ELECAM lauds youth participation in voter registration

The first session of the Electoral Board of Elections Cameroon held on June 23, 2015, in Yaounde.

The year 2015 will certainly enter the records of the elections management body, Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, as the period during which youths started showing more interest in voter registration.

Speaking to the press yesterday, June 23, 2015 in Yaounde on the sidelines of the first session of the Electoral Board of the institution, Board Chair, Dr Samuel Fonkam Azu’u, disclosed that 70 per cent of the newly registered voters are young Cameroonians aged between 20 and 35 years.

“Those numbers are most impressive because when we speak of voter apathy, it essentially concerns those within this age bracket. Now that they have understood the importance of elections in the governance of every democratic country, I think we are happy,” he said, adding that strategies are being implemented to spur the number of registered female voters. For the Board Chair, the ongoing revision of electoral rolls also enabled ELECAM to clean up the rolls in view of any elections. “By the end of this month, we must have beaten the registration figures that we had at this time last year,” he boasted.

The Board session, which held in the conference room of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, NACC, saw the participation of Board members who scrutinised the reports of their activities undertaken in the country and abroad during the inter-session period. Minutes of the last session were also due adoption.

Due to the delay in organising the first session for the year, Dr Samuel Fonkam Azu’u saw the possibility of organising yet another session before the end of the month to thrash out any leftover business from yesterday’s session.

Commenting on other burning issues, Dr. Fonkam Azu’u urged political parties to continue participating in joint commissions supervising the voter registration process at local levels in order to respect the participatory nature of the process. This, he pointed out, is to ensure transparency, impartiality and permanent surveillance of the electoral process.

On press reports on alleged confusion on ELECAM’s organisational chart, Dr Fonkam Azu’u reiterated that the Electoral Board is the first interpreter of the Electoral Law. “If anyone is not happy with the interpretation of the law by the Electoral Board, they know where to go to: the Constitutional Council,” he told the press.