Politics

West Region: Gov’t bans MRC rally in Bayangam.

File photo of MRC supporters & party leader, Maurice Kamto

The Divisional Officer, DO, of Bayangam, in Koung-Khi Division of the West Region, Mfopou Aliyou, has banned a planned meeting of supporters of the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC party, in his area of command.

The administrator, in a communiqué signed recently, said the opposition party failed to declare the meeting at his office as required by law.

He equally went on to task the forces of law and order in the Subdivision to see into the strict implementation of the ban.

Slated for December 2, the meeting, sources are quoted as having disclosed, was to install Gérard Kuissu Mephou as Secretary of the Wanko Samuel Unit of the MRC Section in Bayangam.

Reports equally hold that elite of the locality, besides the ban of the DO, had pressured a relative of the late patriarch, Samuel Wanko, to ensure that their late father's name does not appear in anything related to the opposition MRC.

A letter attributed to one of the sons of the late Wanko, has also surfaced in which Gérard Kuissu is being warned to keep the name of the Bayangam patriarch out of MRC affairs.

Worthy to be recalled is the fact that it is not the first time an MRC meeting is being banned. Since the last 2018 presidential election, several MRC meetings have been banned.

This, according to some political analysts, is because the Biya regime is doing everything to weaken the opposition party.

Others say continuing with such bans now have no effect, given that the MRC has lost most of its supporters due to internal conflicts.

On October 12, 2023, the DO of Ebolowa II Subdivision, banned a meeting of the MRC that was programmed to install the South Regional Bureau of the party. The ceremony was slated to take place at the Nko’ovos Municipal Stadium.

The party’s National President, Prof Maurice Kamto, was expected to preside over the installation but the meeting didn’t take place.

The ban, according to the administrative authority then, was prompted by the unavailability of the location the party had selected for the exercise.

In the meantime, the latest ban on MRC meetings, others are saying, does not speak well of Cameroon’s political space, which many say has continued to shrink with mostly vocal opposition parties feeling the pinch.