Cameroon’s very dishonourable honourables

Parliament opened its 2015 Ordinary Session. During the calendar year they are expected to endorse or rubber stamp bills coming from Paul Biya the President. It has always been like this since the era of former President Ahidjo.

Even with the introduction of multiparty politics, Cameroonians have settled with the fact that only government bills are voted and adopted in parliament. Rarely has a government bill been rejected, however, there have been cases where bills are revised several times before final adoption.

Conversely all private members bills are often rejected outrightly by CPDM MPs who have maintained hegemony in parliament since the introduction of multipartism.

MPs of the ruling CPDM and those of the opposition most often see eye-to-eye only when the interests of parliamentarians is concerned. Disagreements also emerge among CPDM MPs when personal gains are tampered with- it appears to be the only moment when legislators of the ruling party see the need to scrutinize bills.

Hell broke loose last year when SDF and CPDM MPs of the National Assembly Bureau, (23 of a total of 180MPs) agreed to raise their allowances amounting to 3Billion FCFA without raising premiums for ordinary parliamentarians.

The 157 ordinary MPs opposed the move complaining that in addition to colossal allowances enjoyed by Bureau members, they are the only MPs allowed to hold posts of responsibilities in continental and regional parliamentary groupings; these include the CEMAC Parliament, Commonwealth parliamentary Association, the Francophonie parliament, the Pan African Parliament etc.

As of last year, ordinary members in Cameroon’s parliament were allocated 10 million FCFA each as car allowances, while members of the bureau had about FCFA 45 million.

The Speaker‘s car allowance stands at 80 million FCFA; the First Vice President smiles home with 65 million FCFA while Vice Presidents (5) take home 60 million FCFA each. Questors (4) have 50 million FCFA each for car allowance while secretaries (12) each take home 45 million FCFA each as car allowance in addition to other yearly allowances of FCFA 12 million each.

All the 23 bureau members are said to earn a duty allowance of 16 million FCFA each, paid to them quarterly.

In addition to car allowances they are also given car maintenance allowances worth a third of what they each receive as car allowance. This is paid two years after they receive the car allowance. The car repair allowance is one third of the car allowance.

National Assembly bureau members have office maintenance allowances ranging from 4 to 5 million FCFA; they are lodged by government and provided with two cooks each. They equally have 8 million FCFA each for the purchase of ‘the kitchen car.’

When bureau members attempted to raise these allowances for themselves, ordinary MPs went haywire, storming every local newspaper house telling reporters how greedy their colleagues were, but when SDF MP, Cyprian Awudu Mbaya’s private bill could guarantee water supply in Cameroon, it was rejected, not even his SDF MPs raised as much dust as they did over money.