French Cameroun surrogate insists elections must hold in Southern Cameroons ⁰

Barely 25 days to the February 9 Legislative and Municipal elections, the Board Chair of Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, Enow Abrams Egbe, says almost all the materials required for the polls are in place.

The ELECAM boss was speaking in Yaoundé Friday, January 10, during a working visit to the National Printing Press, the Military Air Base N° 101, and other institutions involved in the production of electoral materials. He was there to assess the progress of work done by the Commission in place.

The Chairperson of ELE- CAM was accompanied by the Director General of ELECAM, Board Members and other officials. “We are on a tour to evaluate the performance of the Director General and his team in terms of material preparations and we are very pleased that, at this moment, the work is well done. We have less than 28 days to go for elections and we can comfortably say now loud and clear that Elections will effectively take place on February 9 and all the polling stations will be furnished with all their electoral materials,” he said.

He equally lauded the Director General of ELECAM, Erik Essousse and his team, for a great job, while urging them to remain vigilant and concentrated to make sure that everything moves in the right direction. Talking about the electoral materials already in place and the various units, during the tour, the ELECAM Board Chair cited transparent ballot boxes, voters’ cards, polling materials, among other things.

The groups concerned are work throughout the day to ensure that all the electoral materials are de- livered to ELECAM latest January 25. SOPECAM has the contract to produce all the electoral materials for the Legislative and Council elections of five political parties. The materials include ballot papers and campaign materials.

The political parties include: the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM; Social Democratic Front, SDF; National Union for Democracy and Progress, NUDP; Alliance for Democracy and Development, ADD; and Cameroon National Salvation Front, CNSF.

The Director of the Production Department of SOPECAM said all the materials for the election of Members of the National Assembly have been produced and delivered to Elections Cameroon. The department, he said, was finalising those of the Municipal Councillors.

At the National Printing Press, work is almost done and sealed. The Director of the institution disclosed that, for the moment, they have the contract with ELECAM to produce envelopes for the election of Municipal Councillors. The different units are lodged in canopies that have been set up for the purpose of the elections. When each of the institutions finish producing the electoral materials, they are immediately handed to ELECAM teams that carry out controls to ascertain quality and quantity before the materials are transported to the Yaoundé 101 Airbase for deployment to the field.

Despite the progress made in the production of electoral materials, uncertainty still looms in the Northwest and Southwest Regions as kidnappings of opposition political party officials in recent week has been surging. There have been repeated threats from separatist fighters that elections will not hold in the Anglophone Regions in the heat of a war. But Government has insisted that the security of the electorates in guaranteed with the deployment of over 700 gendarmerie officers in the two Regions.

Source: Cameroon Info.Net