Editorial: 2025 presidentials; Opposition at crossroads!.

It is "a choice of the heart and reason,” Nkuete affirmed, urging elite and activists of West Region to sign a motion to support the candidacy of President Paul Biya.

“We are not talking about the succession of the leader during his lifetime,” said the former Government Delegate to the Bafoussam Urban Coouncil, Emmanuel Nzeté. 

“The basic texts of our party are clear,” Nzeté added, referring to the fact that the president of the CPDM, Paul Biya, since its creation is automatically the party’s presidential candidate, even at 91 and in power for over four decades.

That longevity, advanced age and socioeconomic challenges in appalling cost of living, electricity shortage, insufficient water supply, bad roads and a sick health delivery system should have been issues for the opposition to capitalise on and effect change at the polls.

But the opposition has traditionally skewed towards egoistic interests, which appeared to have been fizzling out when Hon Jean Michel Nintcheu, defector from the Social Democratic Front, SDF, and current president of the Front for Change in Cameroon, FCC, last year launched the Political Alliance for Change.

In an interview with the media, he said the unique candidate should be “Maurice Kamto, the person who embodies the opposition, through the way in which he and his party are repressed by those in power and through the fact that he came far ahead of the others in the last presidential election. Anyone who says anything else will not work for the opposition”.

In reaction, the opposition leader who trailed Kamto at the 2018 presidential election, Hon Cabral Libii, President of the Cameroon Party for National Reconciliation, PCRN, welcomed the idea of an opposition alliance but disagreed on the precipitated choice of Kamto. He instead proposed the idea of a transition. 

"At the end of the period of deep consultation of our political base on the subject of the adhesion or not of our political party to the Alliance of which you [Nintcheu] are responsible for the coordination, it is my republican duty to bring to your attention the widely shared position of activists, sympathisers and elected officials of the PCRN: The Political Alliance for Change (APC) is an indisputably timely initiative,” Cabral Libii said. 

He added in his letter to Nintcheu, which was made public, that: “Given the state of degradation of our country and the opacity which will have surrounded more than 40 years of exercise of power by a single party governing, and in view of the lessons that the transition situations that countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Gabon are going through, it seems to us a priority, realistic and wise to anticipate by working for it through a vote, for a Civil Reformation Transition of three to five years, which will be responsible for evaluating the institutions and carrying out reforms at the end of which there will be, among other things, equality of chances between future competitors for power”.

He added that: “Rather than immediately presenting a candidate, we must first agree on the main reforms to be made, and then find a “workhorse” whose profile will be drawn up in a concerted manner by political and civil organisations of the transition platform”. 

"The activists and sympathisers and elected officials of the PCRN would unreservedly support the MRC candidate, if he were chosen in this context,” Hon Cabral Libii added 

He was echoed last week after the National Executive Committee, NEC, meeting of the Social Democratic Front, SDF, in Yaounde.

The National Chairman of the SDF, Hon Joshua Osih, during the NEC meeting, called for an inclusive approach that will provide a peaceful political transition.

“The SDF has been able to organise coalitions since 1990. We sincerely believe that where Cameroon stands today, we need to seriously work towards pushing an agenda and not running after a coalition so that one actor wins. We are for a winning Cameroon and not for a winning individual,” Osih told the press.

“We are today at a turning point, and we are looking forward to putting proposals on the table that can be as inclusive as possible to bolster our country to a political transition. We are not running to win the race, but trying to bring together, to make sure that the only outcome that can save this country, which is the political transition, is the agenda that will be considered,” he insisted. 

From the discourses of the major opposition leaders, there is the unanimity for a common alliance. 

However, what does not slot together like Russian dolls is the choice of Kamto as coalition candidate.

But how will Hon Cabral Libii have a transition government for "three to five years" without first having a leader to win the presidency? Judging by the last presidential election results, isn't it just logical that Kamto should lead an opposition alliance?

The Guardian Post share in their articulated opinion that there is need to reform a system that has been veering from "national integration to living together, from Rigor and Moralisation to hate speech and from accelerated to effective decentralisation" for over four decades. 

There is also the urgency to cut costs, not just import substitution but by reducing the number of ministers in a bloated government of 64 portfolios.

To do that, the opposition most unite under one leader and share ministerial posts such as Prime Minister, Speaker of the National Assembly, President of the Senate, Presidents of the Supreme Court and Constitutional Council and other key ministerial posts among members of the coalition if they win. 

That cannot be by divine interposition but by patriotic opposition politicians warding off their inflated egos for the sake of democratic change and transformation in 2025.