7, October 2018
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Results will be computed overnight at the Cameroon Concord News Group global headquarters in the United Kingdom.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Group Chairman
7, October 2018
CPDM OFFICIALS ARE HAVING A TOUGH TIME. THEIR BREAD AND SARDINE APPROACH DURING THE CAMPAIGNS IS NOT DELIVERING THE DESIRED RESULTS.
ACCORDING TO A SOURCE WITHIN THE PARTY, JEAN KUETE AND HIS COLLABORATORS ARE ALL HAVING BUTTERFLIES IN THEIR STOMACHS.
DESPITE HUGE AMOUNTS SPENT ON CAMPAIGNS BY THE RULING PARTY, EXIT POLLS ARE CLEARLY INDICATING THAT THE CPDM CANDIDATE IS, ON THE WHOLE, STRUGGLING.
A SOURCE AT THE UNITY PALACE HAS INDICATED THAT THERE IS PANIC IN THE HOUSE. THE EXPECTED LANDSLIDE VICTORY IN THE CENTER AND SOUTH REGIONS IN FAVOR OF THE INCUMBENT IS TURNING INTO A NIGHTMARE.
THE SOURCE HAS ALSO INDICATED THAT THE PHONES ARE OFF THE HOOK AS EXIT POLLS ARE DELIVERING BAD NEWS TO THE RULING PARTY.
ACCORDING TO THE CAMEROON INTELLIGENCE REPORT EXIT POLLS, MAURICE KAMTO IS LEADING IN THE FAR NORTH, LITTORAL, WEST AND CENTRE REGIONS.
HE IS CLOSELY FOLLOWED BY JOSHUA OSIH AND CABRAL LIBII WHILE PAUL BIYA IS AT A DISTANT FOURTH POSITION.
MEANWHILE PAUL BIYA IS LEADING IN THE SOUTH WEST, NORTH WEST WHERE ONLY GOVERNMENT TROOPS ARE VOTING.
NO CIVILIANS ARE VOTING IN THOSE REGIONS AS THERE ARE INTENSIVE GUN BATTLES BETWEEN SEPARATISTS AND GOVERNMENT TROOPS.
BIYA IS ALSO LEADING IN THE SOUTH PROVINCE. HE IS NECK AND NECK WITH CABRAL LIBII IN THE EAST WHICH IS NOT A POPULATED REGION.
ACCORDING TO THE EXIT POLLS, MAURICE KAMTO OR JOSHUA OSIH WILL BE THE NEXT EAST CAMEROON PRESIDENT IF THE CONSTITUTIONAL COUNCIL DOES NOT DOCTOR THE DOCUMENTS.
CAMEROON CONCORD NEWS GROUP HAS REPORTERS IN ALL THE REGIONS AND THEY ARE INTERVIEWING VOTERS AFTER THEY HAVE CAST THEIR BALLOTS.
7, October 2018
Cameroon national borders will be closed ahead of the presidential polling day on Sunday, the country’s minister of territorial administration Paul Atanga Nji said on Friday.
“National borders shall be closed 48 hours to polling day. They will be reopened the following day after voting.” Nji told a press conference in the capital Yaounde.
The authorities announced the measure as the election is taking place in a context of growing tension in the Anglophone regions where separatists are fighting to create a new nation called “Ambazonia”.
Armed separatist forces have vowed they will disrupt voting in the regions.
Nji also said that the circulation of goods and persons within the territory by road, railway, and airlines is banned as from 6 pm October 6 to 6 pm October 7, adding that assembly of persons in front of polling centers are also banned.
Over 6,500,000 registered voters are expected to vote during Sunday’s presidential race, according to the Cameroonian electoral body, Elections Cameroon.
The outgoing president Paul Biya, leader of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, is seeking to extend his 36 years in office by winning a new seven-year mandate.
Source: Xinhuanet
7, October 2018
An opposition contender who will seek election in Cameroon’s impending presidential polls alleged on Friday that a “massive fraud” is underway to ensure the sitting president wins a seventh term.
Maurice Kamto’s campaign chief Paul-Eric Kingue said that efforts to rig Sunday’s ballot “had the blessing” of the Elecam electoral commission.
“We won’t accept any result if this kind of fraud continues,” he said at a media briefing by Kamto’s Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) party in the capital Yaounde. Kingue called on party supporters to “fiercely resist” rigging.
The MRC has alleged that polling cards have been forged and that voter registration has been allowed to continue despite the process being officially closed. “In 62% of areas, the (ruling) Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement party is still adding names to the voter roll,” said Kingue.
“But this year, 2018, will not be like 2011,” he vowed.
In the most recent presidential elections in that year, President Paul Biya won a sixth term in office with 78% of votes in polls the opposition and observers accused of being flawed. “We’re not preparing for war, but wherever there is fraud, there will be a firm response,” said Kingue.
Rumours have emerged in recent days of a possible coalition between opposition presidential contenders. Kamto’s campaign director confirmed that “talks were underway” with rival opposition hopeful Akere Muna – but Kingue was unable to confirm if a deal had been struck.
Biya, 85, has been in power for 35 years and will face-off against eight opposition contenders. The front-runners are Joshua Osih, Maurice Kamto and Akera Muna.
AFP
7, October 2018
Many Cameroonians face being unable to vote in the country’s election on Sunday because of insecurity and fear driven by worsening violence in its anglophone regions.
Paul Biya, the 85-year-old who has ruled Cameroon since 1982, looks set to capitalise on a divided opposition to easily win his fifth election since reluctantly adopting a multiparty system in 1992.
Separatists in the English-speaking regions have announced a boycott of the poll, and many voters there have said they are too scared to go to the polls. At least 400 civilians have been killed in unrest in the past year, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.
“Who can vote when our brothers are dying? How can we even vote, when you don’t know how safe it will be?” asked Chimene Ngum, a 23-year-old student in Bamenda, capital of the anglophone Northwest region.
The rebellion that erupted in the country’s two anglophone regions was triggered by the violent repression of a peaceful protest a year ago, after lawyers complained that magistrates were being appointed to their courts despite their poor English. It spread to the regions’ teachers and students, then activists symbolically declared the two anglophone regions the independent republic of Ambazonia.
Biya’s government responded with a wave of arrests and killings.
For years, anglophones have felt deliberately sidelined and neglected, their infrastructure left to crumble. Last year, for instance, Biya’s home region was allocated almost twice the money that the anglophone regions got combined, the public investment budget shows, despite their vital importance to Cameroon’s economy. Much of the country’s oil production is off the coast of the Southwest region, and onshore are its biggest cocoa-growing areas.
Biya was due to visit Buea, the Southwest regional capital, on Wednesday for a rally, but called off his trip at the last minute after the “Amba boys”, as the forces of the Ambazonian separatists are known, issued more threats. It would have been the first trip he has made to the anglophone regions since 2014, in which time he has spent at least 260 days on private trips abroad, many to Geneva.
Teachers who were bussed into a heavily securitised Buea to participate in the ruling party’s rally said they were threatened that there would be consequences if they did not attend. Meanwhile, gunfights broke out between Ambazonian and Cameroonian forces in villages near the city.
It is unclear how many of the 4000 polling stations due to open in the anglophone regions will function on Sunday, though some are determined to cast their ballots.
“I am going to the polls this Sunday, despite the fact that our brothers don’t want us to. They should understand that this is the only way we can get the change we want,” said Judith Mafor, a supporter of the main opposition party. “We have tried with guns and this has taken us to the graves and to the bushes.”
Others said they would not risk voting and described feeling powerless.
“We vote all the time and the outcome remains the same,” said Josephine Ngum, a tailor from Bamenda. “Why do I have to vote again? In a country where real democracy is instituted, when someone’s term of office is over, he steps down for another person to take over. This is not the case with Cameroon.”
Chimene Ngum said she didn’t even have a voter’s card. “Even if I had one, I wouldn’t vote because the results would still be the same. Paul Biya always wins,” she said.
After Robert Mugabe’s fall from power last year, Biya took up the mantle of being Africa’s oldest president, making Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, 74, and Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari, 75, seem young.
Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang, 76, currently holds the title for the longest-serving president in Africa, having ousted his uncle in a military coup in 1979. Biya, who rules his cocoa and oil-producing country essentially by decree, is second.
Culled from The Guardian
7, October 2018
Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, the organizing body for the October 7 presidential elections has officially rejected the stepping down of a key candidate, Akere Muna.
Muna, one of nine candidates announced a coalition with a former minister, Maurice Kamto, late Friday. But ELECAM through a press release with hours to the vote said it rejects the move.
Muna had written to the body to officially retract his candidature but ELECAM said it was impossible to admit Muna’s request because it had no basis in law, much less with just hours to the opening of polls.
Opposition coalition shrinks after ‘growth?”
Meanwhile news that the opposition coalition in Cameroon had grown to three has since been denied by Serge Espoir Matomba, leader of the PURS. Reports suggested that he had backed the Kamto-Muna alliance.
News of his decision to step down in support of former minister Maurice Kamto had been expected through the better part of Saturday but in a Facebook LIVE posted in the evening, he denied any such alliance.
Twenty-four hours prior, Akere Muna had announced that his party hand entered an alliance with Kamto with the view of presenting a united front. The current development means that even though nine candidates are on the ballot, there are seven aspirants to choose from.
Incumbent Paul Biya is facing a stiff challenge to his over three-decades in charge. The coalition has come late in the day but some political watchers say it could prove crucial.
Source: Africa News
6, October 2018
Dear friends of Crisis Group,
On 7 October 2018, Cameroonians will vote in a precarious presidential election. The political climate is tense, the economy unsteady and the country is threatened by Boko Haram in the Far North and armed separatists groups in the Anglophone regions in the Northwest and Southwest. A few days ahead of polling day, communal tensions are also growing, while new movements are forming across the country, which, though still embryonic, reject the election.
Crisis Group has been closely following recent developments in Cameroon and their implications for the upcoming election, along with a steady flow of reporting since 2014 on Boko Haram in the country’s Far North, and on the Anglophone crisis since 2016. Our publications provide an overview of key issues surrounding the vote. We have prepared a full reading list, and outline some of our key publications below.
Today, our briefing entitled Cameroon: Divisions Widen Ahead of Presidential Vote was made available in full in both English and French. In it, we argue that the government and armed Anglophone separatists still have time to declare a ceasefire to improve prospects for a peaceful poll in areas affected by the conflict. In addition, the government should strike a more conciliatory tone toward the Anglophone conflict and make moves to curb rhetoric stigmatising specific ethnic groups across the country. Outside powers – in particular the African Union, France, the UN and the U.S. – should use the days before the election to push for a ceasefire while taking a firmer line against leaders implicated in violence on either side. They should also call on the government to refrain from cracking down violently against any protests that take place around the vote.
In September, Crisis Group issued a statement calling for national and international support for the proposed Anglophone General Conference. We argue that the conference could offer a decisive breakthrough in the Anglophone crisis if all parties, including the separatists, attend.
As fighting between government forces and Boko Haram insurgents in Cameroon’s Far North diminishes, a lasting peace depends on how the government deals with former members of the jihadist movement, its former prisoners and the vigilante groups set up to fight it. Our August report advocates for community service, public confessions, symbolic ceremonies and vocational training to help reintegrate those who do not pose a threat.
The danger of bloodshed around this weekend’s vote is high in Anglophone regions, and insecurity in the Far North will hinder the administration of the poll. In a more peaceful climate, the election could offer the political renewal Cameroon needs. As things stand, it risks further polarising society. Though time is short before the vote, these parties could take steps to calm tensions and reduce this risk.
Dr. Comfort Ero
Director, Africa Program
International Crisis Group
6, October 2018
Nigeria’s main opposition party will have its unity tested in the aftermath of this weekend’s primaries for the presidential flag-bearer, which is being contested by several political heavyweights in the party.
Both the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) will hold primary elections this weekend to select their nominees for presidential polls scheduled for February 2019.
While President Muhammadu Buhari is likely to be unanimously endorsed to contest a second term at the APC convention in Abuja, the opposition PDP which was in office from 1999 until 2015 has a tighter race in the southern city of Port Harcourt.
PDP’s candidates
The leading contenders in the race to be PDP presidential flag-bearer are former allies of Buhari, who fell out with his administration, and defected to the opposition.
But since then, Buhari’s party has seen a wave of defections in protest at his leadership style and a surge in PDP contenders that could give it momentum as the vote approaches.
Perennial presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, a 71-year-old former vice-president from the northeastern state of Adamawa, was the one of the first big names to throw his hat in the ring.
Then, after lawmakers crossed the floor in July, former Kano state governor Rabiu Kwankwaso emerged as a leading opposition candidate, promising he can secure the key northern state.
Sokoto state governor Aminu Tambuwal joined the PDP defectors and declared his candidacy to pry northern voters away from Buhari, who enjoys mass support across the north.
Finally, the ambitious Senate leader Bukola Saraki, a former Kwara state governor who is seen as the shepherd of the defectors, announced he would campaign for the top job.
The likely chosen candidate is expected to come from the Muslim-majotity North, following an unwritten rule in Nigeria that the presidency should alternate every two terms between a candidate from the north and south.
Unity beyond primaries?
Rising tensions and divisions have been reflected in hotly contested local party primaries, said Idayat Hassan, director of the Centre for Democracy and Development in Abuja.
“These primaries have been fractious,” she said. “It’s one of the most contentious in a long time.”
After the PDP officially chooses its presidential candidate, the party will select a running mate, who will likely come from the largely Christian south.
“What we’re waiting to see is if the (PDP) will be able to continue as one,” said Hassan. “Now they are putting up a united front — but will that continue?”
AFP
6, October 2018
As Paul Biya seeks a seventh term in office in Sunday’s presidential election, the economic outlook for Cameroon is far from rosy. In reality businesses are shutting down as unemployment is increasing in the country’s restive Anglophone regions.
Coffee and cocoa are key economic mainstays of the country’s two English-speaking regions.
“Previously when you come to the market, you see a lot of people here. But now you don’t see anybody around. Now people are not coming to the market because they are afraid of the crisis”, said popcorn vendor Kenji Jude.
“All the customers have gone. Most of the time we come out but there is not customer to buy. So it is not making work because the customers are out, they have gone. The place is empty”, said butcher Wilfried Eron.
“Our President has been in power for 36 years and there has been no change. So everyone’s angry. I’m angry, we go to school and graduate without a job, nothing, nothing. Everyone is angry.”, said taxi driver John.
Last month the country’s employers’ group GICAM estimated that exports for both crops were down 20 percent, blaming the insecurity and the displacement of people escaping the unrest.
Fighting has become a daily occurrence in both Anglophone regions since late 2017 when separatists issued a symbolic declaration of “independence” from mainly francophone Cameroon.
AFP
Pope Leo XIV in Cameroon-The “Ambazonia crisis” in Southern Cameroons 
New Testament pastors in the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon 
World Bank Group statement on the conflict in the Middle East 
Anglophone Vice President: a deeply counterproductive idea 
Ambazonia Crisis: latest on Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s arrest, trial and conviction 
4 Anglophone detainees killed in Yaounde
Chantal Biya says she will return to Cameroon if General Ivo Yenwo, Martin Belinga Eboutou and Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh are sacked
The Anglophone Problem – When Facts don’t Lie
Anglophone Nationalism: Barrister Eyambe says “hidden plans are at work”
Largest wave of arrest by BIR in Bamenda
7, October 2018
Will Biya’s branded condoms deliver victory? 0
Politician can do just about anything to ensure they clinch whatever seats they are contesting for.
Some would campaign by pouring money and other goodies such as food, clothes and decent merchandise to the electorates.
However, Cameroon President Paul Biya revolutionised the game during the final leg of his presidential campaign by distributing condoms with his face and messages calling for his re-election to citizens.
Biya, who has ruled the country for the past 35 years, or should we say his advisers thought it wise to have the words ”Je Vote Paul Biya”(I vote for Paul Biya) and a photo of the 85-yea-old president printed on both sides of the condoms.
It should be noted Cameroon will be going to the ballot to elect a new president on Sunday, October 7, and Biya’s team did all it could to remind voters to do the necessary come D-day.
His condom campaign however did not auger well with some people who claimed he should have distributed much useful things.
Others supported him saying he cared about his people and their health hence the move.
Despite the minor controversy, political analysts in the country hold that Biya is pitted to with the race yet again judging with latest poll.
Biya is Africa’s second-longest serving president having ruled Cameroon since November 1982.
Source: Tuko