Editorial: Alarm bell as 2025 Presidential approaches!.

The last registration exercise ended on August 31, 2024, with the Director General of Elections at ELECAM, Dr Erik Essousse, disclosing that 755,085 new potential voters were biometrically enrolled on the electoral register in 2024, augmenting the total number to 8,116,960 in the country.

He, however, said the number was not conclusive because a de-duplication process was awaited to clean-up the register.

After the cleanup, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC party Chairman, Prof Maurice Kamto, who was the main challenger of the CPDM incumbent, Paul Biya, at the 2018 presidential poll, announced that names of his party supporters had been systematically deleted in constituencies regarded as the party’s fief.

On Wednesday November 27, 2024, the MRC National President, Prof Maurice Kamto, who describes himself as "candidate for the 2025 presidential", repeated the claim in a press release. 

He reiterated that as many as 120,000 voters had their names erased from the register in "Yaounde V, Yaounde III and Yaounde VII. It is the highest rejection rate for lack of fingerprints, with 87%, 75% and 60% respectively".

In response to a question from a reporter during the second meeting of the National Platform for Permanent Consultation between ELECAM and other stakeholders in the electoral process, held last Tuesday November 26, in Yaounde, the Director General of Elections at ELECAM attributed the removal to lack of fingerprints.

Kamto has since replied ELECAM, saying "the absence of fingerprints of certain voters could be due to agricultural activities or disability".

He then expressed worries that: "We do not know where the plantations of the people concerned are located in Yaounde, and no one can believe that the majority of people of voting age in these three Subdivisions of the country's capital have a disability affecting their fingers".

He, however, commended ELECAM for giving the assurance that "the problem has been deeply analysed within the Electoral Board and the General Directorate, and all these voters are taken into account and will be in the December 2024 lists”.

“This is a step, however small, in the right direction. The MRC is delighted that the Electoral Council has decided to assume its mission of ensuring compliance with the electoral law, by all stakeholders, so as to ensure the regularity, impartiality, objectivity, transparency and sincerity of the ballots". 

Prof Kamto explained in the statement that "the General Management of ELECAM has regained its senses on this question. The MRC would like to see this as a sign of the electoral body's desire to work towards strict compliance with the electoral law, by all actors in the electoral process, starting with itself.  If, as we hope and strongly wish, this were indeed the case from the start to finish of the process, there is no doubt that the presidential election scheduled for 2025 would be peaceful, to the great happiness of the Cameroonian people; our march towards democracy would then take a crucial step for the greatest honor of our country, Cameroon. ELECAM would rightfully get a lot of the credit".

Kamto, however, insisted that Cameroonians should "move away from this period where there is much talk about the electoral law without having read it, and where above all there is blind trust in an electoral body that is supposed to be independent and neutral, but some of its staff engaged in reprehensible behaviour, by their scandalous practices, to say the least."

He warned that the MRC "continues to draw the attention of the General Management of ELECAM” and its “technical partners,” to their historical and legal responsibility in the good or bad conduct of elections in Cameroon, in particular the crucial presidential election, scheduled for 2025. This is an opportunity for us to invite all the forces of change, whether supporters of the MRC or not, to remain mobilised and on maximum alert, so as not to allow any attempt at fraud to flourish".

He said they are awaiting the publication of the lists of registered voters by December 30, 2024, as required by the Electoral Code and hoped the "120,000 Cameroonian citizens excluded from the electoral lists have actually been reintegrated into the electoral register".

The Guardian Post also wishes to see the deleted names included on the electoral register, especially given that farming, by no stretch of scientific explanation, can affect the fingerprints of a person, especially in Cameroon where 70 percent of the working population are cutlass-and-hoe farmers.

We urged that when the lists are published, those who have registered should verify their names and those who did not register should do so when registration begins again on January 2, as some eight million registered voters in Cameroon as of now is   insignificant compared to a population estimated at 30 million.

Several alarms of uncertainty, curiosity and caution, have been raised concerning the impending 2025 presidential election, not only by MRC but by organisations like the Britton Woods Institutions.

It shall, however, be the responsibility of ELECAM, to ensure neutrality and integrity in its conduct, despite the flaws that have been pointed in the electoral code by international election observers, as rigged polls are often a trigger for violence, which Cameroon doesn't need. 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3305 of Friday November 29, 2024