October 12 poll: Biya survives another tackle but....

Onana said Biya wasn't any longer the natural candidate of the CPDM party. The court ruled itself incompetent and the status quo was maintained.

Unlike the other candidates who filed their applications to ELECAM personally, Biya's own was done by an emissary, Jean Kuete, who is Secretary General of the party’s Central Committee and Onana too submitted his.

While that of Maurice Kamto, Biya's main challenger, was rejected because of double applications from MANIDEM party that invested him, that of the ruling party with two challengers sailed through in Biya’s favour.

Onana once again seized the Constitutional Council and Biya scaled through the obstacle. 

At the weekend, the Candidate of UNIVERS, Barrister Akere Muna, filed a landmark case at the Constitutional Council, asking for the disqualification of the CPDM candidate on two solid grounds:

The first was that he was "reigning" and not governing, or doing so by proxy, depending on a supportive chain of aides.

The other plank rests on a legal imperative, intended to preserve the integrity of the Presidency. He had questioned if Cameroon is led by a President still capable of governing, or by a Presidency reduced to a mere title?

After more than two tenuous hours of hearings, with supportive proofs presented by a team of lawyers, the Constitutional Council, as it was a foregone conclusion before the matter got to their chambers, dumped the application as "unjustified."

According to Barrister Achet Magnigni, one of the government's lawyers, the applicant did not “produce a medical-legal certificate of the President. You have seen that the applicant in the suit has pleaded not to be able to produce this evidence".

Gregoire Owona, the Vice Secretary General of the ruling CPDM Central Committee, said: “We are very satisfied with the verdict. We were there with the Director of the Civil Cabinet, Minister Samuel Mvondo Ayolo, who immediately went for a working session with the President. What do you want to talk about?".

The petitioner, Batonnier Akere Muna, in a swift reaction, welcomed the admissibility of the legal debate, which "validates the fundamental principle that a candidate's eligibility is not a matter of opinion, but of law. This leaves the door open for citizens and legal oversight of power".

But he deplored the refusal to address the substantive questions regarding the Head of State's actual fitness to govern.

He said their request "was supported by specific, documented and uncontested facts: prolonged absences, non-Presidency of constitutional institutions, problematic public appearances, and damning testimony from the Minister of Justice on a system of parallel “injunctions”.

Biya was not present as has been the case with all other candidates with matters at the Council or at ELECAM.

However, the presence of the Director of the Civil Cabinet was conspicuous, prompting the applicant to raise the following questions after the hearings: “Why was he [Ayolo], present, if not to represent Presidential authority? Why did the President of the Council give him the floor? And above all, why did he refuse to speak? His presence speaks louder than all our words”. 

Akere pointed out that they had offered the defense of Candidate Biya, "the perfect opportunity to demonstrate, with supporting evidence, that the President exercises his functions with complete autonomy" but "they chose silence. This deafening silence validates, in our view, all of our arguments".

He concluded that: "The Cameroonian people deserve more than eloquent silence. They deserve transparency. They deserve to know who really governs the country, when its President is absent for weeks, when institutions no longer meet, and when governance seems to be exercised by proxy”.

He added that: "Our fight was not personal, it was constitutional. It aimed to ensure that the highest office of the State is exercised by a fully autonomous person as required by the law. This fight for clarity, accountability, and strict compliance with our fundamental law does not end today. We will continue to use all legal and democratic means to hold those in power to account and to work towards a Cameroon where the legitimacy of leaders is complete, transparent, and incontestable."

The candidate of the ruling CPDM won, yet, another legal battle as was expected. His acolytes even gave the verdict that had gone viral in the social and conventional media at home and abroad, before the Council sat. 

Biya has won an epic battle in a polarised atmosphere but has lost the public relations war, especially when at least two Bishops have predicted that his "victory is known, even before voting".

The Guardian Post welcomes Akere Muna's audacity, even in the face of hallucinatory savagery by pocket social media lawyers who gave the verdict before the hearing.

We also join him to applaud the Constitutional Council for admitting his complaint, unlike in previous cases. We equally use this opportunity to urge Constitutional Council members to adhere to the rule of law, irrespective of whose ox will be gored, given that the October 12 poll will produce more litigations.

As for President Biya, his victories at the Court of First Instance, ELECAM and twice at the Constitutional Council, should be illustrated by nation-wide personal appearances in the campaign trail to justify the scary obstacles he has gone through ahead of the October 12 poll.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3544 of Monday August 25, 2025