EDITORIAL

Why the cold war between senators & mayors?

There is a simmering cold war between mayors and senators in many parts of the country. They are not collaborating. Open hostility especially in the two Anglophone regions where most of the senators have failed to tour their constituencies since entering the national assembly over a year ago is on the front burner.

The senators who specifically represent only “regional and local authorities” as stipulated in the constitution, are being kept out of council business by mayors and government delegates.

South West senator and former mayor of Limbe I council, Daniel Matute when asked about municipal development projects in Limbe where he resides said he was in the dark. “I have not been invited for any of the council sessions. You don’t expect me to gatecrash”, he told The Guardian Post. His case is not an isolated one. No council in any of the two Anglophone regions, for instance, has officially invited a senator to attend a session as it should be.

One of the mayors who did not want to be named told The Guardian Post that it is the duty of the supervisory official, the SDO, to instruct them to invite senators as observers to council sessions.      The mayor cynically queried why senators want to be invited when their electorates “do not know them... How many senators have gone round their constituencies to thank those who elected them?” he asked.

Several senatorial teams within the Francophone communities have however made thank-you visits to their regions. Within the North West and South West regions, the two Manyu senators have toured their division of origin. But the question is: Were they elected only by an electoral college made up of Manyu councillors? Certainly not.

The constituency of a senator is a region. The ten of them made up a single ticket for one constituency. Their campaigns, for those not appointed by the president, were not restricted to a division. If in their myopic political consideration they want to limit their interventions to their divisions of origin, what do they want divisions without senators to do?

The Guardian Post understands that some South West senators have tried to get their colleagues to tour their regional constituency, but the former mayor of the Buea council, Senator Mbella Moki has been the stumbling block.

A programme of such a tour, The Guardian Post learnt, had already been drawn up and presented to former Prime Minister Peter Mafany Musonge who is CPDM senate chief whip. Moki is said to have told them that they “can go ahead” without him.

Moki who is said to be an odd-man in the South West senatorial ticket was not on the original list of Chief Tabetando who was the regional leader. His name was inserted into the list by the central committee; reportedly, as his partisans say, through a lobby by the assistant secretary general at the presidency, Peter Agbor Tabi.

A former mayor of Buea and current Fako CPDM section president, Moki is openly at daggers drawn with his successor at the council, Patrick Ekema.

The open antagonism between Moki and Ekema has since been open knowledge to a point The Guardian Post has learnt plans are underway to set up a commission to investigate into the senator’s management of the council for 11 years.

  

 It is against that background of intrigues and antagonism, The Guardian Post understands, that senators from Fako, and by extension, the South West region are in disperse ranks and have not visited their constituents.

Their North West cousins are also in disunity because of the looming conflicts in the fons’ union. NOWEFU president, Fon Teche Njei, is said to be uncomfortable as senator to visit fondoms whose traditional rulers he clashed with due to the carried-over of their tribulations during the celebrations of the 50^th anniversary of reunification.

Taking advantage of the conflicts among the senators, the municipal authorities who perceive the members of the upper house as super supervisory authorities, are not in a hurry to collaborate with them.

The Guardian Post is aware that senators do not owe any political alliance to the masses because they were elected by an electoral college that is an anachronism in modern democratic practice. Even the Americans who initiated the electoral college system from who Cameroon is emulating abandoned it over a century ago.

Be it as it is, shouldn’t the senators as an obligation tour their constituency which is a region? Even if they are not invited to council sessions, are the sessions not open to the public? Is there any mayor or supervisory authority who will order a senator out of a council session with all his immunity?

The senators are elected by councillors. The constitution stipulates that they represent the “local and municipal authorities.” Does the burden not lie on their shoulders to make sure they attend all council sessions in their regional constituencies even if not invited? Wouldn’t their presence in council meetings deter many of the mayors from engaging in malpractice some are notorious for? What would senators say is their responsibility to their constituencies if they are kept in the dark about the socio-economic and political situations of the “local and municipal” environment which the constitution empowers them to represent and protect?

Do the honourable senators not understand, if they can allow us quoted a biblical phrase, that “a house divided against itself cannot stand”? Why are mayors scared of senators who can lobby for development projects and invest some of their 15 million francs micro project money in their constituencies?

For the interest of the common good, they should dump their egoistic baggage and work like a united team to fulfill the development aspirations of their municipal and regional constituencies.