By Moma Sandrine
Militants of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM Party have held a reawakening seminar in Bamenda ahead of the upcoming elections.
Philemon Yang, Head of the CPDM Permanent Regional Delegation for the North West in his opening speech said learning was a continue process and was glad the party organised the seminar.
The meeting that held at Ayaba hotel in Bamenda on Saturday March 23, was aimed at preparing the minds of party militants ahead of the parliamentary elections and that of the regional assembly as the minister Delegate in charge of common wealth and main speaker at the seminar, Felix Mbayu explains “the purpose of this seminar was for us to come and meet our militants to prepare them for the elections which are forth coming. As you know, all things being equal, we are going to have elections in to the regional assembly and parliamentary elections also”.
Felix Mbayu fathered that it was necessary for the party militants to be educated enough prior to the elections given the numerous challenges associated with the times “so we had to come, educate and remind our militants on the need for them to commit to the party ideas and to do that you have to remind them of what this party ideas are. We have to remind them of what is in the basic text of the party because we are facing challenging times, competition from other political parties, new political parties, all of these taking place in an environment where the democratic processes are being affected sometimes negatively by the social media. It was important for us to remind our party militants that membership to a party needs discipline, and commitment”.
At the end of the seminar, Felix Mbayu expressed his satisfaction with the turn out despite the socio economic climate of the region “we are so pleased to see the turn out. For militants to come out in the present circumstances in such large number shows that we have truly committed militants in the North West region”.
The seminar that began at about 10:00am lasted till about 3:00pm. After the meeting had been officially closed, some party militants could be seen hurrying to take off their party regalia to wear the dresses they initially wore to the meeting. One party militant was seemingly stranded as she could not find her dress to change into. According to what this reporter gathered, the lady’s son had carried the bag containing her dress after she had changed into the party regalia earlier that morning. How she got out of this dilemma remained unknown to the reporter who left the woman’s side when she was almost shedding tears.
With the current socio political climate of the North West region, many have considered being seen in a political party’s regalia as life threatening. As such to stay on the safe side, some party militants only put on the regalia at the event and change into their normal outfit shortly as the event is ended.
The seminar was open to mayors on the CPDM-ticket, parliamentarians, the seven permanent divisional delegations, general managers of state-run institutions and presidents of the three wings in all sections. The seminar had been initially slated for March 16 but was pushed to March 23 to join with the 34th anniversary of the CPDM party.