Election stakeholders prepare for voters' registration

Elections Cameroon is organising a consultation meeting in Yaounde this Tuesday October 2, 2012.

The Electoral Board of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) will today, October 2, 2012 at the Yaounde Conference Centre, organise a national consultation meeting between ELECAM and other stakeholders of the electoral process. The Electoral Board Chairman, Dr Fonkam Azu'u Samuel in a press release said the stakeholders to participate the meeting include representatives of the administration, justice, legalized political parties and civil society organizations.

The consultation session that will take place on the eve of the official launch of the biometric recompilation of the electoral register, tomorrow, October 3, has as theme, "Biometric recompilation of voters' register: Challenges and perspectives." It will serve an opportunity for the stakeholders to be abreast with innovations in the recompilation operation of the voters' register. As such, the major highlight will be a demonstration of the biometric voter registration followed by a video projection on the biometric registration process and the presentation of the functionalities of the registration kit, the programme specifies.

The Director General of Elections in ELECAM, Mohaman Sani Tanimou in an interview with Cameroon Tribune, disclosed that the biometric recompilation of voters' register is to enable Cameroon have a viable and transparent electoral register. The target, he stressed, will be to be first of all register the over 7 million voters who enrolled for the October 2011 presidential election. However, the goal is to have between 7.5 to 8 million registered voters at the end of the operation whose normal expiration time is February 28, 2013.

ELECAM officials will use the consultation meeting to clearly re-state the objective the biometric recompilation of the electoral register sets out to achieve, how the operation will be conducted and the level of preparations. For the electoral process to be successful with an ultimate guarantee for transparent, fair, free and credible future elections in Cameroon, all stakeholders need to put hands on deck right from the registration phase. At the end of today's consultation meeting, there will certainly be a general consensus and a consolidated working platform for greater success.