UDC MPs Protest Late Submission of 2025 Finance Bill

The Cameroon Democratic Union (UDC) opposition party has accused the government of showing contempt for the Parliament, by submitting the 2025 finance bill late.

The law obliges the government to table the finance bill at the start of the parliamentary session. But they have repeatedly violated the law, according the UDC MPs.

However, the Prime Minister submitted bill to Parliament Sunday, December 1, 2024, 10 days to the end of the budgetary session.

In protest, UDC parliamentarians staged a walkout, accusing the government of violating the law and undermining Parliament.

“By doing all this today, barely 10 days before the end of the budget session, the Government not only shows its contempt for MPs to whom it had promised on November 26 last year to respect the deadline for transmitting the draft finance bill and its annexes, but also shows its option to perpetuate the violation of the law in a more serious manner from one year to the next given that if last year the bill was submitted on November 26, this year it is submitted on December 1, rather aggravating the delay,” Hon Koupit Adamou, spokesperson of UDC MPs, said in a statement which MMI obtained.

Citing legal instruments, the opposition party argued that the government was supposed to submit the bill at the start of the budgetary session. But the government violated the legal provision.

“Article 57 of Law No. 2018/012 of 11 July 2018 on the Financial Regime of the State and other public entities which: stipulate that the initial draft finance bill, including the report and explanatory annexes provided for in Articles 14 and 15 of this law, shall be submitted to Parliament no later than 15 days before the opening of the budgetary session,” Hon Koupit noted.

MPs of the governing Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) overlooked the late submission of the bill from the chairmen’s conference to plenary.

According to the UDC, there is need for “electoral awareness of the Cameroonian people who must be able to send to the National Assembly, patriotic and republican citizens who must assert national solidarity and not partisan solidarity as is the case until now with an obese majority of the party in power, quick to defend the positions of the government even when it is detrimental to the general interest of the sovereign people which can only be better preserved by respect for the law by all”.