2018 Election Cameroon - The Constitutional Council (CC) Shot Themselves In The Foot

The missed opportunity of the Constitutional Council (CC) as an electoral judge in relation to the challenge of some of its members for suspicion of bias.

The CC as an electoral judge failed to seize the opportunity to shed light on a number of provisions of its organic law. Judging this day, October 16, 2018, inadmissible the request for recusation of 3 members of the CC, while it is clear, on their part the non-compliance with the statutory rules on incompatibilities imagined to ensure the independence of said Council, the electoral judge by his posture, did not evacuate the suspicion of impartiality which continues to hover over the organ because of the mode of political choice of its members.

2018 Election Cameroon - The Constitutional Council (CC)

The CC could have taken advantage of this to clarify the notion of force majeure contained in the 2004 law organizing it, with regard to the question of quorum for deliberate. Indeed the CC can rule in the absence of two of its members.

The quorum rule is thus fixed for the presence of 9 members out of 11. But, in case of impediment or force majeure, the CC can deliberate with less than 9 members ... This is the second paragraph of the Article 13 which provides for it. On that basis, therefore, the judge could have acceded to Mr Kamto’s challenge and thereby strengthened his credibility.
Rather than this, the CC felt that Mr. Kamto did not have the authority to consider that the Presidential Candidate was asking some of his members to relinquish their mandate, thus giving the same legal nature to the challenge and renunciation.