The new Cameroonian constitutional council in a comparative perspective: progress or retrogression?

Abstract

The 1990s will go down in history as the decade when Africans had the chance to correct and make up for the blunders of the 1960s. Constitutional and multi-party democracy is now back in fashion and many are ready to forgive the errors of the past and make the sacrifices that will make such democracy and the expected concomitant economic progress possible. The daunting task facing African constitutional engineers is how to free themselves, intellectually and practically, from their strings of colonial loyalty, and how to frame constitutional arrangements that are adapted to the prevailing conditions and are genuinely democratic.