of the Law,and the President did not even decry this in emphatic terms,when thugs from Mfoundi Division beat Diboule to pulp they have been left at large,so how are they going to make all the ghost voters they ferry from one end to another,their SDO`s who distort the trends on the PVs,their Dipanda Alexis who sweats rivers when announcing election results ,face the wrath of the Law?

[Eric Ngonji Njungwe]

Please read a recently posted article entitled “The Prospect of a Presidency for Life in Cameroon: Facing the Reality of the NEO/MINATD Charade”. This article describes a probable game plan that could be underway in Cameroon.

You can access this article by going to PICAM’s publication page at http://www.picam.org/publications.htm or by pasting http://www.picam.org/Documents/The%20Prospect%20of%20a%20Presidency%20for%20Life%20in%20Cameroon.pdf into your web browser.

Kind regards,
Eric Ngonji Njungwe
Executive Director - PICAM

[Aviche]

This may be a bit old but still interesting!

The World’s Worst Dictators for 2007: Africa Dominates the List

Parade Magazine, which is distributed with the Saturday editions of major daily newspapers in the United States, has published its list of the world’s 20 worst dictators for 2007.

The magazine defines a dictator as “a head of state who exercises arbitrary authority over the lives of his citizens and who cannot be removed from power through legal means. The worst commit terrible human-rights abuses.”

The list is based on reports from international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International, and the US State Department.
Topping the list for the third year running is Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, who according to Parade Magazine “retains his position as the worst dictator because of his ongoing deadly human-rights abuses in the Darfur region of Sudan.” Eight other African Presidents are in al-Bashir’s unwelcome company; Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (7), Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya (9), Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (11), King Mswati III of Swaziland (12), Isayas of Afewerki of Eritrea (13), Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia (17), Hosni Mubarak of Egypt (18), and Paul Biya of Cameroon (19).

Regarding Paul Biya of Cameroon who makes the list for the first time, the report states the following:
Independent Cameroon’s first dictator, Ahmadou Ahidjo, resigned after 22 years in power when his French doctors convinced him that he had a terminal illness. He didn’t, but by the time he realized this, his replacement, Paul Biya, was safely in place, and Ahidjo had to flee the country. Cameroon has the reputation of being one of the world’s most corrupt countries. Biya is credited with instituting one of the more creative tactics in the history of rigged elections. After international election-monitoring groups denounced his elections as “designed to fail,” Biya hired his own group of international monitors. Made up of ex-U.S. congressmen of both parties, the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress declared Cameroon’s 2004 election as free and fair. Another observer group, led by former Canadian prime minister Joe Clark, arrived earlier and denounced as rigged the registration process, which the U.S. group had missed.

So, what is Acha Morfaw talking of?

[Wrong Man]

Acha Morfaw will sue Biya's henchmen. He-he he-he. Anglophoone. Gari don pass wata.

[knganjo]

What? An election rigging organisation threatening court action? Wonders will never end.This woman needs to repent and ask God for forgiveness.Do these fellows have a conscience? NEO or call it whatever was instituted to facilitate election rigging in Cameroon. It was created by Biya for Biya and with the conivance of Biya's cohorts to legitimise and prolong their stay in power.If the past elections organised by the so-called NEO were all flawed, what does this shameless woman think has changed this time around? Is it not the same old wine in the same bottle? If she had a conscience would she not have resigned from NEO given its past history election rigging? I am advising her to resgn fron such a reckeless body if she is a woman of substance.

[Njei M. Timah]

Madam, You better sit down and have a cool reflection before telling us whether this your declation is intended for Cameroonian voters like me or for some undefined audience. If the country is not yet ready for an Independent electoral Commission, we should stop wasting money, disturbing the poor people's peace and causing further embarrassment to ourselves. This country has been disgraced for too long. For how long shall we continue to remain the laughingstock of the world?
Njei M.T (www.njeitimah-outlook.com)