After 22 years, Cavaye sits tight as Assembly Speaker

Hon. Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, MP for the Mayo-Sava constituency in the Far North Region, is stepping into his 23rd year as Cameroon’s National Assembly Speaker.

A major item of the parliamentary ordinary session that opened on Thursday, March 10, 2016, with the election of the bureau of the National Assembly, and there are strong indications that the bureau of the House will maintain the status quo by enabling Hon. Cavaye to succeed himself once more in 23 years.

Sources from the ruling CDPM party told The Post that Hon. Cavaye would still be maintained as Speaker of the National Assembly if the Chairman of the CPDM does change his mind at the last minute.

“No major changes are going to take place at the helm of the National Assembly and the Senate because of the issues at stake. I mean the eminent amendment of the Constitution and certain provisions of the Electoral Code,” a source told The Post.

Hon. Cavaye entered the National Assembly as MP in 1970 and was elected in 1992 to succeed the late Lawrence Fonka Shang as Assembly Speaker. Since then, Cavaye has continued to call the shots as the Head of the Legislature in Cameroon.

The septuagenarian has survived the storm of opposition from his political enemies in the CPDM. In 2008, one CPDM MP from the Far North, Hon. Adama Modi, stormed the hemicycle and vehemently opposed the re-election of Hon. Cavaye by presenting his candidature for the post of Speaker.

Although the MP was accused of violating party discipline, Hon. Adama Modi acted the scene again in 2009. The Post learnt that the CPDM party hierarchy finally called him to order and cowed him into submission in 2010. He remained silent until he quit Parliament a few years back.

The CPDM party hierarchy has continued to bestow confidence on Cavaye. That is why observers believe that the Central Committee and the CPDM parliamentary group meeting that would be convened in the coming days to designate a Speaker and other members of the bureau, would be performing mere formality.

The Post learnt that President Biya does not effect any changes at the helm of Parliament given his alleged bid to organise early presidential election.

“President Biya is a very clever politician. He prefers to deal with the devils that he knows rather than with the angels that he knows very little about,” one CPDM insider remarked.

The parliamentary session begins at a time that CPDM officials and supporters all over the country are calling Biya to run again for the post of the nation’s Head of State.

Apart from the opposition parties that roundly rejected the calls as a wave of political madness, few people in the CPDM also took exception to them. They are Sultan Mbombo Njoya of Foumban, Tobbie Ndi and Eloi Bidoung, all CPDM supporters in Yaounde.