Will Biya Show Mercy To Fru Ndi & SDF?
As President Paul Biya is expected to appoint 30 senators
to complete the list of 100 senators that make up the Upper House of
Parliament, hopes and expectations are rife that the President should consider
appointing at least three senators from the opposition SDF party if just to
enable the struggling party to have a group in the senate so as to share in the
juicy spoils that come with having a senatorial group.
The SDF
party won a paltry seven seats in the 25 March 2018 senatorial election,
scoring 8.7%. It had 14 seats in 2013. This decline in the political fortunes
of the once very popular and vibrant party is telling, if not catastrophic.
Though
occupying second place in the election behind the ruling CPDM (63 seats and
81%), the SDF did not have the requisite 10 senatorial seats to merit it a
group at the senate. Having a group at the senate is understood to bring
certain pecuniary and other advantages to the senators of the party. The Group
leader for instance is entitled to official lodging in Yaounde, a driver, a
bodyguard, a cook and other sundry personnel in his cabinet all paid by the
state. Then the party could also produce a vice president of senate and maybe a
questor. All these positions are very juicy in terms of salaries and other
fringe benefits.
The SDF
has every reason therefore to throw itself at the mercy of President Paul Biya,
who by virtue of the constitution has the singular and exclusive prerogative to
appoint the rest 30 senators.
But the
question on every lip is: “will the President consider his rival/friend, John
Fru Ndi, and extend his legendary magnanimity and mercy to his party, which is
now suffering, and evidently desperate?”
Many
voices are of the opinion that the President should show mercy to the SDF and
appoint at least three senators from the party if only to give the senate a
colourful look.
Political
pundits recall that even though the SDF is not in the Presidential Majority,
Fru Ndi could still evoke the secret pact his party signed with Biya’s party in
2002 that enable the SDF to go to parliament after initially talking of
boycotting the house over the acrimonious parliamentary elections that year.
Though
the content of the CPDM-SDF agreement in 2002 still remains a mystery to both
militants of the SDF and the wider public, it is understood that the SDF and
the CPDM have since become strange bed-fellows after the signing of the pact.
It
remains a mystery to many also that the SDF won all senatorial seats in Adamawa
region in 2013 even though she had not even one councilor in the region. Many
said the fact that the UNDP that shared the councilors in that region with the
CPDM lost the vote to the SDF, after the CPDM list was cancelled, was telling.
Be it as
it may, it is in the interest of President Biya, who prides himself as a
liberal democrat, to consider empowering the SDF at the senate this, if just to
give a semblance to the international community of the existence of “advanced
democracy” in Cameroon.
It is
understood that the president will appoint some senators from parties in the
Presidential majority including the Bello Bouba’s UNDP, Hamadou Moustapha’s
ANDP and perhaps Tchiroma’s NSFC and the limping UPC.
Yet,
whether or not Biya will consider the SDF and appoint more senators from the
party, one point continues to make itself clearly evident and this is that the
SDF has circumscribed itself over time in the NW region. And this is very
regrettable for a party that calls itself a national party and which was at one
time the only hope of Cameroonians for political change in the country.
Commentators
say it was evidence of dwindling fortunes that the SDF fielded candidates in
just five of the ten regions of the country.
In
politics as they say “anything is possible”. So, for now and until President
Biya announces his much-awaited list of 30 senators, we can only hold our
breadth and keep our fingers crossed.
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