Kamto’s Victory Declarations: Chief Justice Ayah Paul Abine Gives Legal Lessons To Atanga Nji, Co
By NFOR Hanson Nchanji
Rerired Attorney General at the SupremeCourt, Chief Justice Ayah Paul, says the declarations of Maurice Kamto, President of Cameroon Renaissance Movement, on his supposed victory in the just ended Presidetial elections, were within the law.
He said since the electoral code in article 113 gives presidents of Polling stations to proclaim results, Kamto therefore could have used the entire results gathered to insinuate that he has the majority.
Ayah on PROCLAMATION OF RESULTS
Whereas it is common knowledge now that the Constitutional Council has exclusive jurisdiction (the exclusive legal right) to proclaim the results of certain elections in Camerouoon, the question as to the meaning of PROCLAMATION appears to remain elusive even to some lawyers. Many are a layman that have embarked upon frolics of their own. But that is not as intolerable as the assumptions of members of the learned profession, guided, perhaps, by sordid invested interests.
Lawyers are not unaware that, in the context of elections, proclamation involves the formal making of a public pronouncement relative to who among the candidates has carried the day. Such pronouncements are buttressed (backed up) with statistics as to the scores of the various candidates. Often, the statistics are substantiated by each candidate’s votes at chosen levels.
Proclamation, then, is much more than the making of a statement in public about a candidate’s score at an election. As a matter of fact, the law, (the electoral code in our context), makes it mandatory (compulsory) for the results at each polling station to be made PUBLIC on the spot at the close of the polls. If proclamation was equal to making public the results, it means that results are PROCLAIMED at each polling station.
This can only be nonsensical because it would defeat the exclusive prerogative of the Constitutional Council to enforce (ensure) the regularity of elections. Resorting to an analogy here could be instructive and salutary. Making public the results is like a product at the initial stage. If it is good, it will survive winnowing by the Constitutional Council. It is discarded otherwise. So the finished product could remain unchanged; it could be changed or sorted out.
As regards Professor Maurice Kamto’s pronouncements yesterday, it is palpably clear that he did nothing more than what the law permits. Making public his gross score at the election in subtle terms (without specifically stating the score in figures) was only repeating what the polling stations had already legally done. In fact, it is a contradiction in terms even to say that he “made public”. You cannot “make public” that which is already of public knowledge: you cannot make public the results already made public by the polling stations! Were that even the case, you cannot infringe the law by conduct that the very law permits.
If, therefore, the CPDM barons are jittery, there is the strong/powerful suggestion that their rival’s cautionary recurrence within the law is inimical to their machinations to turn the results around behind the scene. But at law, Professor Maurice Kamto’s conduct is NOT reprehensible. He cleverly chose his terms!
NA GUILTY CONSCIENCE BORN LOSS-SENSE!
ME FIAGA!
