By EBONG M. WILSON
President Paul Biya has enacted nine bills adopted from the just ended ordinary and extra ordinary sessions of parliament. Key among the laws is the much anticipated decentralisation code which gives content to the special status granted the North West and South West following the recommendation of the Major National Dialogue.
Another bill signed into law by the president is the Bilingualism law which makes official English and French in courts and schools. A law fiercely challenged in both houses by Anglophone law makers of both the ruling party and the opposition.
However, after the enactment of these two bills, pundits and moderates await their implementation.
President Biya also enacted the bill authorising the president to ratify the optional protocol to the convention of the rights of the child, the sales of children, child pornography, and child prostitution. A convention by the UN which laid down the political, social, civil, economic, health and cultural rights of the child, signed by member countries in November of 1989.
Also enacted was the bill authorising the president to proceed with the accession of Cameroon to the agreement establishing the African Insurance Trade agency A. I. T. This body was established in Nairobi Kenya by seven COMESA countries with the technical and financial backing of the World Bank to provide insurance in political and commercial risk zones in order to attract direct foreign investment.
The president also signed into law the bill to amend some provisions of law no 2016/7 of 12th July 2016 relating to the penal code.
The bill laying down rules governing credit in the banking and Micro-finance sectors of Cameroon was also signed into law by president Biya.
Settlement bill was also signed into law. This law lays down rules governing settlements of conflicts by citizens inside and outside the court of law.
The bill authorising the president to ratify the amendments of the World Tourism Organisation WTO, adopted since its establishment on September 27, 1970 in Mexico has been equally enacted into law.