By Joe Dinga Pefok
The General Secretariat of the ruling CPDM has increasingly become worried by the lack of sound arguments being publicly advanced by the party's officials and militants in support of the plan to amend Article 6 (2) of the 1996 Constitution, to give President Paul Biya a third term.
A source at the Central Committee of the CPDM told The Post in Douala on February 4, that the party hierarchy has become quite disturbed with the trends of the hullabaloo about the amendment of the constitution.
He stated that their local party officials as well as militants are generally confused, disunited and inconsistent in their different efforts to argue in defence of a revision of the constitution.
Leave Biya's Name Out
Our source noted that many CPDM party officials and militants as well as some prominent CPDM elite, have, just like the opposition, been publicly linking the party's call for constitutional change to its plan to have Biya as life president.
The source admits that even though the plan of the CPDM in reality is
to have Biya run for another mandate in 2011, the party, however, does
not want its call for the amendment to be presented publicly or be seen
as a campaign to seek another presidential term for Biya.
The CPDM hierarchy is said to be very worried that the opposition and
civil society groups have so far been successful in winning public
support against the amendment of the constitution.
The CPDM Central Committee source told The Post that the party hierarchy was partly to be blame for the rather weak, confusing and inconsistency in the arguments of the party officials and militants.
The source noted that besides the fact that the position of the party on the issue is known to militants, the Central Committee did not promptly arm the party officials with solid and uniform arguments in favour of a constitutional amendment.
There are no guidelines. As a result, it has been a matter of CPDM officials trying at their individual levels to come up with arguments to defend the party's stance. Worse still, the source went on, it was observed that in spite of the willingness of the local party officials to defend the party's stance, many of them have been fumbling, simply because they did not understand well the stakes.
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Our source also told us that it was against this disturbing background that it was resolved that a forum be organised to bring together all CPDM Section Presidents across the country on February 7 in Yaounde.
This is what has been code named an "information and training seminar", for some 750 delegates, drawn from the 244 CPDM Sections across the country.One of the major objectives of the seminar, apparently, is to educate the Section Presidents on the basic texts of the party. This is seen to be quite important, because many of the Section Presidents are new in their posts.
A number of other items were reportedly programmed at a preparatory meeting that held at the CPDM headquarters in Yaounde last week. However, our source confirmed that the topic on the plan to revise the constitution was programmed to be the principal focus of the seminar.
The General Secretariat of the CPDM Central Committee headed by René Sadi (Secretary General) had reportedly brought together a cream of the party's resource persons to prepare the party's official arguments in defence of a revision of the 1996 Constitution.
It seems that though the greatest interest of the CPDM in the revision of the Constitution is article 6 (2), there are indications that the party will be demanding for a few other changes in the constitution to hoodwink the public.
There is nothing to hide about in the fact that Cameroon will be thrown into confusion and disunity if these few CPDM individuals succeed in pushing through the Biya-for-life agenda. The gentility of Cameroonians should not be taken for granted. A docile lion always remains a brave lion who fights till death. I advice that the regime recruit more Ewondos and Bulus into the Police force to cope with what will befall the nation. Remember Kenya can never be the same peaceful country again.
Posted by: kenedy Epie | Saturday, 09 February 2008 at 11:23 AM