Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai
The controversial iconoclastic Public Intellectual, Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai has dismissed as inconsequential the recent law authorizing Cameroonians in the Diaspora to vote in local elections, saying, it will not guarantee the organization of free, fair, transparent and credible elections in the country. The Public Policy Analyst and graduate from the prestigious Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government in the USA argued that the Diaspora vote cannot be resolved without addressing underlying issues such as entitlement to citizenship and dual nationality, adding that the election management body, ELECAM as currently constituted lacks the capacity to handle the wide range of complex issues involving external enfranchisement.
“The transnational nature of external enfranchisement is an electoral reflection of globalization but because of the absence of an international consensus on external enfranchisement rights, my fear is that external balloting by Cameroonians in the Diaspora may become electoral black boxes and sources of confidence erosion in the democratic process rather than opportunities for lawful electoral participation. Besides, the rather cavalier manner in which the bill was rushed through Parliament and the urgency with which the President promulgated it into law raises fundamental questions whether MPs exercised due diligence and circumspection over the issue and the impact of the bill which was not even debated for two hours before it was adopted. This is utterly ridiculous,” Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai noted in a very thought-provoking interview with The Median in Yaounde.
Said Ekinneh: “It cost the Cameroonian taxpayer FCFA 265 million for the four days that Parliament met in extra-ordinary session, ostensibly to examine the bill on the Diaspora vote that was not debated for two hours, whereas MPs had been idling in Yaounde for two weeks, receiving their regular pay for no work done. How can you justify the FCFA 1.3 million each MP earned in four days for doing practically nothing, besides attending the funeral of their late colleague, Philemon Ajibolo? This is an insult to the Cameroonian people.”
Question: The President has promulgated into law the bill allowing Diaspora Cameroonians like you to vote in local elections, including the upcoming Presidential elections but you say the law is inconsequential, why?
Answer: Let me begin by saying that we are living in very perilous times with the nation at crossroads over its political future, thanks in part to the constitutional ambiguity over presidential succession and the confusion over the legality and constitutionality of President Biya’s candidacy. The law, in my view is inconsequential; it is a well contrived distraction because it does not address the fundamental problems of credibility and lack of confidence in the electoral process. If Cameroonian voters at home cannot change their leaders through the ballot box, what difference will it make if you involve Cameroonians abroad? Since 1992, the pursuit of free, fair and transparent elections has been elusive, and remains at best a luxurious desire. This is not going to change simply because Cameroonians in the Diaspora have been allowed to vote. It takes more than just a law to organize credible elections and I don’t think ELECAM has what it takes to organize credible elections in Cameroon, let alone in the Diaspora
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Question: You sound so pessimistic, whereas others think because of the enormous sacrifices made by Diaspora Cameroonians towards the development of their country, they should at least have a voice over who governs and manages their affairs.
To say I sound pessimistic is a mistaken assumption. I am just being realistic. As citizens, Diaspora voters have a legitimate claim to a vote in Cameroonian elections. As a community, they make substantial sacrifices to the development of their fatherland through remittances and other investment and income-generating activities. Advocates for electoral rights for external voters take the argument that a citizen’s voice and vote should not be affected by status and location. However, the Cameroonian case runs reverse on this argument. By enfranchising external voters on the basis of their location, new voices and votes will be created to selectively expand the electorate. The transnational nature of external enfranchisement is an electoral reflection of globalization but because of the absence of an international consensus on external enfranchisement rights, my fear is that external balloting by Cameroonians in the Diaspora may become electoral black boxes and sources of confidence erosion in the democratic process rather than opportunities for lawful electoral participation. Besides, the rather cavalier manner in which the bill was rushed through Parliament and the urgency with which the President promulgated it into law raises fundamental questions whether MPs exercised due diligence and even took time to examine international best practices in the area of electoral law and systems of representation, including external balloting.
Question: When you say new voices and votes will be created to selectively expand the electorate, are you suggesting that this will benefit the CPDM and what makes you think so?
Non-resident enfranchisement can be used as a form of political gerrymandering to selectively expand the electorate. Even though the Cameroonian Diaspora is not a geographical constituency, and thus does not represent a typical case of gerrymandering, all electoral systems that use external balloting are susceptible to it. In our case, it is clear that the Diaspora constituency represents a strong opposition base against the ruling CPDM party since a majority of Cameroonians abroad believe either rightly or wrongly, that the country is headed in the wrong direction and will prefer to see a change after 29 years of failed New Deal policies. For one thing, the issue can be easily resolved with presidential elections with one man casting one vote for a specific candidate, but with legislative and municipal elections, Diaspora voting becomes more complex and politically controversial, and for good measure. How external votes are translated into parliamentary seats, and ultimately the extent to which external votes influence domestic policies, depends on the structure of the parliament and two additional factors:(1) how many external votes are cast and where these votes are assigned geographically;(2) how many seats external voters are granted if extra-territorial seats will become a component of our system.We are talking about a situation wherein ELECAM will have to navigate through a new electoral landscape which is largely unchartered waters. It can be an opaque process; and in such conditions voter manipulation, massive fraud and other electoral malpractices are likely to be perpetrated especially by the party that controls the electoral machinery of the state.
Question: Your text book analysis are too theoretical, can you explain with concrete local examples why you disagree with the law?
I don’t know what you mean by theoretical but in system analysis of political theory, external votes in parliamentary elections can be assigned in one of three ways: (1) to a single, national constituency; (2) to sub-national constituencies; (3) to extra-territorial seats reserved for this purpose. In countries where electoral constituencies are delimited, external voters are usually assigned to a sub-national constituency. The most common approach in this context is to assign voters to their (former) place of residence. This is the practice in the USA, Canada, and Britain. But in our context of list system and special constituencies like Balikumbat designed to favor the CPDM, including instances where two or three sub-divisions are forced to share one parliamentary seat, this is susceptible to fraud, vote buying and all imaginable forms of political chicanery that makes a mockery of democracy.
Secondly, the cost of conducting an external vote - setting up polling stations, hiring staff and sending materials to multiple countries - is considered high by any country’s standards. Naturally, this results in a relatively low turnout of voters abroad, and a relatively high cost per voter. As most countries organize in-person external vote only in their embassies or consulates, it can be very difficult for those who live outside of the capital or far from the polling station to vote. To administrative and campaign costs of conducting electoral campaigns, which is partly funded from the state budget, one could add ‘unofficial’ costs such as politically motivated assistance, including instances of the use of state funds for the campaigns of political parties. According to the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), when countries have abolished the external vote, the main reason has normally been the cost.
Besides, little consideration was given to the fact that a majority of Cameroonian Diaspora are economic migrants, who obtained political asylum after telling heroic tales of political persecution by the Biya regime. These Cameroonians have not changed their nationality; and it is hard to see how they will be allowed to vote.
Finally, I will be glad to be proven wrong and I stand to be corrected, but ELECAM has neither the means nor the capacity to conduct a vote of Cameroonians abroad. It is mere wishful thinking because ELECAM cannot even undertake genuine voter registration in Cameroon, to the extent that CPDM militants have torpedoed and hijacked the process with nationwide campaigns to register their militants. The exercise has now become a game of magical numbers as each sub-division fights to “out-register” the other amid promises of 100% support for Paul Biya. The whole thing is just a circus
Question: What in your view is the real problem with ELECAM?
The real problem with ELECAM is that it doesn’t meet even the basic minimum threshold for an Election Management Body (EMB) that can strengthen and support constitutional democracy. There are three broad models of electoral management, namely: the independent model, the government model and the mixed model. Every EMB has the responsibility of ensuring the legitimacy, credibility and integrity of its electoral processes. Over the years, guiding principles have been developed internationally for election administration. These guiding principles include the following: independence, impartiality, integrity, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness, service-mindedness, and professionalism.
There is yet to be an agreement internationally on what constitutes an independent EMB because independent is normally viewed as consisting of two elements, formal and normative independence. Formal independence requires the independence of an EMB to be protected in the constitution or the law, which should also provide for the size, composition and membership tenure of an EMB as well as the appointment and removal procedure of its members. Normative independence on the other hand requires independence in decision making and functioning, in other words, independence in action, which in my view, is more important than formal or structural independence. ELECAM as currently constituted does not meet this threshold and no matter who is appointed into ELECAM, the system is a nonstarter.
Question: Let me get your views on this politically controversial issue; is Biya’s candidacy in the 2011 presidential election unconstitutional?
Paul Biya’s candidacy is potentially unconstitutional in matter of fact and law. At the time Cameroonians voted in 2004, what they had in their mind was that they were giving Paul Biya his last mandate. At the time Paul Biya took the oath of office in 2004, the President himself knew that he will be serving his last mandate. Whatever amendments were made to the constitution to remove presidential term limits had nothing to do with the incumbent because the law is not retroactive. If lawmakers wanted to exonerate Paul Biya from the mandate-barred provision, they would have expressly stated so in the amendment. But they did not. All the gesticulations by CPDM militants will not change the facts; the law is the law. Besides, Biya is tired and should go and rest.
Question: But militants of the ruling CPDM party have been calling on Biya to stand as evidence by five volumes of the “Peoples’ Call” published by SOPECAM.
The so-called “Peoples’ Call” is political jobbery and grandstanding at its worst. I don’t know why they are calling him, but it strikes me as disingenuous that even intellectuals can lose all their sense of honor and dignity and join political brigands and hirelings to project something that they genuinely do not believe in. As a long serving incumbent, Biya's candidacy cannot be a situational call. The president as an incumbent should be running on his record, and based on this record, Cameroonians will make the determination whether or not he deserves their trust. The fact that CPDM militants have gone grandstanding and are begging Biya to stand as their candidate is a telling illustration of the fact that the incumbent has no record to run on; or they are trying to run away from his record. You will be surprised to hear me say the CPDM is not a political party. The CPDM is a loose amalgam of contending impulses and special interests revolving around one man: Paul Biya. The day Biya leaves office; the whole enterprise will unravel and crumble. In policy analysis, we call this kind of bad governance, “state capture” by vampire elite who want to keep power just to protect their selfish personal interests. The degree of travesty to which Cameroonian intellectuals have descended in their deification of Paul Biya is indeed amazing. Fortunately, every beginning has an end; when the time comes, we will call out all those people who are claiming now that Paul Biya is the only one who can reason for the entire country. Most of those political jobbers and self-centered pedestrians don’t even know Paul Biya; the man might have grown in his job, but he still remains a recluse.
Question: Any last word to our readers?
The Cameroonian Diaspora has always been viewed with hostility and suspicion, in the wake of the mass demonstrations by Cameroonians abroad who miss no opportunity to embarrass the President, be it in Bruxelles, Paris, London, Geneva, New York or Washington DC. This apparent hostility of the Diaspora and the public humiliation of the President has so angered Yaounde authorities and engendered an “us” versus “them” mentality within Biya’s closest advisers, especially those who have served in diplomatic missions abroad. The government is very aware that in the countdown to the next presidential election, the rising crescendo of “Biya Must Go” echoes will intensify in the Diaspora where Cameroonians hope to bring international pressure to bear on the regime to quit power. The government is not sincere about engaging the Diaspora; they are merely looking for a way to scapegoat and emasculate the Diaspora, but Cameroonians are paying a huge price for the bad governance.
It cost the Cameroonian taxpayer FCFA 265 million for the four days that Parliament met in extra-ordinary session, to examine the bill on the Diaspora vote that was not debated for two hours, whereas MPs had been idling in Yaounde for two weeks, receiving their regular pay for no work done. How can you justify the FCFA 1.3 million each MP earned in four days for doing practically nothing, besides attending the funeral of their late colleague, Philemon Ajibolo? This is an insult to the Cameroonian people.
This interview was conducted in Yaounde Cameroon by Ojong Steven Ayukogem.
