By Mua Patrick, November 17, 2016
Cameroon Journal,Yaounde – This is unprecedented and extraordinary. For the first time in the history of Anglophones struggle, Members of Parliament of Anglophone extraction from the ruling Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement, CPDM party, Tuesday in a statement, backed the ongoing strike action of Common Law Lawyers practicing in the North West and South West Regions.
A Yaounde closed-door meeting Tuesday, grouping the MPs and leaders of Common Law Lawyers was brief, yet crucial.
During the meeting, the Anglophone lawmakers amongst other things recommended the amendment of law no 90/059 of 19th December 1990 organizing the practice such that it could reflect the creation of a Cameroon Common Law Bar Association.
While pressing that all officials who directly or indirectly contributed towards the attack of lawyers in the North West and South West Regions be appropriately sanctioned, the lawyers
and the Anglophone MPs quickly requested the immediate lifting of the ban on the North West Lawyers Association and the Meme Lawyers Association as well as a decision suspending activities of the Fako Lawyers Association.
“Magistrates, Court Registrars and Bailiffs should be deployed nationwide according to their legal background,” suggested the MPs who later insisted that the lawyers’ wigs and gowns seized by police in Buea when they took to the streets last week, be returned.
While expressing the need for a simultaneous publication of laws in English and French, the MPs and representatives of the Lawyers’ associations requested victims of last week’s attacks in the North West and South West Regions to be compensated by government.
In calling for the enactment of a language code which punishes those who violate its application, the lawyers and MPs during the Yaounde meeting, re-echoed the need for the creation of a Law School, a Common Law Bench at the Supreme Court, Common Law Department in ENAM, as well as the bringing on board of lawyers of both legal systems into the Higher Judicial Council.
Meanwhile, the Common Law Lawyers whose strike action is in its sixth week have vowed that they will continue with the strike action until all their grievances, some of which have now been backed by Anglophone legislators, are fully met.
SDF MPs accuse CPDM colleagues
In the mean time, Members of Parliament of the Social Democratic Front, SDF Party, have said the meeting between their CPDM counterparts and Common Law Lawyers is another attempt by government to manipulate and down play acts against lawyers who were recently brutalized for embarking on a peaceful protest.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the lawmakers of the opposition SDF said the meeting between the CPDM MPs and representatives of Common Law Lawyers was a non event and an act of manipulation.
“That meeting had as ulterior motive to water down the gravity of the acts and violence meted on Common Law Lawyers in the North West and South West Regions and eventually destroy the cause for which they stood” said the SDF MPs yesterday.
The SDF legislators while maintaining that the restoration of the Anglo-Saxon system of
justice and the Anglo-Saxon system of education within the South West and North West Regions remain the way forward, said the attacks on unarmed lawyers last week was a regrettable incident and an aberration.
“We observe with much regret, the ill-treatment that has been given to the learned members of the legal profession who were beaten, wounded, dragged in mud, their offices ransacked their wigs and gowns seized while in the exercise of their constitutional right to protest and demonstrate. The compensation of each and every one of them by the state apparatus cannot be overemphasized if indeed we are a nation that respects the rule of law” the MPs noted in their statement.