The Director General of ELECAM, Mr. Eric ESSOUSSE, is on an assigned mission against the people of Cameroon. I solemnly call for his immediate resignation or dismissal, and that of the board members of Electoral Council of ELECAM, this is in order to preserve peace in our country.
Despite the huge sums of money allocated for the proper functioning of this organ. Budget from which ELECAM has benefited for over ten years, most especially during elections years, the Director General and members of the Electoral Council are more concerned with their living standards and various privileges which they enjoy rather than with providing the body in charge of elections with sufficient kits and logistical means for the efficient registration of voters.
How can Mr Éric ESSOUSSE, who for five months has refused to publish the national statistics of voters registrations, and in total violation of the law, dares to dictate on operational hours of services thereby preventing millions of Cameroonians from being able to exercise one of their fundamental civil rights, namely the right to register and be able to vote, which is only effective through registration on an electoral list?
How can Mr ESSOUSSE, whose agents have just been caught in the act of fraudulent registration in complicity with police officers in charge of identification in the home of a CPDM militant in MASSANGAM, has still not opened registration to all Cameroonians in the diaspora. How can he to allow himself to prevent Cameroonians of the grassroots from registering to vote after their long days of toil, these Cameroonians who work like slaves just to earn their daily bread whereas the Director General of ELECAM and the lucky members of the Electoral Council live comfortably on their tax money?
It must be stressed that ELECAM staff are not civil servants. In addition, ELECAM has only one mission: to always prepare for elections on an ongoing basis knowing that the most important part of their mission is for all citizens of voting age to register to vote.
ELECAM holds many unwarranted seminars on Saturdays and Sundays, without any reference to working hours or working days. In the same way, its executives drive their luxurious company cars every week-end without this posing any problem for them either.
How does Mr Éric ESSOUSSE intend to repair the enormous damage caused by ELECAM to Cameroonians who have still not seen the national voters’ list that the Electoral Code requires him to publish at the end of December each year and which would enable them to ensure that they are indeed on the list or to request corrections in the event of an error or omission in their names?
How does he intend to repair the damage done to those who are unable to register on the electoral lists due to the lack of functional registration kits available in quantity, and to those in the diaspora who have been deliberately prevented by ELECAM
from registering for the past five months?
Mr Eric ESSOUSSE and the members of ELECAM’s Electoral Council are a danger to the exercise of the fundamental political freedoms of the Cameroonian people.
Mr ESSOUSSE wants to play the political Hercules, the unlikely hero of a political tragedy whose elements he is trying to put in place. With the support of the Electoral Council, he believes he can save the CPDM from a predicted electoral debacle. In his previous life at the Ministry of Territorial Administration, he had been breathtaking in his role as the gravedigger of public freedoms, in particular the freedoms of the press and information.
This time, at ELECAM, he has no doubt promised to outdo himself and work miracles. What vanity in the face of a people who are awake, on their feet, and fully aware of their responsibilities to their own destiny and that of their country.
How can Cameroonian citizens, paid with the taxes of the Cameroonian people, work to such an extent against these same people, against democracy, and for the same party, the CPDM, which has plunged our country into the abyss in four decades of uninterrupted and solitary exercise of power? This cannot and must not continue. The political authorities must assume their responsibilities in the face of this group of lawless individuals if they do not have the elegance to resign themselves. Peace in our country depends on it.
In the meantime, I call on the millions of Cameroonians, whose determination to register [in their numbers]on the electoral lists can easily be read in their burning and irresistible desire for change and alternation in the various elections to come, not to let themselves be discouraged by Mr ESSOUSSE and the members of ELECAM’s Electoral Council manipulations.
I invite you, the people of Cameroon, to give a memorable response to their deception by registering massively on the electoral register, by inviting your family members, colleagues, and friends to do the same, in their thousands or even millions, and to invite other Cameroonians to do the same. Let’s do this so that, when the time comes, we can also go out [massively] pass out our verdict peacefully and through the ballot box. The regime that ELECAM’s leaders want to impose on us once again through fraud in the various elections to come must be rejected.
Yaoundé, 30 April 2024
The National President of the CRM
Maurice KAMTO
