National Assembly: Datouo is not Cavaye!.

Article 57 of the State Financial Law mandates the government to present the Finance Bill to Parliament, at least 15 days before the start of the budget session.

 However, it has often been submitted at times two weeks to the end of a session, provoking the ire of opposition lawmakers, while their CPDM peers kept a suspicious silence.

With the election of Hon Théodore Datouo as House Speaker, things are changing, not in the executive branch but in the second realm of State. 

The June Session of Parliament was dedicated principally to the scrutiny and approval of the Budgetary Orientation Document, a programming instrument that sets out the broad outlines of public finances for the next three years.

But the bulky document was submitted to the National Assembly as late as last Friday, July 4, and “adopted”, [some critics would say rubber stamped] on July 6, barely forty-eight hours before the session's closesure.

The Honourable members voted one of the most crucial budgetary legislations with remarkably speed. 

Hon Datouo did not conceal his disappointment with the executive for the late submission in a session no other bill was tabled.

In his closing remark, the Speaker expressed regret at the late arrival of the session's Budgetary Orientation text. 

For him, such a document required submission within a required timeframe, to facilitate a compatible and thorough review by the National Assembly.

As noted by some parliamentary analysts, “when such a strategic text arrives in the very last days of a session, the parliamentary institution certainly retains the formal power to debate and adopt it, but its political time for appropriation is significantly reduced. It is precisely this unease that the Speaker of the National Assembly recalled that respecting deadlines is essential for the quality of parliamentary review, and also implicitly reminded everyone that a Parliament that receives bills too late is less able to fully carry out its mission”.

In the view of commentators, the practice contributes to establishing an institutional routine, in which Parliament's time is compressed to the benefit of the government.

For some Members of Parliament, this is not simply a matter of administrative burden or technical delay, it is a way for the executive branch to limit the thorough examination of sensitive bills, particularly when the documents concern the direction of public finances that are likely to spark more politically charged debates of accountability.

As some parliamentary commentators have noted “expedited review of the Budgetary Policy Document is not a mere formality: it outlines the State's major budgetary assumptions, informs spending choices, and, in part, foreshadows future decisions”.

Although no government bill was submitted in the June Session, the National Assembly and the Senate held highly anticipated question-and-answer sittings, focusing on government accountability.

Lawmakers directed approximately some 14 oral questions to the Prime Minister and his ministers, based the slow pace of decentralisation, opaque management of public assets, deteriorating road networks, urban sanitation, and bureaucratic delays in contract awards within Decentralised Territorial Collectivities.

Most answers were anchored on promises. But when note is taken that the Cameroonian government and the African Development Bank, AfDB, met in Yaounde last week, to assess the implementation of the Country’s Strategy Paper (CSP 2023-2028), it emerged that of 28 active projects, representing over 1.5 trillion CFA francs in commitments, a disbursement rate of less than 30% has been achieved, the delay in promises should be anybody’s guess.

Be that as it was, the Speaker, despite grumbling about late submission of documents, said in his closing remarks that "...synergy in action should remain one of the hallmarks of the excellent relations that prevail between the Executive and the Legislature". 

But behind the glossed statement lies a well-known criticism:  Parliament is often consulted late on major texts, at the risk of reducing its actual capacity for scrutiny and oversight to “rubber stamping”.

As US Statesman, Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence, advised: "You may delay, but time will not".

In Cameroon, the delay extends to governance, where "coming days" take months without coming and "short trips" take over a month. 

The Guardian Post looks up to the Speaker to make the National Assembly to expeditiously “control government actions”, for the interest of the people and development as "time waits for no body".

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3847 of Tuesday July 14, 2026