Editorial: 2025 presidentials; CPDM campaign is on!.

Paradoxically, the man who anchored his last campaign on the "Force of Experience", 92-year old President Paul Biya, in office for 42 years, has not even said he will take another seven year mandate or have a reserved retirement at the end of this term.

".... When this mandate expires, you will be informed whether I am a candidate, or whether I am returning to the village," he said in reply to a reporter. That  was when he was questioned if he will run again during a visit by his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, to Yaounde.

Given the various calls by his party top officials for him to remain in office, there is very little room for doubts. 

His party's texts are clear; "the party's Chairman is the natural candidate in the presidential election".

Biya is the CPDM Chairman, re-elected at the last party congress held in 2011, on the eve of that year's presidential election.

By CPDM internal rules, the congress should hold every five years. 

But since 2011, the party, which regime insists on "respect of the law and republican institutions", has breached the regulation.

Without another congress before October next year, President Biya remains the natural candidate of the party for 2025.

The question is who in the disunited and divided opposition will challenge his 'force of experience'?

Given the performance of the last presidential election, Prof. Maurice Kamto, a formidable opponent, by official results, came a distant second with 14.23% of the vote, but claimed he won and his victory was stolen.

But his Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC, boycotted the 2020 legislative elections, denouncing "fraud during the previous elections in 2018" and demanded first the resolution of the bloody crisis that has been raging in the North West and South West Regions since 2016.

The electoral law, as if to target him, was tinkered to stipulate that potential candidates can only be invested by a party with at least one elected representative throughout the territory.

Another condition is for independent candidates to obtain 300 signatures, 30 each from all 10 Regions; from senators, parliamentarians, mayors and first class traditional chiefs. It is an insurmountable barrier that no politician has ever managed to overcome.

Another possible politician who can give the CPDM candidate a run for power is Hon Cabral Libii. He came third at the last legislative poll. His party took part in the last legislative and municipal elections, scooping five parliamentary seats and seven councils. 

But Cabral Libii is in a dicey situation. Without a party of his own, he joined the Cameroon Party for National Reconciliation, PRCN, and became its National President, leading a list to the 2020 legislative elections that gave him and four others parliamentary seats. 

Since last year, the founding president of PRCN, Robert Kona, a retired civil servant, has been contesting Libii's leadership. 

The Minister of Territorial Administration had to write to Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, taking sides with Kona. The leadership dispute remains dragging in court. It is not clear if there would be a terminal verdict before the polls. 

While the tussle for leadership drags, Kona has surprisingly endorsed President Biya for the October 2025 poll, thus joining the bandwagon of campaigners for the incumbent, even before the electorate are invited to the poll.

Last Friday, Senator Nfor Tabetando, leading a team of the South West Permanent Regional Delegation of the Central Committee of the CPDM, was in Tiko for a "training" session which has been a nationwide stunt glossed with campaign messages for the party's candidate.

Meeting local officials, Nfor Tabetando said: “The CPDM is a party that wants to preserve its power. We came to brief our supporters that there are challenges for the 2025 presidential election and we are bound to fight to consolidate power”.

After the "training" in Tiko where the CPDM narrowly took the council from the SDF at the last poll, Senator Nfor Tabetando said “supporters have assured me that Tiko will remain a bastion of the CPDM party”. 

When Jean Kuete, Secretary General of the party, launched the national training sessions which are being used to pour encomiums on, and campaign for Candidate Biya in Yaounde last year, he said: "The current national and international atmosphere further warrants that the party enlightens its own on what the 2025 elections represent for Cameroon’s democracy".

What the election means for democracy will be determined by its fairness, transparency and above all not to use slick tactics to eliminate potential opposition contestants.

Shall it not be a mockery of democracy and an invitation for an uncertain future, if the two candidates, who were runners up at the 2018 presidential elections, are disqualified from next year's presidential poll?

One of the achievements of President Biya has been the introduction of multiparty politics to "enrich" the country's democratic process. 

The Guardian Post urges him to ensure a level playing field, whether he decides to return to the village or remain in office.

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3186 of Thursday August 01, 2024