Cameroon’s parliament on Saturday overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to reintroduce the position of vice president, a measure the government says \u200bwill ensure continuity but which the opposition say will consolidate executive power.<\/p>\n
In a \u200cjoint session of the ruling party-dominated National Assembly and Senate, lawmakers voted 200 to 18 in favour, with four abstentions, to pass the bill.<\/p>\n
The bill stipulates that the vice president will \u200bautomatically assume the presidency if President Paul Biya dies, resigns, or becomes incapacitated.<\/p>\n
Biya, \u200b93, has led the oil- and cocoa-producing Central African country since \u20601982 and is the world’s oldest serving head of state. Public discussion about \u200bhis health is banned.<\/p>\n
According to the legislation, a copy of which was seen by \u200bReuters, the vice president will be appointed and dismissed by the president, serving for the remainder of the president’s seven-year term.<\/p>\n
However, the interim leader would be prohibited from initiating constitutional changes or \u200brunning in a subsequent election.<\/p>\n
The government has argued that the reform is intended \u200bto safeguard institutional stability in case of a sudden leadership vacancy. Biya has 15 days to \u200cpromulgate \u2060the bill.<\/p>\n
Critics, including opposition lawmakers, argue the amendment weakens democratic institutions and exacerbates centralisation.<\/p>\n
Joshua Osih, a member of parliament and chairman of the opposition Social Democratic Front, said the changes were a missed opportunity to boost national unity and democratic governance in \u200bthe nation torn by \u200ba civil\u00a0conflict since \u20602017.<\/p>\n
“This text weakens legitimacy, reinforces centralisation, and ignores a major historical grievance,” Osih said, calling instead for a system where the \u200bpresident and vice president are jointly elected, reflecting Cameroon’s origins \u200bas a \u2060union of British and French-administered territories.<\/p>\n
The reintroduction of the vice presidency marks Cameroon’s first major constitutional revision since 2008 when presidential term limits were scrapped in a move that \u2060sparked \u200bnationwide protests, which were met with a violent \u200bcrackdown by security forces.<\/p>\n
The vice presidency was previously part of Cameroon’s governance structure but was abolished in 1972 \u200bfollowing a constitutional referendum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cameroon’s parliament on Saturday overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to reintroduce the position of vice president, a measure the government says \u200bwill ensure continuity but which the opposition say will consolidate executive power. In a \u200cjoint session of the ruling party-dominated National Assembly and Senate, lawmakers voted 200 to 18 in favour, with four abstentions, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9785,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":14,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2362,33],"tags":[193,1503],"class_list":["post-20419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-cameroon","tag-paul-biya"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20420,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20419\/revisions\/20420"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}