Constitutional Vacancy in La République du Cameroun.

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Today Friday 18th October 2024 is day 46 of Mr Biya’s absence from his office in Yaounde.

As he is “not” ill, he has no reasons, not to say excuses, for being away from his “constitutional workplace” for this long without justification. Mr Biya is deemed to have resigned his post by abandoning it…

“In the event of a temporary impediment, the President of the Republic shall instruct the Prime Minister or, if the Prime Minister is unable to attend, another member of the Government, to carry out some of his functions, in the case of an express delegation.”

He is not ill as per the 8th October Communique from his Chief of Staff, just to be clear so the 45 day limit is applicable – at least to be considered as unreasonable for anyone to be absent from their workplace without justification.

While the same communique may have claimed he was doing his job, article 8(1) defines his work place as the presidency in Yaounde, primarily, or other justifiable locations within La République du Cameroun. He certainly could not do his routine job overseas. Non-routine parts of his job would be diplomatic aspects – and nothing like being cloistered in secret in a Swiss hotel.

Certain minsters have been quick to say that there is no actual time limit at which the vacancy would be triggered but Mr Biya’s habits would have lead him to try to make it back within the disputed limit. That eh did not suggests bigger considerations than any argument about the time limits not being defined.

What should happen now?

The Constitutional Council should notice, having been  been made to notice the vacancy [called resignation, if he has abandoned his place of work and his job] by the Speaker of the Lower House, and they should act to address it as by passing the torch to his constitutional heir…

That constitutional heir would be the speaker of the senate Niat Njifenji, who, sadly is in no state to step in as he is off for treatment in Europe. His vice-speaker should step in …

Quickly, it is clear that there are just too many improvisations to be called into play if the CC were to do its job. It is exactly the sort situations where the French have been known to step in to “help” and everyone can guess their “advice”.

As it happens, if the vacancy is not noticed, Barrister Tamfu has petitioned the Speaker of the Assembly to ensure he notices the vacancy and seizes the Constitutional Council.

All of the foregoing has built-in loop holes. For one thing, all the players in the chain are appointees of Mr Biya and are very unlikely to play their parts to discard him.  The speaker will wait as long as possible, giving the Constitutional Council all that time to wait, before they wait again as they “deliberate”. The upshot, Ambazonia News surmises is that this law, even in spirit, is only for the poor, like most La République du Cameroun laws.

Mr Biya’s fall will, in the end, not come directly from the law. Had he been in any position to circumvent it he would have tried to get back just in time to avoid the criticism – at least avoid his lackeys having to defend his position in front of the international community.  That he has not does not bode well for his basic functional health, rendering the “debate” about 45 days and any semantice and technicalities completely moot given his is very unlikely to be able to evcen contin ue to issue “high instructions” having failed to show himself “capable”.  “His” [Mr Biya’s] dubious tenure has seen him burn bridges in the diplomatic arena, for instance with Switzerland and Canada most reccently, both of whom “he” duped into fools’ errands  over the Ambazonian Liberation Struggle. To recall, he lead these two partner nations down the garden path of playing at “negotiations” before publicly disowning their statements. In the case of Canada, it was Global Affairs Canada’s head, the Minster of Foreign Affairs for Canada,  who was disowned summarily contracdicted, having been misled to publicly announce dealings known as Pre-Talks between La Republique and Ambazonia. If La République du Cameroun had dispatched a functionary to slap her in the face that could not have been more offensive.

In Switzerland’s case, La Republique du Cameroun allowed a peripheral “opposition” minister delegate to issue an op-ed claiming Mr Biya was a genius for dribbling the international community away from sanctions. An admission of the genocidal crimes coupled with offending international partners – quite apart from the establishment of a reputation as unreliable. 

These two are only the overt players in the scene and, as is the way of international partners, there will be others whose bridges were torched less publicly in the same, or related episodes.

Ambazonia News brings these examples to show that “dirty launders” of the vacancy could not have come at a worse time – the lowest ebb of “trust”.  The secondary losses will fall on France who will have to further break cover when the try to crown their preferred “dauphin”, if their shenanigans in other French colonies is to be engaged again. Their standing in region is already tenuous and with the capital they have deployed in supporting La République du Cameroun’s genocidal war against Ambazonia they will need to have a lot of credit to burn, or a colossal amount to gain, to risk the attempt of a coronation in La République du Cameroun. If they do not line up their ducks, they will come unstuck especially in a theatre already primed and ready for exploitation by any disgruntled frenemies.

As Ambazonia News conjectured on the eve of expiry of the 45-day “understanding”, it does not matter  much whether Mr Biya returns or not and there is hardly any credit to be had for dying in service, given that he has never been in service and would likely have died showing his disdain for the country he was claiming to serve – frequenting a foreign health facility for his own failure ro cause the creation of one within “his” country, which fellow citizens could benefit from as part of his legacy.   Instead, he would be shown to have chosen to lavish resources on himself and his cronies while leaving abject poverty, incompetence, ineptitude and anarchy as his legacy.

His name would be “mud” so the French would have their work cut out to sustain a dynastic transition.

It will be intriguing to see how it unfolds in the next few days and weeks and months.

Ambazonians beware! Kamto ignores HCB 28/92 in trojan horse post.

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Renowned La République du Cameroun law academic and politician Maurice Kamto has wadded into the Ambazonian Liberation Struggle with a social media post in which he reheats the “wrong federalist” argument that “massive voter registration” in La République du Cameroun’s presidential election will “allow” Ambazonians, who he calls “anglophones”, to “exercise their self-determination by voting” in that “election”. In a previous post, Ambazonia News discussed the similarly blue-sky ideas of certain naïve federalists in suggesting that opinion polling could cause change “within” La République du Cameroun, which could facilitate the return of a federation by demonstrating the people’s preference.

On the face of it, Prof. Kamto’s post sounds “reasonable” and if we are wondering why it even needs to be made as an “offer”, then that is the paradox and where the offer damns itself, for it implies that “democracy” is a special offer in La République du Cameroun! To his credit, Prof Kamto, is ,therefore, acknowledging our [Ambazonian] experience of the lack of democracy in La République du Cameroun, where we do not even legally belong, and, therefore do not have to endure the abuses of what Prof. Kamto calls a “brutal, autocratic, kleptocratic” regime which has “mishandled the reunification”.

Prof. Kamto himself has spent the current “grand projects term” protesting a stolen vote in the last La République du Cameroun presidential election of 2018, so even if Ambazonians were gullible enough to fall for his “offer”, there would be no precedent to base any faith on, that their votes would “count”, or what would accrue if those votes did somehow count. There is no “consensual electoral system” in La République du Cameroun, even for their own citizens as Prof. Kamto himself has often lamented, so Ambazonians would have to be gullible indeed to suppose that they could achieve any self-determination through a La République du Cameroun-organised vote, already disowned by their own citizens, including principally the gentleman advocating such a folly! Prof. Kamto would appear to be asking Ambazonians to replay the mistakes of the past by diving head-first into an ill-defined “association” merely in the “hope that it will turn out alright as we are brothers”! Ambazonians, you have learnt from those mistakes at high and continuing cost. Do you want La République du Cameroun militia firing into school-bound traffic, or even controlling such traffic? In what country on the planet would such victims spurn the opportunity to break free from such a fix?

But that is not all. There are more fundamental legal issues at play to do with the Bamenda High Court ruling, HCB 28/92, a fact which makes Prof. Kamto’s apparent offer more threatening, compounded by his renown as lawyer. HCB 28/92 ruled that La République du Cameroun is/was “forcefully and illegally occupying Southern Cameroons, unless La République du Cameroun showed just cause”. La République du Cameroun has never addressed, appealed or tackled the ruling in any way other than through “force”, even before the recent seven year period of heightened genocidal acts in Southern Cameroons by her militias.

HCB 28/92 says, in so many words, that La République du Cameroun and Ambazonia are separate nations on the basis of La République du Cameroun having had her international borders set in 1960, and reaffirmed same in 1984, thereby releasing Southern Cameroons from the unratified process of a “federation of equal states” engaged in 1961. As long as La République du Cameroun is called La République du Cameroun, it has those borders and zero right to any Ambazonian territory -economic, social or political. In fact, better still, it does not matter if La République du Cameroun changes her name, for it is now like we are in the plebiscite campaign period when decisions could not be made for either La République du Cameroun or Southern Cameroons except by those separate peoples themselves, separately.

La République du Cameroun citizens were not allowed to vote in the plebiscite and they are not allowed to vote today in Ambazonia or offer Ambazonians a vote in La République du Cameroun! Ambazonia regained the right to her own destiny in 1984 and her citizens do not need to be offered any thing in La République du Cameroun’s political system. What’s more, the value of such an “offer” to take take part in an illegal election under an electoral system, he himself rejects, and when Ambazonia has a righteous legal and moral cause is frankly disingenuous and nebulous.

The real danger and loss if any Ambazonians fall for this wooden horse would be that they provide the fig-leaf/thread of “representation” by which La République du Cameroun’s forceful occupation hangs over Ambazonia. Is it possible Prof. Kamto can make this “offer” not because he expects to win the La République du Cameroun election but because he is one of the La République du Cameroun class of “gouvernants” who want to continue pillaging Southern Cameroons and their own country on behalf of a foreign manipulative colonial power?

Ambazonians beware! It is not your vote that they want! They just want to be able to say you are represented in their system so that they can continue to exploit you as they have always done. Reject this “offer” and La République du Cameroun will have to leave so that you can run your own country and benefit from your own efforts and hard work. It is not even a realistic offer as it is illegal under international law for La République du Cameroun to try to organise their elections on Ambazonian territory.

Please recall that there is a Presidential Executive Order reminding Ambazonians of their freedom to shun La République du Cameroun’s make-believe.

See also, why the federalists are wrong and the Bamenda High Court Ruling

The Most High God is the Watchman of Ambazonia.