Editorial: 2025 presidentials; Desperate Biya regime hanging on to illegal UPC faction!.

As the 2025 presidential election draws near with alliances being formed or fortified, the party is once again in factions. 

Just before anyone could say Jack Robinson after a coalition of 20 opposition political parties and Civil Society Organisations, including the UPC, had endorsed Barrister Akere Muna as their presidential candidate, a tiny faction of the UPC, led by Hon Robert Bapooh Lipot, cropped up supporting the CPDM incumbent, Paul Biya.

Before the pro-Biya faction went to the Ministry of Territorial Administration, MINAT, last Friday; a major stakeholder in the electoral process, which should be nonpartisan, the UPC leader, Habiba Issa, said after their formal support for Akere Muna, that it was time to give power to Anglophones, who must also feel like Cameroonians.

The UPC leader had added that: “We are bringing shame to the African people. After 40 years, Cameroon is living in misery. Let us choose a peaceful transition, free and transparent for an Anglophone candidate because two Francophone mandates are enough”.

“Today, we the citizens have the final word. We can decide our own destiny. If we don't decide our destiny, politics will. Let's rise up,” Habiba had said. 

Judging from various media reports and voices of wisdom for momentum going in support of Barrister Akere Muna and the two other alliances that have been formed to support Prof. Maurice Kamto and Hon Cabral Libii to get into Muna's boat, it can be said without fear of being contradicted that the few UPCists clinging on to the Presidential Majority know it too well that more than 90% of UPC supporters will cast their votes in favour of Akere Muna, come October 2025.

Seven of them, led by Hon Robert Bapooh Lipot, said to be Secretary General of the party, grumbled after an audience in MINAT that "some members of the UPC support Barrister Akere Muna as candidate for the 2025 presidential elections".

He said they went to MINAT to "officially renew the party’s loyalty and fidelity to the ruling CPDM party by handing a sealed note carrying the agreement earlier signed in 2017, stating the party’s alliance with the CPDM".

With the agreement, he said the UPC is legitimately still in coalition with the CPDM, thus it was unconstitutional for some UPC members to stage a coalition with any other political party. 

“We are here to reaffirm our support to President Paul Biya and let the entire nation know that we are giving our support to President Paul Biya during the upcoming presidential election and... this is the only alliance that the UPC has”.

He added that: “We want to let the entire nation know that if someone is wearing the clothes or anything concerning the UPC and is saying that he is giving the support of the UPC to another political party, this is wrong. We reassure the entire nation today that the only alliance which the UPC has is the alliance with the CPDM and also that for the next presidential election, we are going to support the candidate of the CPDM".

Pure lies! No matter how convincing Bapooh tried to sound, political analysts say they read in his outing at MINAT, last Friday, a clear example of political manoeuvring and gansterism.

First, they argue that his trip to MINAT, to present a copy of the party’s supposed pact with the CPDM, was ill-advised. Why didn’t he go but to the Secretary General of the CPDM Central Committee? 

This isn't the first time members of the party have been in splinter groups. On Sunday July 15, 2018, in Douala, Habiba Issa, president of the UPC, was invested by the party's steering committee as its candidate for the presidential election of October 7, 2018 "with the possibility of a coalition with all other parties except the CPDM of Head of State Paul Biya".

The next day in Yaounde, Hon. Robert Bapooh Lipot, Secretary General of a dissident faction of the UPC, organised a press conference to call for support for Candidate Paul Biya in the 2018 presidential election.

MINAT, in its mediation, sided with the losing horse. In a letter of July 17, 2018, with reference No. 0032/L/MINAT/, to regional governors, the Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, had written: “Following the persistence of internal conflicts within certain political parties, I have the honour to inform you that only the leaders designated below are authorised to represent their respective political parties. They are: 1- Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC), Secretary General: Mr. Bapooh Lipot Robert...".

The ministerial instructions were rejected in a lower court. MINAT filed an appeal and the Supreme Court, in judgment No. 192/ QD/2022 of October 12, 2022, in the case of the "State of Cameroon (MINAT) V/ Union of Populations of Cameroon (UPC)" dismissed the appeal and recognised Baleguel Nkot Pierre, as the Secretary General of the UPC that endorsed Akere Muna's candidature.

So, which is the UPC that went to MINAT to give "motion of support" to President Biya, 91, and with over four decades in power for a seventh term when in democracy three terms are a taboo?

Even if it was a legal political entity, is it at MINAT that it should go to announce support and even pose for a picture with the minister, which is trending in the social media?

Will MINAT, in the same logic as a supposedly neutral partner in the electoral process, accept another opposition party to come to its office and declare support for Akere Muna, Maurice Kamto or any other opposition leader?

Is MINAT not aware of the decision at the country's highest court that only Baleguel Nkot Pierre is the legitimate leader of the UPC that has declared for Barrister Akere Muna?

Patriotic law-abiding Cameroonians interested in the development of the country's nascent democratic process are watching with rapt attention as the 2025 presidential election, which will make or mar, comes up.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3252 of Monday October 07, 2024