2025 presidentials: Unspoken side of Kamto's Paris rally!.

"When you do me the badge of honour of entrusting the reindeer to me, you can be sure that nothing will happen to Mr Biya and his family. Nothing. I bear myself a guarantor, I have no time for hatred. I have time to build Cameroon with you," he said at the rally, held at the historic Republic Square. Bookmakers put attendance rate at "10,000 supporters, who enthusiastically saluted Prof Kamto’s 'dream of a peaceful alternation through the ballot box'".

Banners brandished at the rally read: "Kamto, only hope", "Youth standing, the future calls us", "He [President Biya] must understand that it is time to give way to the one who gives hope", "Showing the world that the candidate of the Cameroonian people is Maurice Kamto", "After more than 40 years of dictatorship, everything has to change”, “In Cameroon, nothing works".

Reacting to the virile debate about his qualification, Kamto told cheering supporters that there are "no legal obstacles". 

AFP quoted Guy Tassé, a lawyer in Paris and a member of the MRC's France office at the rally, as saying: "It's a political maneuver by the regime to try to block the candidate who scares them because he embodies real change".

At least two ministers have reacted to Kamto's rally. The Minister Delegate to the Minister of Justice, Jean de Dieu Momo, coming from an inconsequential opposition party in alliance with the CPDM government in a social media post, wrote: “False promises at a meeting in Paris! Frankly, I laughed. It didn’t end when I learned that he is committed to 'protecting President Paul Biya and his family'! It reminded me that I too made the same promise when I ran for president in 2011”.

He added that: "A president for Cameroon? Frankly it’s a joke? No! Actually, it’s a disguised way of telling the one in power not to fear exactions…I recognise with hindsight that it’s a puerile and ridiculous requirement in politics! Do we give power to an opponent? Better give it to Franck if it’s not just a matter of personal safety! By the way, here is a guy who is not yet in power but whose close guard consists of Nkassa (whites), a veritable black inferiority complex believing that whites are superior to him! Pathetic and sold to the core! A president for Cameroon? Frankly it’s a joke? No!”. 

The relay was taken by the vice spin doctor of the ruling party, Grégoire Owona, who is also Minister of Labour and Social Security. 

He focused his attack on "crowd size", which was an issue in the US elections with Democrats mocking at scanty attendance at Donald Trump's rallies.   

For Grégoire Owona, "A rally in France! How pathetic was this rally, so highly publicised for months, when organisers announced that millions of Cameroonians from around the world would attend! The prestigious Place de la République did not see the tens of millions of Cameroonians expected. Not even 5,000," he proclaimed.

The venue can accommodate a large number of people. In 2008, a demonstration drew an estimated 1.6 million people, making it the largest in modern French history.

He added that: “Luckily, even the Parisians mobilised that same afternoon for the Champions League final in the bars and snacks of the environs, where they spent hours in complete quiet. More football fans than potential voters”.         

He went on to question what protection Kamto was promising to give President Biya.

"Protection of Paul Biya and his family...what protection do they need? Are they or will they be in danger? Who he lives will see. Cameroon is not in danger! Cameroon is up and running for the better!”, Minister Owona concluded.

But what the government ministers are not saying is the peaceful organisation of the rally, no violence and no hate speeches. 

The official rallying message inscribed on visuals was: “We don’t come as communities, we come as a nation”, to confirm Kamto's' attachment to national unity, which his opponent won’t mention.

Suspecting that separatists abroad, many of whom usually attend MRC meetings, Kamto proscribed the coming with their flags, or weapons and no hate speech.

For that peaceful organisation in a country where there is no taboo subject for public debate and criticism, Kamto, judging by many independent media reporting, succeeded to mobilise the diasporas in Europe. 

He also used it to draw international attention to his candidacy and the numerous challenges facing ordinary Cameroonians at home, which the ruling party has not resolved in 43 years. 

His acerbic critics naturally have had a cold, some even suggesting that he should be arrested on his return for what no one knows. 

But as Martin Luther King Jr said in A Testament of Hope: “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right”. 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3463 of Tuesday June 03, 2025