2025 presidentials: When internal rebellion rocks foundation of CPDM.

French language newspaper, Le Point Hebdo, describes it as "The Pandemonium...", while other media organs prefer headlines like "Grosse panique: le RDPC au bord de l'implosion" and "Grave crise au RDPC".

Unlike previous years for the past four decades when the South Region often boasts of giving 100 percent votes to the CPDM candidate, Paul Biya, "their son", this time, some of their elite are calling for "a sanction vote". 

Ahead of the October presidential poll, in an open letter circulated in the media, the South elite called for a change of the long reign of their "brother", whom they say has brought nothing to their Region. 

In a Region presented as an impregnable bastion of President Paul Biya, who has always made the most of the votes, with a superlative score, the four-page open letter to the populations of the Region, presents a bleak assessment of the accomplishments of the CPDM regime.

They deplored: the state of roads judged as disastrous, localities without electricity, the unemployment of young graduates before coming to the conclusion of a "generalised despair".

They added that President Paul Biya has maintained a relationship of “condescension and distance...who remembers a single meeting held by Paul Biya in any locality in the South?”

The authors called on voters in the South Region to seize the opportunity of the October 2025 presidential election to free themselves “from the bondage of a power that holds them hostage”. 

In a quick reply, the Minister of State, Minister of Higher Education, Prof Jacques Fame, who doubles as South Region CPDM boss, said "the South does not accept this attempt at political parricide". 

The minister, who is also spin doctor of the CPDM, described the signatories of the open letter as "a group organisation that is as sectarian as it is herd-like". 

He explained that "although born in the South Region, President Biya's Region or his tribe is Cameroon". 

He quotes Biya's 1991 campaign rhetoric in Yaounde and repeats: "Many talk of change, but to change what?...do we want to change the man through whom change came?" And again: "The people are not fooled; they know how to distinguish between vanity and truth". 

"No one can scientifically demonstrate that no road has been paved," Jacques Fame Ndongo asserted, noting that no one can "scientifically" demonstrate that no road has been paved, no hospital, no high school built in four decades. 

"Much has been done by the Head of State...much remains to be done, with him," he stated. 

The letter from Biya's backyard, which content gets into the skin of the regime, followed another killer blow from Leon Theiller Onana, a CPDM Councillor of the Monatele Council, also in the party's stronghold.

He went to court, challenging the violation of the CPDM internal rules, arguing that if the situation is not corrected, the party's ‘natural candidate’ shall not qualify for the October election. He is also calling their leader to give way for the youth.

The Yaounde Court of First Instance, last week, declared itself incompetent to rule on the explosive case that has stirred the Cameroonian political landscape for months.

Despite this defeat, the CPDM councillor has already announced his intention to make an appeal.

“It’s going to get rather complicated...we will appeal the judge's decision of incompetence. Nothing is so far finished,” Onana told reporters after the verdict.

In parallel with the legal feuilleton, Léon Theiller Onana is said to be facing an exclusion proceeding from the council. 

It is not the first time the ruling party is facing such a storm from within. 

In January 2003, Chief Mila Assouté, a member of the Central Committee, was lead author of a memo titled: ‘Le Livre Blanc Du Groupe Pour La Modernisation Du RDPC, Evaluation et Proposition” loosely translated as "White Paper of the Group for the Modernisation of the CPDM, Evaluation and Proposal".

The authors were members and alternate members of the Central Committee of the CPDM party, Members of Parliament, Charges de Mission and members of the Economic and Social Council, drawn from across the national territory.

Their intention was to reform the party, which the authors said, was "ostentatiously deviating from its noble objective, by individuals who do only what they want in contempt of its ideals and objectives, its texts and regulations, thus endangering the social policy contract of its national president with the people, and rendering its commitments null and void in the eyes of national and international opinion". 

They said the party, like the country, was, according to them, undermined by "evils such as corruption and bribery, fraud and embezzlement, embezzlement of public funds and property, the exacerbation of tribalism, discrimination, favouritism and nepotism, without forgetting the feeling of impunity, organised crime, criminality, mediocrity and ambient laxity".

The document also stated that "true hegemonic dynasties are being created, lurking in dormant networks that threaten the life of the state, and privileged clans within the party and the nation, having practically confiscated senior government positions, entire sectors of the economy and finance, assets, and other precious natural resources, which they squander at will". 

They called for the convening of a party congress and the use of primaries to elect its presidential candidate with Chief Assoute announcing his candidature for the primary. 

Though their action, like that of Onana, was considered a democratic auto-criticism of both the modus vivendi and modus operandi of the ruling party, the regime didn't take it lightly and they were expelled.

But times are changing and such internal self-examination with all legitimacy is just a writing on the wall pointing to a rising dynamic of political reconfiguration that is taking shape in the party of flames, leading to an implosion.

In her book, “Factional Politics: How Dominant Parties Implode or Stabilise”, Françoise Boucek, argues that the extended dominance of a party breeds internal dissent, because politicians who do not have to worry about re-election start using the party primarily as a vehicle for individual ambition".

In the end, this mechanism leads to the demise of a party, even though some political parties are successful in managing internal divisions over extended periods of time.

Isn’t that what is happening in the ruling party? The CPDM, with its National President, Paul Biya, then bracing up with the energy of age 70, succeeded to manage the Reformist "rebellion" of Chief Assoute, by expelling him and his group. 

At 93 and some 23 years after that shock, only time will tell if the party will contain the wind of change that is being tenaciously fanned by some elite of the South Region, Councillor Onana and allies like Isa Tchiroma Bakary and supporters of UNDP.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3482 of Monday June 23, 2025