Security Concerns:

Cemac Commissioners Avoid Bangui, CAR Headquarters

Commissioners and workers snub Summit President’s instruction for HQ to be returned to Bangui, CAR 

Heads of States of the Cemac sub-region must meet urgently and take a decision on the situation of the Headquarters of the Cemac Commission if they must guarantee unity and harmony within the commission.

            Representatives of the Central African Republic CAR in the Commission boycotted a meeting of the institution in Bangui, Chad, on 24 March, complaining that the meeting was supposed to hold in Bangui, CAR, which harbors the headquarters of the Cemac Commission.

            Before that meeting most of the Commissioners of Cemac had taken temporal residence in Malabor, Equatorial Guinea, where the Headquarters was temporally transferred due to the crisis in CAR.

            Reports say confusion set in at the Commission ever since the forceful ouster from power of former CAR president, Francois Bozize. Following the coup, most of the Cemac Commissioners that were resident in Bangui, packed bag and baggage and sought safe sanctuary in Douala. They evoked security concerns.

            In February 2014 the former President of Cemac Commission, Pierre Musa indicated to CAR authorities and to Heads of State of Cemac his intention to transfer temporarily the headquarters of the commission to Libreville, Gabon. This was even as most of the commission members had taken residence in Douala, Cameroon.

            But it was in Malabor, Equatorial Guinea that the Headquarters was finally transferred on a temporal basis.

            During the last Summit of heads of state of Cemac in Ndjamena, Chad, in February 2017, the Summit President, Idriss Derby suggested that the Commission HQ be moved back to Bangui where it is statutorily HQ is supposed to be lodged. Derby said the crisis that led to the temporal displacement of the HQ was over and security had returned in Bangui.

            But over one year after the Ndjamena Summit, members of Cemac Commission are still scattered here and there, as the HQ is still maintained in Malabor.

            The Interim President of the Commission, Mrs Fatima Amin evoked lack of befitting residences in Bangui to house the Commissioners. She said commissioners cannot be lodged in hotels with their families.

            With the boycott of Commission matters by representatives of CAR, it becomes incumbent for the Heads of State to make a final ruling on the issue of the HQ of the Cemac Commission.