A group of students, artists and workers in Cameroon has formed a movement to oppose President Paul Biya’s plan to reform the Constitution so that he can run for office again, a founder said on Monday.
This youth movement considers that ”no modification of the Constitution can be envisaged before the vote for change scheduled for 2011”, said Rodrigue Batogna, who also chairs Cameroon’s students’ rights association.
Biya, in office in the Central African country since 1982, is trying to have the Constitution amended to scrap a clause limiting presidential terms, so that he can stand for a third elected term at the polls in 2011.
Batogna said members gathered on Sunday in a private home ”to stop any intervention by the security forces” and agreed on ”a campaign of active resistance with an action plan being drawn up that will be made public in coming days”.
The new group is called the Patriotic and People’s Youth Council, Batogna said, without giving further specific details of the meeting.
The opposition is strongly opposed to Biya’s bid, and police on Saturday violently dispersed a second attempt to demonstrate against it in the Atlantic port town and economic capital of Douala, press reports said. Police then clashed mainly with youths.
The same happened in Douala on Wednesday, when police used water cannons and tear gas to break up a march by 300 people after a press conference given by Cameroon’s main opposition leader, John Fru Ndi, who heads the Social Democratic Front.
Biya has argued that the constitutional clause banning a third mandate is ”a limitation on the popular will, a limitation that sits uneasily with the very idea of a democratic choice”.
A provincial official in the Douala region last week said that bans imposed there in mid-January on all public gatherings were aimed at avoiding ”a Kenyan scenario”, in a reference to political bloodshed that swiftly took on a tribal nature in the East African country after a disputed presidential election in December.
Fru Ndi spoke out last week against the ”manipulation of the Constitution for selfish interests, this gross insult to the collective intelligence of the Cameroonians … to protect corrupt citizens”.
”For a man whose 25 years in power have plunged the country into dark misery and abject poverty, any attempt to prolong his mandate can only be considered as a serious attack on the very foundations of our shaky democracy,” he said.
The opposition said it will ignore the ban on rallies. — Sapa-AFP