Yaounde, Cameroon Africa. (Cameroon News) – ELECAM: Twelve teams from the head office of Cameroon’s electoral institution, Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) will leave for different destinations in the five continents of the world on Thursday, August 4, 2011 to start the electoral process.

The Head of the Communication and Press Unit, Nnomo says the teams are from the General Directorate of Elections, the organ in charge of organising elections and added that some members of the supervisory Electoral Board of ELECAM will also be on mission abroad.

The teams, he disclosed in Yaounde, August 3, will move to localities where there is a high concentration of Cameroonians and will use the occasion to start distributing electoral material.

President Paul Biya on July 13, 2011 promulgated the law enabling Cameroonians settled or residing in foreign countries to vote in presidential elections and referenda.

ELECAM, the institution in charge of organising, managing and supervising all electoral processes and referenda, has the daunting task to organise elections abroad, starting with the 2011 presidential election.

The law provides that ELECAM will consult with authorities of diplomatic missions, consular posts and political parties in view of setting up commissions to enhance the electoral process that include; the commission in charge of drawing up and revising registers of electors, issuing and distributing voters’ cards and the local polling commission.

The Director General of Elections in ELECAM, the law further specifies, has the responsibility to certify the composition of the commissions and their composition and functioning will have to be determined by regulation.

“The organisation and supervision of elections of the President of the Republic and referenda, polling and the counting of the votes of Cameroonian citizens settled or residing abroad, shall be laid down by another regulation”, the July 13, 2011 law specifies.

Cameroon’s diplomatic missions and consular posts in the countries of residence or attachment of Cameroonians abroad, will be the nerve centre of pre-electoral and election processes.

ELECAM will have to accelerate work on the electoral process abroad, considering that the law provides that registration for the 2011 presidential election ends this August 31.

The registration process back in Cameroon is almost at the peak with some 2,011,728 new voters already registered since the start of the process in August 2010, statistics from ELECAM disclose.

The country’s electoral population is about 8,732,289 people following the 2005 population and housing census results.

More than seven million voters have already been registered, taking into account the electoral register of the 2007 twin legislative and municipal elections that had 5,067,836 registered voters.

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