*By AYAH Paul ABINEWhen a group of concerned catholic Christians set up the Justice and Peace Commission in the Diocese of Buea in the early nineties, the foundation of the scheme was their firm conviction that justice and peace are inextricably glued together. Ant truly, the interdependence of Justice and peace makes no allowance for the existence of the one without the other. That statement is beyond disproof today and tomorrow. Justice automatically anticipates peace, and peace is the inevitable consequence of justice. The collateral dimension is that whoever talks about justice talks about the law. It can only be so because justice is compelling conformity with the law, and/or sanctioning lawbreakers.
Wisdom then is the recognition or, at least, the acceptance that the law is supreme. No-one, for instance, can hold an office without complying, a priori, with the law laying down the conditions for holding that office. If a member of the security wears a uniform and bears a gun, it is because the law so provides. Conducting oneself to the contrary breaks the law, and is necessarily a breach of peace. It is akin to self destruction because destroying what makes one what one is destroys what one is.
As self is more often than not the fatal end of impartiality, civilized societies regard the law as almost sacred. They have used it to organize themselves in three complementary arms of governance that interact with and restrain one another, namely the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary. The main function of the Legislature is the enactment of laws. The laws so enacted guide the Executive in its conduct of State affairs. And the Judiciary interprets and applies the said laws to ensure observance. As it is, no one arm does everything: there is division of labour as the economist would describe it. Democratic societies that have stood the test of time are those that have adopted and maintained that neat separation of powers, assuring that each of those three arms of governance has reasonable autonomy.
As a lawmaker and a crusader for peace, one should naturally wish that our system of governance was modeled on that time-tested system of governance. This is essential in that genuine peace means conducting oneself in a manner that leads to and promotes peace; and refraining from perpetrating conduct that disrupts the peace. That can be summarized as being amenable to the law. Such preventive conduct is most salutary as no-one doubts that a taste of the forbidden is a second transgression. Negation is resultant instability and insecurity for all.
Therefore have we stated more than once before that making the President of the Republic head of the Judicial Council and the guarantor of the independence of the Judiciary inevitably undermines the independence of that arm of governance. That is not our concern here though. Our present objective is to opine that saddling lawmakers with executive duties outside their traditional realm of legislating is bringing the Legislature under the authority of the Executive, and thereby weakening it.
Over the years, Cameroonians have heard and read about the President of the Republic being represented at some summit of Heads of State by the President of the National Assembly; and about some new ambassador to Cameroon or some foreign envoy being received by the President of the National Assembly on behalf of the President of the Republic. The media have similarly informed us several times that the President of the National Assembly was “the personal representative of the President of the Republic” at some funeral or another. Much as those statements may have sounded normal to the ordinary Cameroonian, someone with legal knowledge should be courageous enough to state that such practices are typically Cameroonian and outside the law. In our thirst for finding what has favoured the thriving of major democracies in the world, we have searched unsuccessfully for any similar confusion of roles in those democracies. Neither have we chanced upon any enabling local legal instrument that justifies this departure by our system from what is usual in those democracies?
We are making but a statement of fact that appointing the head of one arm of government as “the personal representative” of the head of another arm reduces the appointee to the position of an errand boy. The autonomy of such errand boy of course is eroded, and the doctrine of the separation of powers becomes a mere illusion. It makes no difference that ours is a presidential system. Equally immaterial would be the argument that the one is the head of a party, and the other owes him allegiance as a member. The constitution of a party cannot prevail over the constitution of the nation. Nor can Parliament ever be on the same plane as an organ of a political party, whatever its epithet.
Nobody denies that the Constitution of Cameroon provides for relations between the Executive and the Legislature. But those relations are limited to co-operation in the realm of legislation. It would be important to take note that co-operation and collaboration are not synonymous. The latter connotes subordination; and that is the essential characteristic of an errand boy. Nowhere in the constitutional provisions on relations between the Legislature and the Executive does one find, even by inference, any allowance for collaboration between the two arms of governance. The head of the Legislature cannot therefore substitute for the head of the Executive in the performance of the latter’s executive functions. As a matter of fact, the law prohibits a member of parliament from even being on the board of directors of a semi-public corporation. This is in contrast with the members of Government who very often add those positions to their ministerial functions. Much less therefore can the head of the Legislature assume executive functions, even of only temporarily.
The Constitution of course provides that the President of the Republic can expressly “delegate some of his powers to the Prime Minister, other members of Government and any other senior administrative officials of the State, within the framework of their respective duties”. Let us hasten to state that the translation is grossly wrong as the version in French does not contain the equivalence of the phrase “and any senior…duties”. Even if the translation were accurate, few would argue that the President of the National Assembly in his official capacity is a “senior administrative (official)”. Granted hypothetically that he even was he would still not receive new ambassadors as that is not “within the framework of (his) duties”.
As the President of the National Assembly is neither “the Prime Minister” nor one of the “other members of Government”, the President of the Republic is definitely not within the Constitution when he procures him to deputize as the President of the Republic at those summits, conferences and funerals. The contrary can only be true if some instrument higher than the Constitution of Cameroon has provided to the contrary. But no such instrument have we found.
It is only reasonable and logical then to conclude from the foregoing that the practice of effacing the line of demarcation between the two arms of governance as per those “appointments” is inconsistent with our Constitution. It would therefore not be audacious for one to opine that it was high time the practice was discarded.
*Ayah paul Abine ,who is currently a second-term Member of Cameroon's Parliament ,is a career Jurist.He is a noted critic of ill-conceived government plans and practices.
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