- SDF To Place 75,000 Agents In All Polling Stations To Ensure Transparency
By Nformi Sonde Kinsai
The National Chairman of the Social Democratic Front, SDF, party has declared his intention to run for the forthcoming presidential election slated for this October.
He made the declaration at the end of the National Executive Committee, NEC, meeting that held at the Olezoa-Yaounde Centre Regional Secretariat of the SDF on February 1.
While the national secretarial of the party has up to February 8 at midday to receive and public the names of other potential candidates, an extra-ordinary convention to choose the party’s flag-bearer is billed for February 22, 2025. These are some of the key decisions arrived at during the NEC meeting.
One of the key issues discussed is the necessity to get volunteers recruited and trained to represent the SDF as polling agents for all the polling stations across the country. Hon Osih said as a political organisation, they have to work and secure the votes.
“This was a core issue in our deliberations and true to our nature in the SDF, debates around it was lively. We had to assess how far we have gone in recruiting polling agent as well as the preparedness of the party for elections at electoral district levels.
“Polling agents will be present to all the polling stations on behalf of the party to follow the voting and sign the minutes at the end of the voting exercise. Our goal is to recruit and train 75,000 polling agents to ensure that three are available for a polling station. However, on Election Day, some may be unavailable for various reasons but we should be able to have least one in all the polling stations in the country. We are 70 percent gone in achieving the goal of recruiting 75,000 volunteers.
“We had lopeholes in 2018 and we don’t want that to repeat it. We want to be present in all the polling stations in Cameroon and this has to be guaranteed before the holding of our extra-ordinary convention in the days ahead,” Hon Osih reiterated.
The Post gathered that, as at now, only the SDF and the CPDM have representatives in the joint ELECAM commissions in council areas across the country.
Osih told reporters that the NEC meeting was also important because it had to set a base for the extra-ordinary convention to hold in the days ahead during which the party’s candidate shall be chosen.
“Our ambition is to have this candidate as early as possible. It was one of the resolutions of the party in 2023 and we are going to have that respected. When that is done, we will then enter the race for the presidential election.
“Our greater part of the work today is to recall to everyone in the party that this electoral cycle has four elections. And to be present in the four elections, we will have work more than what used to obtain. So, we should be ready for the presidential and regional elections in 2025 and then legislative and municipal elections in 2026,” he stated.
He noted that, if the presidential election is convened between June 5 and July 15, 2025, the electoral registers will be closed and only reopened after the declaration of municipal election results in 2026. He, therefore, called on Cameroonians to take advantage of the time frame between now and June 5 to massively register for the elections.
Hon. Osih told NEC members that they are the hierarchy of the party. “We have this tendency in the SDF and in Cameroon where everybody believes that somebody else is the hierarchy. NEC members are the hierarchy of the party who bear responsibility of going out and winning all the elections as entrusted to us at the last convention.
“Let fellow NEC members understand that as from tomorrow, we will all be 100percent for the party. No excuses for absences will be welcome and those who cannot be part of it; we will circumvent them and move on. We cannot be held back in such a time of going in for four elections in the coming months,” he stated.
Other issues handled at the meeting included presentation of the list of SDF representatives at the joint ELECAM commissions; nationwide list of polling agents; regional reports; highlights of party’s 2025-2026 political programme; happenings at the international scene, amongst others.