October poll: Silence, CPDM has two candidacies!.

For the October 12 presidential election, Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, has received applications from two candidates of the CPDM- one from the incumbent Head of State, registered as Biya Paul and the other from Léon Theiller Onana, a CPDM councillor at Monatele Council in the outskirts of Yaounde.

In a statement, Onana wrote, "Dear fellow citizens, I have the honour to announce that today, July 18, 2025, I officially submitted my candidacy for the presidential election on October 12, 2025. My application was submitted to ELECAM and the Constitutional Council, in full compliance with Article 123, Paragraphs 4 and 5 of the current electoral law. This act demonstrates my firm commitment to being the true candidate of the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement, CPDM, at the October 12, 2025 presidential election". 

Everyone who can read and write, without being a professor of law, knows that the electoral law is unequivocal that a political party can submit only the name of one candidate to contest for the position of President of the Republic.

The Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, whose ministry "accompanies" ELECAM in electoral issues and registers political parties, had to prevent a double registration in parties with a leadership dispute written to ELECAM, stipulating the names of personalities who can present candidates for this year’s presidential election.

It is public knowledge that the leadership of the ruling party has been in dispute, to the point there is even case pending in court.

Unlike in other political parties, where the rancour has been over who should lead, in the CPDM, it is the existence of a yawning vacuum that needed to be filled.

Onana took the matter to the Court of First Instance in Yaounde, arguing forcefully that the mandate of their party National President, Paul Biya, elected for a five-year term at the 2011 Congress, had since expired.

That is a legal reality, going by the text of the ruling party, which he quoted. The court declared itself 'incompetent' to adjudicate to order a Congress, but that did not resolve the legality of a vacancy at the top of the ruling party.

Taking advantage of the vacancy, Onana filled his candidature with ELECAM.

Surprisingly, the CPDM communication gurus, Prof, Jacques Fame Ndongo, Gregoire Owona and other spinners, who display their intellectual ineptitude on Sunday talk shows often with anesthetised consciences predicting the disqualification of opposition candidates, have maintained a dead and suspicious silence.

Wouldn't they have been at their crescendo to disqualify Osih Joshua of the SDF, Akere Muna of Univers or Issa Tchiroma of FSNC, for instance, in their Sunday talk shows, if their parties filed two candidacies? 

Why is the CPDM spin machinery so mute about the audacity of Onana, to present his candidature against that of the "Champion of Experience"?

That suspicious silence is being interpreted as a deep division in the CPDM, with Onana suspected of being backed by a sturdy, if not weird camp, in the war of succession lurking in the dark, and waiting for the right time to take off their masks.

It is argued by political pundits that given the disclosure of Issa Tchiroma, the former Government Spokesman, on his resignation that the President governs by a "cult" of "procuration", many party bigwigs behind the scene believe at age 92 and 43 years in power, Biya should not seek re-election. They believe that since another camp in the succession war has succeeded to have their way by submitting the candidate of the President, a spanner should be thrown in the works, which is the candidature of Onana.   

Who really is that councillor without powerful godfathers in the regime who will have the audacity and imprudence to challenge the crushing machinery of the ruling party, if he did not have some powerful supporters in hiding?

The truth and incontrovertible facts are that following the expiration of the mandate of the National President of the CPDM, there has been a vacancy. 

Its presidential candidate, even though being the natural candidate of the CPDM, has, in past presidential elections, been endorsed at a Congress, as it was the case in that of 2011, in which his candidature was challenged and the opponent had just one vote.

Now that ELECAM has registered two candidates, legal minds are already arguing that both, by law, are disqualified.

This is moreso because MINAT, in its instruction to ELECAM, did not include the CPDM, among political parties whose leadership were in dispute.

As a regime that swears by the rule of law and respect of republican institutions and their autonomy, it is left to be seen how ELECAM handles the two applications.

It will also be a test for the neutrality of the Constitutional Council, if the matter finally gets to its chambers.

For now, the vocal and vociferous CPDM communication machinery is maintaining a suspicious silence of wait and see.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3511 of Tuesday July 22, 2025