Par Louis-Marie Kakdeu | SDF Shadow Minister Economy, Finances and Trade

On 5 July 2022, the Minister of Finance signed a SIMPLE circular letter N°4918/MINFI indicating that due to the underperformance of public enterprises (and under pressure from the IMF), Performance Contracts will be in force from 1 January 2023. This forced measure is inadequate in both form and substance:

by Hon. Jean Michel NINTCHEU, Député.

The latest government measures concerning the financial aspect are pure smoke and deceptions. They are globally very unsatisfactory.

par Louis-Marie Kakdeu | SDF Shadow Minister Economy, Finance, Trade

In terms of budgetary policy, the DOB is the opportunity given to elected officials (and by extension to the people) to express their opinion on the BIG LINES of the national budget. Simply put, this is the time to fight by ALL MEANS to have the concerns of the people ("of their village or region") included in the budget. However, people, including the CPDM, ignore this, which is a major political error in the life of the Nation. A NORMAL country does not manage itself by imploring each time the magnanimity of "His Excellency Paul Biya" or "his high instructions" which constitute in matters of Finance what should be called "budgetary indiscipline". A President of the Republic cannot VALUABLY give instructions that go EVERY TIME against the budgetary lines decided (strangely by himself who has the "comfortable majority"). It is this budgetary disorder that keeps us in the IMF whose main mission is nothing else but to ensure BUDGETARY DISCIPLINE. It is as if you organized the disorder at home and then paid for the services of a Consultant in charge of bringing order. This is the Cameroonian paradox! All this is because we do not understand public finance on the one hand and the role of a Parliament on the other. Even the Executive has every interest in favoring the DOB to be sure that during the year, a legitimate social demand will not come to impose budgetary indiscipline on the government as is always the case in Cameroon. It is hard to imagine that anything that happens to the economy and finance will not happen. Even the external shock that we are experiencing today was largely predictable with the extroverted nature of our economy.

The SDF has created in its constitution 'Standing Committees' with well-defined areas of responsibility and these areas of responsibility cover all the competencies needed to run a country like Cameroon: Agriculture, Rural Development, Economy, Defence, National Security, Science and Technology, Health, Information and Media, etc.

Each Standing Commission is chaired by a President and a Vice-President appointed by the National Chairman of the Party. It is then the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the Standing Committees who constitute the Party's Shadow Cabinet.

In the Anglo-Saxon political system, the Shadow Cabinet forms an alternative to the government in office in the country. The Shadow Cabinet members individually mark each member of the government and have a duty to be ready at any time to ascend to power and exercise the responsibilities of government. In the case of the SDF, in addition to this screening and control of the government in power, the Shadow Cabinet members, through the Standing Committees they head, support the work of the NEC and the elected members of the party at all levels with their advice and reflections, thus providing additional expertise that enables the SDF to better fulfil its constitutional role.

Here is the list of members of the new SDF Shadow Cabinet appointed by Chairman John Fru Ndi on 16 June 2022: