Anticipated presidential election:

Chief Justice Ayah Paul Abine

Cameroonian journalists are hypocrites - Says Ayah
By Ojong Steven Ayukogem in Yaounde
“The journalist in Cameroon pretends to be against in public, but “for” behind the scenes.” This is the grim picture that the Advocate-General of the Supreme Court who doubles as Secretary-General of the PAP party, Chief Justice Ayah Paul Abine paints of Cameroonian journalists.
    Ayah says he is surprised at the way some Cameroonian journalists are reacting to calls for President Paul Biya to convene early presidential elections as a means towards extending and/or perpetuating his stay in power. The super-scale magistrate who was candidate in the last presidential election in Cameroon in 2011, affirms that the constitutional/legal instances where early presidential elections can be called in Cameroon are so clear and unambiguous, and except President Biya wants to toy with the constitution, it is really so difficult for him to heed the call by his party comrades to convene the electorate for an anticipated presidential vote.

    “It’s really so difficult to imagine of what stuff Camerounese are made! Corrupt in just every aspect of life! That is being truly unique! ....... Every reasonable citizen knows that the issue of the possibility of early presidential election in Cameroun since the 1996 constitutional revision has been laid to rest by the repeated explanation of several legal experts in constitutional law. If any honest journalist or some other citizen is in doubt, one expects that the person in doubt would seek counsel,” says Ayah in a posting on his facebook page.
    The legal mind and politician posits that, “by virtue of the 18 January 1996 constitution, there are only three instances where there can be early (“anticipated”) presidential election in Cameroun. The first is where the president dies in office; the second is where the president resigns; and the third is where the president is permanently incapacitated as ascertained by the constitutional council. Thus Ayah maintains that “under no other circumstance can early presidential election hold in Cameroun within the law!”
    Discernibly suspect of and perhaps perplexed by the way journalists and other misguided citizens are heralding the call for early presidential election, Ayah wondered: “What then is the constitutional/legal foundation of all the empty talk about early presidential election in Cameroon? .... It is just like a hunter using a dog to pursue a hare!”
    Ayah regrets that journalists in Cameroon instead of running to experts to get the right answers and explanations on the big question of the moment they rather elect to “erratically publishing trash in the hope of preparing the minds of Cameroonians for a projected illegality.”
    He concludes that Cameroonian journalists are not neutral and objective; they pretend to be against in public, but ‘for’ behind the scenes.”