Political Change and Constitutionalism in Africa by Okon Akiba

Author:Okon Akiba [Akiba, Okon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780429676130
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 54876639
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

(III) The first Cameroon republic: birth of a single-party state

The months from December 1959 through 1961 were momentous. Ahidjo had assumed executive and legislative power in Cameroon, which at the time had no constitution, and he would soon exercise dominion over constitution making. Did the president inherit a political tabula rasa? There was bountiful opportunity for the leadership to influence and determine the contents of laws and how the principal institutions of the land, including the civil service and the armed forces, were to be structured. The opposition’s protestations and insistence on national healing and rehabilitation of Cameroonian society via postwar reconciliation were officially dismissed with insidious equanimity.

Ahidjo would use his political acquaintances to forge a new constitution for the emergent republic: Jacques Rousseau and Paul-Louis Audat were contracted to prepare a draft constitution, and the finished document was proofread by another political “buddy,” Professor Maurice Duvenger. The professor was assisted in the task of looking at the document by the commander of the French gendarmerie in Cameroon, Colonel Jacques Richard. Indeed, the latter is credited with articulating the “special emergency powers” that constitutionally absolve the president of any democratic accountability and responsibility, and stipulating the harshest punishment to deter popular uprisings.

The following exceptional characteristics in Ahidjo’s constitution making are noteworthy: The Cameroonian constitution at this historical juncture was constructed outside the legitimate confines of the parliament and by private hands; and those unorthodox constitution builders were able to accomplish the otherwise onerous commission of constitution making in short order, in a couple of days. And things evolved rapidly thereafter: Members of the Constitutional Consultative Committee (CCC), who had already been selected (October 30, 1959), met and approved the draft document unanimously, after 11 days of deliberation, from January 16 to 27, 1960. And once the draft document was promulgated into law (1960 Cameroon Constitution),74 the electorate voted to adopt it on February 21, 1960. An overwhelming 89 percent of the negative votes against the document nationally were cast in the south,75 as should have been expected and predicted. The Constitution was massively rejected by the largely revolutionary populations in that notoriously flammable southern zone of French Cameroon.

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