SDF Landmark Convention Begins Today

The eighth elective convention runs from October 12 to 14 in Bamenda. Cameroon's frontline opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), that clocked 22 years on May 26, 2012, holds a landmark eighth elective convention in the North West Regional capital, Bamenda from October 12 to 14, 2012.

The stakes of the convention are high as the new members of the SDF executive organ, the National Executive Committee (NEC) to be elected will have the daunting task of mobilising party supporters to register in the ongoing biometric recompilation of voters' register and lead the party to re-conquer its lost political grounds during the upcoming council and legislative elections.

Reports say incumbent SDF National Chairman, Ni John Fru Ndi, stands unchallenged for re-election. The hotly contested positions in the National Executive Committee however, include that of the First Vice Chairman which Osih Joshua and Hon. Fopoussi Evariste will be competing for. Hon. Yoyo Emmanuel and Nkuete Jean-Claude are equally said to run for the post of SDF National Financial Secretary. The outgoing National Secretary for communication, Beatrice Annembom Monju, reports say, will face two challengers; Libone Robert and Elimbi Albert.

The 2012 SDF Convention will remain historic as one in which the National President of the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM), Head of State Paul Biya, honoured, the SDF invitation to attend the convention. In a press release signed by the Assistant Secretary General of the CPDM Central Committee, Dr Hamadjoda Adjoudji, the CPDM five-member delegation to represent their party leader, will be led by another Assistant Secretary General of the Central Committee, Gregoire Owona. The CPDM officials will certainly join those of other friendly parties invited to listen and deliver messages.

The Social Democratic Front, incontestably, remains the leading opposition party in Cameroon since the re-introduction of multi-party democracy in 1990. The new team at the helm of the SDF has to work hard to ensure that the party wins more seats in the National Assembly to maintain a Parliamentary Group. In the ongoing eighth legislative period of the National Assembly the SDF has 16 seats. Its performance in local and national elections has witnessed a nose-dive. Evidence of this is that in the 1992 presidential election, the SDF candidate, Ni John Fru Ndi came second, winning 36 per cent of the votes cast. The score dropped to 17.4 per cent in the 2004 presidential election and further to just over 10 per cent in the 2011 presidential election. It has been the same case in the National Assembly as the party won 43 seats in the 1997 legislative election and only 22 in the June 2002 parliamentary election.