In Cameroon, the candidates and political parties running for the senatorial elections of March 12, have until Saturday, January 28, midnight, to submit their files. The CPDM, the party in power, seems the only one to really compete.
With our correspondent in Yaoundé, Polycarp Essomba
From this midnight Saturday evening, Elecam, the body in charge of organizing the ballot, will then have two weeks to publish the final lists of candidates.
This is an essential step towards the election scheduled for March 12, but before that, the electoral council will examine the said candidate files, in particular their compliance with the law. This sieve work has already been harsh within the CPDM, the ruling party which has seen the birth, thanks to the convocation of the electorate, of many internal appetites.
The party itself expressed, in a circular signed by its national president, a desire for renewal and rejuvenation of its elected officials in this Upper House of Parliament. Thus, each of the ten lists of seven candidates will have to include two candidates aged 40 to 50, including a titular woman and a substitute woman.
The CPDM, which controls almost all the regional and municipal councils, should logically win these elections hands down. The point that will be particularly scrutinized after the election will be the renewal or not, as President of the Senate, of the current President, Marcel Niat Njifenji, 88 years old. Not insignificant when we know that the President of the Senate is the constitutional successor of the President of the Republic in the event of a vacancy in office.
The opposition, as a whole, has few illusions. The MRC, which has no elected officials, will be absent and the SDF is still as badly affected by the English-speaking crisis which caused it to lose all its town halls in 2020, in its traditional strongholds in the northwest and southwest, to the benefit of the CPDM. .
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