2025 presidential election: Biya, political dribbler, dribbles again!.

The decision, which has surfaced through a bill seeking to extend the mandate of Members of the National Assembly from March 10, 2025, to March 30, 2026, is being scrutinised by members of the Constitutional Laws Committee of the legislative house. 

The bill, expected to be clapped through by the majority CPDM parliament in the days ahead, has been described as the outplay of Biya’s political hindsight. 

Through the bill, Biya, who is known to be a political dribbler, analysts are saying, has again dribbled the opposition to smoothen his path to victory in 2025.

Technically knocks out Kamto

The bill, set to be adopted in parliament, will automatically knock out Prof Maurice Kamto from being fielded by the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC, party, for the 2025 presidential election.

This is because, the Electoral Code, in Section 121 (1), provides that for an individual to qualify to contest for presidential election, he/she must be invested by a political party or be an independent candidate on condition they put forward at least 300 signatures from the 10 Regions.

As it stands, Kamto, whose MRC party has no Municipal and Regional Councillors as well as Members of Parliament, will only qualify for the 2025 presidentials if he is invested by another party or if he gets the required 300 signatures from elected officials and first-class traditional rulers from the 10 Regions of the country.

Kamto, whose party boycotted the municipal and legislative elections of 2020, had been hoping to make up by winning parliamentary and council seats if the twin polls were to be staged in the first quarter of 2025.

That scenario would have automatically made him eligible for presidential election in October 2025. But with the bill in parliament, Biya has crashed Kamto’s plans.

National Assembly admits bill

The bill was deemed admissible by the Chairmen's Conference that held at the Speaker's Cabinet, Saturday July 6. 

It was communicated to the entire House Chamber during a Plenary Sitting which was chaired by the Speaker of National Assembly, Rt Hon Cavaye Yeguie Djibril. 

The bill has been prepared pursuant to the provisions of Article 15 (4) of the Constitution, which states that: "In case of serious crisis, or where circumstances so warrant, the President of the Republic may, after consultation with the President of the Constitutional Council and Bureaux of the National Assembly and the Senate, request the National Assembly to decide, by a law, to extend or abridge its term of office".

With the formality provided for in Article 15(4) of the Constitution having been respected as per the explanatory statement, “the attached bill proposes an extension of the term of office of Members of the National Assembly, to 30 March 2026”.

Gov’t justifies mandate extension 

As per the explanatory statement of the bill, the proposed extension is “warranted by the need to lighten the electoral calendar, which provides for 4 (four) elections in 2025; namely the election of Members of the National Assembly and Municipal Councillors, as well as the election of the President of the Republic and Regional Councillors”. 

It further explained that “apart from the election of Regional Councillors, the other elections, which are direct ballots, require the deployment of substantial human, material and financial resources”. 

The bill further justifies that based on the aforementioned reasons, it is “judicious to spread the abovementioned elections over the years 2025 and 2026, so as to ensure better organisation”. 

CPDM regime afraid of Kamto -Nintcheu 

In an outing on his Facebook page, opposition politician and former MP of the Social Democratic Front, SDF, Jean-Michel Nintcheu, criticised the move to extend the mandate of the lawmakers.

To Nintcheu who is the National President of Front for Change in Cameroon, FCC, the move is proof that the Biya regime is afraid of facing the National President of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC,  Prof Maurice Kamto, in another president election. 

He said the Yaounde regime is afraid of the “upcoming electoral deadlines, due to its disastrous record and the legitimate popular anger of Cameroonians, perceptible through their exceptional mobilisation for massive registrations on the electoral register. The regime is terrified of facing Maurice Kamto, the candidate of the MRC and the APC, the Breath of Hope, in the 2025 presidential election”. 

“The arbitrary and unconstitutional extension of the mandate of MPs is therefore in fact only a crude maneuver, aimed at trying to exclude from the race, our declared candidate, the candidate of the people of Change and Alternation,” he added. 

Hon Nintcheu, who is also Acting National Coordinator of the Alliance for Political Change, APC, coalition platform, said the move is “illegal in addition to being dishonest and inappropriate”. 

“This clumsy attempt to justify yet another violation of the law is nothing but a crude and pathetic political manipulation of power. It confirms the notorious negligence and incompetence of the CPDM regime on several levels,” Nintcheu wrote. 

He questioned how government can, in a country with recurrent financial scandals involving ministers and other identified top-ranking personalities, invoke the financial cost of elections to extend the mandate of MPs. 

He detailed that the holding of legislative and municipal elections in its right date in February 2025, has an eight months gap to the presidential election of October 2025. He said extending it by one year, that is to say until March 30, 2026, the period which will now separate it from the presidential election of October 2025 would only be four months. 

CPDM gov’t laying groundwork for power grab - SDF

In a writeup exploring the contours of the proposal to extend the mandate of MPs, the SDF Shaow Cabinet Minister of Justice, Honoré Ngam, said the move is the groundwork for extended power grab by the CPDM regime. 

The former SDF Senator said the CPDM government is carefully using laws and decrees to pack loyalists in positions of power at all levels for the next decade, a way to guarantee that they are in charge, come what may. 

“The strategy behind this may not become obvious at first, but then there is a clear intention there: to lock in the next group of people who will take over the Senate and the Regions. In other words, the Presidency, in case of vacancy and the Regions, where decentralised power now lies,” Ngam wrote. 

The habitual extension of the mandate of MPs and municipal councillors, he said, “runs against core election principles, notably according to which, elections have to be periodic (Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)”.

While stating that the mandates of municipal councillors have always been extended since 2002, while that of MPs of have had extensions in 2013, 2018 and 2024, the former SDF lawmaker noted that “respect for the electoral calendar has to be the norm”. 

He said with no legal provisions extending the mandates of Regional Councillors, the logical and natural outcome of an extension of the mandate of municipal Councillors will be that the incumbent municipal councillors will elect Regional Councillors for two mandates, ten years, 2020-2025 and 2025-2030. 

“This will also have a domino effect on the outcome of the 2028 Senatorial elections,” he detailed. 

He said the ideal objective should be strict allegiance to the electoral calendar with elections conducted when due. 

Ngam insisted that if the government is keen to extend the mandates of MPs and municipal councillors, complementary measures should also be taken to extend the mandate of Regional Councillors. 

“Any contrary dispositions will only translate into a complete and total highjack of the will and aspirations of the people,” he stated. 

CDU says move selfish, calls for review of Electoral Code

In a statement issued recently, the Cameroon Democratic Union, CDU, rubbished the move by the Head of State to propose an extension of the mandate of MPs.

The statement, signed by the party’s president, Tomaïno Ndam Njoya, describes the move by the Head of State as a disregard of his constitutionally prescribed role as arbiter in regulating the functioning of public authorities, and of the democratic game for the general interests of the Republic and the Cameroonian people.

The party called on the President to withdraw the said bill, respect the electoral calendar and for the interest of electoral fairness, publish the precise dates of the various elections so as to enable stakeholders in the electoral process to enter the political arena with confidence.

The CDU also urges the Head of State to introduce in Parliament the Draft Amendment to the Electoral Code, considering proposals submitted by the platform of political parties and civil society organisations. 

Kamto’s hints finally comes to pass 

Vocal opposition politician and MRC leader, Prof Maurice Kamto, it should be recalled, had on, on March 15, hinted of a ploy by the regime to reverse the electoral calendar to its favour, ahead of upcoming polls in the country. 

The 2018 presidential election candidate was unequivocal that any attempts by government to reverse the electoral calendar and hold the Presidential Election before the Legislative, Municipal and Regional Council elections in 2025, will be in total violation of the law.

The former member of Biya government, now a stanch regime critic, had said: “…there are indications that the CPDM is persisting with its idea of holding the Presidential Election before the Legislative and Municipal Elections, due to be held in February 2025”. 

Recalling a press conference, he granted on July 27, 2023, the politician and lawyer, explained that such a decision would be contrary to the country’s constitution. He had also said it would be unjustified in financial terms.

“On the institutional level, flouting the electoral calendar to postpone the Legislative and Municipal Elections, for 18 months or indefinitely, would result in either the extension of the term of office of Regional Councillors, or the election of new Regional Councillors by Municipal Councillors with no elective mandate, surviving only thanks to the decree extending the duration of their term of office, and consequently devoid of any democratic legitimacy,” the politician said. 

According to the MRC leader, such maneuvers to first hold the Presidential Election before local elections “would taint the legitimacy of these institutions (Regional Councils) and would be profoundly undemocratic”.

This, Kamto said, is because “it would run counter to the republican principle of elections as the method of appointing representatives of the Cameroonian people to these institutions...”.

Kamto had also said reversing the electoral calendar to hold the Presidential Election before the Legislative and Municipal Elections “would be a concrete expression of the panic that has gripped the CPDM”.

The opposition politician had argued that the CPDM party, which has “led Cameroon into a dead end, hopes to be able to engage in a damage control to salvage the name of its President, which is the only cement that still allows the various enemy clans of this party in tatters, to give themselves an apparent cohesion”.

In his usual claim that he won the 2018 Presidential Election, Kamto, holds that: “CPDM leaders naively hope that with the system of fraud and control over those in charge of State organs, put in place by the President of their party, no one would dare declare the latter's electoral defeat, even if, as in 2018, he was to lose at the ballot box”.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3162 of Monday July 8, 2024