Presidential 2025: Time for opposition to unite!.

Last week's announcement by the Ministry of Territorial Administration, MINAT, a key player in the electoral process, of the creation of 40 new opposition political parties, is being interpreted by political analysts as one of the aspects of preparation.

They argue that the 40 political parties applied at various times individually and that the timing of the announcement by MINAT, underlines government's strategy to crowd the field, fragmentise the opposition and consolidate its "divide and conquer" strategy.

In December 2021, a planned meeting of an opposition alliance campaigning for the revision of the Electoral Code, was systematically banned. It was the first successful attempt for unity within the opposition, not to support a single candidate, but to ensure the perceived flaws in the Electoral Code were corrected.

The prohibition is said to have been a murky illustration of the government's phobia for an opposition unity, which could threaten its iron grip on power.

“The political parties have worked hard on the rules of the electoral game to be proposed to parliamentarians. For this simple meeting with journalists, we are chased away even though we have paid,” Sosthène Médard Lipot, an activist from the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, had grumbled aloud.

There has, however, been politicking on the field by the genuine political parties, ostensibly preparing for the 2025 poll. The Secretary General of the ruling CPDM, Jean Keute, recently made rounds across the country to sensitise party supporters so as not to be caught napping when the whistle is blown.

Prof Maurice Kamto, the principal challenger of the incumbent President Paul Biya, is also known to have gone round the country installing regional executive committee members of his MRC party.

What is however crystal clear is that the genuine opposition parties, based more on the personalities behind them with some geopolitical gloss, than political ideologies, are not strategising towards a unique candidate to challenge Biya at the 2025 presidential election.

For a vibrant democracy and credible electoral process, the country needs a single opposition candidate who can give that of the ruling party, be he the incumbent Paul Biya or his successor, a real run for their money.

What the opposition should understand as Jennifer Gandhi says in "Opposition Unity and Cooptation in Hybrid Regimes", is that in nascent democracies like in Cameroon, there is the combination of "the formal institution of democracy with some of the behavioral patterns of autocracy: partisan elections in which the incumbent or his party seldom loses".

The author illustrates, using data from Sub-Sahara African countries, that it is only when "pre-electoral coalitions and agreements among opposition parties to support a unity candidate to challenge the incumbent president in the election that they sometimes are able to dislodge long-time incumbents from power".

Aware of the potency of such alliance, incumbents are known to have lured some opposition leaders without mettle away from opposition unity by offering ministerial and senatorial posts. 

That should explain why Bello Bouba Maigari, Issa Tchiroma, Jean de Dieu Momo, and their likes, are leaders of opposition parties, but since joined government to implement CPDM policies.

Despite that divide and rule gymnastics, The Guardian Post can vouch that with a single opposition candidate, the country will in 2025, (or why not before then?), enjoy a pulsating electoral contest which should be for the progress of the country's democracy.

We are delighted that one of the prominent politicians on the national scene, Hon Nincheu Jean Michel, has expressed that need as The Guardian Post reported yesterday.

For him, a coalition led by Prof Muarice Kamto, will produce political fireworks akin to the 1992 presidential poll, which saw the putting in place of the SDF-led Union for Change that gave the Biya regime a run for their money.

According to Hon Nintcheu, there is no real opposition political voice against the Biya regime except Prof Kamto’s Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC.

He is not far from the truth. Prof Kamto officially came second at the last presidential election with 14.23%. He was followed by Cabral Libii, on 6.28% while Osih Joshua of the SDF, came a distant fourth with 3.35% and Ndam Njoya on 1.73% of votes cast.

With the demise of Ndam Njoya, his Cameroon Democratic Union, CDU, still holds firmly to the Noun Division of the West Region. These political parties, including prominent Anglophone political personalities like Kah Walla, Akere Muna and Ayah Paul Abine are those who can form a powerful alliance that can rattle the ruling CPDM party at the presidential poll.

But to do that, there should be a kingmaker who does not want to be king. Hon Nintcheu has positioned himself as that kingmaker and it will be for the interest of Cameroon's democracy if he can take up the task of forming that alliance of genuine opposition parties that have illustrated their following in past polls, not the multitude being created to muddle the playing field.