Anniversary celebration activities will take place in SDF electoral districts nationwide.The Social Democratic Front (SDF), the leading opposition political party in Cameroon will be celebrating 20 years of its existence in all its electoral districts today. The party with 16 seats in the ongoing eighth legislative period of the National Assembly, was created on May, 26, 1990 in the North West regional capital Bamenda, five years after the creation of the ruling Cameroon People??s Democratic Movement (CPDM) in the same town on March 24, 1985.
The anniversary celebrations will serve as a moment for the SDF hierarchy and supporters to X-ray the turbulent path the party has walked since 1990, characterised by persistently coherent declining fortunes. There is no denying of the fact that SDF despite all internal dissentions and traditional complaints of electoral fraud, has remained Cameroon??s strongest opposition political party ahead of Maigari Belo Bouba??s National Union for Democracy and Progress, (NUDP), Adamou Ndam Njoya??s Cameroon Democratic Union (CDU) among others.Today??s celebrations will be to re-think the SDF and chart the way forward to re-conquer lost political grounds, without which the party may be heading towards extinction. SDF leaders must redefine their strategies with the aim of re-injecting vigour and vitality into the party, preconditions for maintaining the trust of supporters and attracting other Cameroonians who are yearning for alternation of power. Judging from the performance in elections since 1990, the SDF scores have steadily been declining. Ni John Fru Ndi,, the SDF pioneer and current National Chairman, the party??s candidate in the 1992 presidential election won 35.9 percent of the votes cast. The party in the 1996 municipal elections won 62 councils, and 43 seats in Parliament during the 1997 legislative election. The performance dropped when in the 2002 twin legislative and council elections, SDF won only 22 seats in the National Assembly and over 30 councils. The October 2004 presidential elections showed the SDF further weakened following a score of 17 percent of the votes casts in the election. Now, the party has only 16 seats in the National Assembly in the ongoing eight legislative period that spans through 2007 to 2012.
