Social media and audiovisual declarations by spokespersons and accredited surrogates for candidates are often so amateurish, unguarded and unrestrained; they can hurt the fortunes and prospects of candidates.  This is my experience covering politics for over two decades:

– In political campaigns, the people not seen render more strategic service than people seen jumping around and beating drums for candidates.

– Back office guys or campaign strategists give and receive situation briefings, do progress assessments, weigh the risks and prospects, march these with the budget, make projections and inform candidates how the race is faring, how to proceed and/or when the race is done.

– That’s why when candidates take major decisions; including “suspending campaign” (euphemism for throwing in the towel in American political lingo) the most crestfallen faces are those of front office guys, which are the megaphones, the spokespersons, the surrogates. They are often just balloons. Little else.

– The greatest sycophants in a campaign are front office staff. Fortunately and unfortunately, they are not aware of what back office strategists are doing in earnest.

– Political campaigns are expensive. Back office strategists are working on the maths and advising caution. Front office megaphones are spending and enjoying their show without counting the costs (both in terms of expenditure and potential damage and gains).

– Back office guys are those who advise candidates on damage control in order not to burn bridges for future political deal-making.

– Front office guys are artillery soldiers. They never understand. They spit fire against those the candidate may make deals with, eventually.

– Understandably, ignorance and enthusiasm are the fuel that fire front office guys. So, bear with them for not knowing what back office guys know because reality needs to be hidden from them to keep them upbeat. Dampened spirits may cause them to lose the flare they need for their megaphone roles.

However, Campaign Managers ought to monitor the actions and declarations of their mouthpieces and call them to order. Their useful enthusiasm can be a harmful double-edged sword.

By Franklin Sone Bayen

Tension is mounting in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s political capital, as the country’s opposition parties will be announcing a single candidate on Saturday, September 13, 2025, who will give the 93-year-old incumbent, Paul Biya, a run for his money.

The event, scheduled to take place at the Ahmadou Ahidjo Stadium in Yaoundé, will send a clear and strong message to the corrupt and incompetent ruling party, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) that change is on the way and that those who are still sitting on Mr. Biya’s sinking boat will have themselves to blame.

Cameroonians are looking forward to change and most of them think that Mr. Biya has overstayed his welcome and that he should be held accountable for the economic disaster that has hit the country like a wrecking ball.

Mr. Biya, who is suffering from acute senile decay and who is not even participating in his own campaign, is being touted by the ruling party as the best candidate for the country even when things are falling apart and corruption has increased significantly.

Mr. Biya has ruled Cameroon for forty-three years but there is nothing to show for his long stay in power. The country’s economy has collapsed, causing many Cameroonians to seek greener pastures out of the country.

The country’s political capital, Yaoundé, is an eyesore with garbage heaps lining the streets as if the city is being decorated with garbage.

During Saturday’s event, Prof. Maurice Kamto, who was disqualified as a presidential candidate by the country’s constitutional council will endorse the single candidate which many think will be Issa Tchiroma Bakary who was Mr. Biya’s communication minister and also vocational education minister.

Professor Maurice Kamto is a crowd puller and his presence at the stadium on Saturday will be a nightmare to CPDM stalwarts who thought that his political career was over.

Professor Kamto’s support for a northern candidate spells danger to the ruling CPDM which is very unpopular in the North and is not liked in the West, Northwest and Littoral regions of the country.

Kamto’s endorsement will diminish CPDM votes in the Southern part of the country, whereas in the North, Cameroonians are hunting CPDM stalwarts  out of their towns and cities. Even Imams who suggest that prayers be offered in Biya’s name are being shunned in the North.

The country’s political map is being rewritten and the constitutional council’s decision to disqualify Prof. Kamto might turn out to be its greatest undoing as that decision is today uniting the country’s opposition.

CPDM politicians are losing sleep. A huge majority behind Issa Tchiroma who is from the North might thwart efforts by the ruling party to rig elections across the entire Grand North.

This is a developing story and the Cameroon Concord News writers are already on the ground in Yaoundé to provide full coverage of the event. More will be yours as it becomes available.

By Rita Akana in Yaoundé

The President of the Electoral Council of Elections Cameroon (Elecam), Enow Abrams Egbe, has called on candidates for the October 12, 2025, presidential election to appoint their representatives to the National Commission for the Final Counting of Votes (CNRGV). In a press release issued on Thursday, September 4, Elecam stated that this request is in accordance with Article 68 of the Electoral Code. Candidates are urged to submit the nomination documents for their representatives “as soon as possible” to allow for the official confirmation of the commission’s composition.

The National Commission for the Final Counting of Votes a central role in the electoral process. It is comprised of a member of the Constitutional Council who serves as president, two magistrates, five representatives from the administration, five representatives from Elecam, and a representative for each candidate or political party. According to electoral law, the commission is responsible for the general tally of votes, based on official reports and supporting documents sent by the departmental supervisory commissions. It is also authorized to “correct” any clerical errors in the vote count but cannot invalidate the corresponding reports. The commission prepares an official report of all its operations, signed by the president and members present. A copy of this report, along with supporting documents, must be submitted to the Constitutional Council within five days.

Thirteen candidates are vying for the presidency this year. Among them is the incumbent head of state, Paul Biya of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), who is seeking another term. He will face several well-known opposition figures, including Joshua Osih of the Social Democratic Front (SDF) and Cabral Libii of the Cameroon Party for National Reconciliation (PCRN), both running for the second time. A female candidate, Patricia Tomaino Ndam Njoya, president of the Cameroon Democratic Union (CDU), is also in the race.

Source: Business in Cameroon

The United Nations on Tuesday said growing restrictions in Cameroon raised fears about whether voters can freely choose their candidate in upcoming presidential elections.

Cameroon’s veteran President Paul Biya, the world’s oldest head of state at 92, is seeking a new seven-year term to extend his nearly 43 years in power in elections on October 12.

“A safe and enabling human rights environment is essential for peaceful, inclusive, and credible elections. It regrettably appears that this is not the case in Cameroon,” said UN rights chief Volker Turk.

He urged the government to take swift action to ensure an environment conducive to a free, transparent election.

Last month, Cameroonian security forces arrested at least 53 opposition supporters, who were accused of public disorder, unlawful assembly, rebellion and incitement to revolt, the UN rights office said in a statement.

“While it is welcome news that all the 53 opposition supporters have since been released, they simply should not have been arrested in the first place. No one should ever be arrested for exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly,” Turk said.

Cameroon’s divided opposition is struggling to challenge Biya, who has been accused by rights groups of suppressing political rivals.

Source: AP

Bishop Paul Lontsié-Keuné, who has been a lightning rod for pro-democratic forces in Cameroon, has once again put the government on red alert, saying that he is ready to die for the truth.

The bishop of Bafoussam, known for his acerbic critique of the Biya government, blasted the authorities for continued intimidation of citizens as a presidential election scheduled for October 12 approaches.

President Paul Biya, 92, has been in power since 1982 and is seeking an 8th term in office.

Government officials have threatened severe retaliation against critics of Biya. Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji has repeatedly vowed to crush those “threatening public peace” with the same brutality as ingredients in a blender.

While the president’s extended tenure, advanced age, and declining health have drawn opposition and Church criticism, Lontsié-Keuné has voiced deeper concerns about Cameroon’s political process itself. The bishop has specifically condemned the exclusion of Maurice Kamto — Biya’s most formidable rival and the opposition leader who continues to claim victory in the 2018 presidential election — from the October 12 poll.

He has also taken issue at the violation of the electoral calendar through postponement of legislative and local elections to 2026, and criticized the deployment of security forces at major city intersections following the publication of the final candidate list. The bishop has also been at odds with restrictions on public freedoms and the surge in tribalism and hate speech.

“All these behaviors and events observed on the eve of the presidential election do not promote peace,” he said.

He said peace “cannot be achieved through lies, manipulation, intimidation, fear, denial of rights, injustice, corruption, the buying of consciences, the exploitation of the law and its variable interpretation for political ends.”

As if anticipating that his critical utterances against government’s electoral malpractices could eventually land him in trouble, Lontsié-Keuné said he is ready to pay the ultimate price.

“So if there is only one person to be killed, let them kill me and leave you, the people of God alone,” the bishop said at Mass on Sunday.

“And if there is only one person to be imprisoned, let them imprison me and leave you alone,” he added, and urged prisoners to welcome him “as a brother” because he has always had their back in freedom.

The bishop noted that suffering for the Christian is just part of carrying the Cross, reminiscent of the price Christ paid for the sins of man.

“The disciple is not greater than his master,” he said.

“We are disciples of a crucified Christ. But that’s not all. He is crucified, he is dead, he is risen again,” Lontsié-Keuné said, to thunderous applause from the Christians.

The bishop’s continued bashing of the Biya regime has also given his priests the courage to speak out against what they see as evil in society.

“Human life no longer has any value; it is cheap, trampled underfoot,” said Father Philype Kahake of the Saint Robert Parish in the Bamengouem Airport.

“Dignity is being flouted. Do we respect it? God says thou shalt not kill. To those who govern us, we say: thou shalt not kill. It is not the people who have the weapons; it is those who govern us who have the weapons. When someone dies because they have been shot, it means that it was not the people who shot them,” the priest said.

He denounced the reign of injustice and condemned what he called blind leadership at the helm of the state.

“The situation is clear. We are at an impasse in our country. Everyone is crying, everyone is shouting. Why? Why this stagnation? Why? Why all this crying? Why are families not thriving? Well, because whether it is those who command us, whether it is family heads, whether it is anyone, no one obeys anything anymore, as we can see in our country, starting at the top. We say that the good example comes from above, but [in Cameroon today] the bad example is coming from above,” Kahake said.

A call to vote

Despite the seeming irregularities in the electoral process, Lontsié-Keuné urged Christians to vote massively in the October poll.

“By voting, refuse to sell your conscience, whatever the proposed price,” he cautioned.

“No one must, at any stage of the process, change the value of the vote of a single citizen,” he said.

Amid the growing pre-electoral tensions, the President of the National Episcopal Conference has urged Cameroonians to be peaceful before, during and after the Presidential election.

In an interview with Crux, Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bamenda said that the Church will be working endlessly to ensure that the process is peaceful and just, even as he distanced the Church from partisan politics.

“Although we maintain our neutrality when it comes to partisan politics, we are going to deploy election observers in all the polling stations in our ecclesiastical province to have a feel of what Cameroonians will go through in these elections and be able to make an evaluation after,” he told said.

“We are working on how our justice and peace institutions, our justice and peace offices, can act as election monitors, election observers in all the dioceses of this ecclesiastical province,” Nkea told Crux.

He said the Justice and Peace Commission of the Cameroon Bishops’ Conference is already planning a seminar at the national level where “we are going to draw our election officers from all over the country to come for a formation session so that they are able to understand how to observe and how to report after observing elections.”

Source: Crux

This was arguably the most glaring “memory gap” in French colonial history. Between 1955 and 1970, France waged war in Cameroon against independence and later opposition movements, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands and helping to install an authoritarian regime loyal to Paris. The silence that surrounded this “dirty war” was both an insult to the victims and a historical failure, as well as a major unspoken issue in relations between the two countries.

This is why we should welcome the move by French President Emmanuel Macron who, in a letter to his Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya made public on August 12, acknowledged that a “war” had been waged in Cameroon by “the colonial authorities and the French army,” and stated that he acknowledged “France’s role and responsibility.”

It took many years before the reality of this brutal “pacification” carried out in secret, but long well-documented by writers, journalists and historians, was officially recognized. The “counter-revolutionary warfare” techniques first tested in Indochina and then in Algeria – destruction of villages, assaults on unarmed civilians, forced regroupment camps, torture, targeted assassinations – were used against supporters of the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC, a pro-independence party) and to crush the uprising of the Bamileke people. By delegating repression to local actors, France turned a colonial conflict into a civil war.

Macron’s initiative began in 2022 with the creation of a commission of French and Cameroonian historians tasked with “shedding light” on this chapter of history. The report from this commission, delivered in January 2025, found that the violence in Cameroon “transgressed human rights and the laws of war.”

While President François Hollande had merely referred in 2015 to “particularly violent repression,” Macron acknowledged, as the commission suggested, that France fought a true “war” in Cameroon. The president is thus continuing the necessary process of truth-telling that, from the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda to the Algerian War, must fill the gaps of amnesia – and even lies – that still weigh on French society and diplomacy, without any notion of “repentance.”

Of course, his gesture remains incomplete – the “violations of human rights” are not clearly defined – and ambiguous in form: It came as a letter addressed to Biya, who is himself the heir to autocrat Ahmadou Ahidjo (installed by France in 1960) and has ruled the country since 1982.

This is where the particular sensitivity of Macron’s attempted truth-telling operation regarding Cameroon lies. The “decolonization war” did not end with independence; Paris continued to repress opponents of the regime that had been put in place. Forgotten in France, this endless war continues to poison the political and social climate in Cameroon. As the end of Biya’s reign approaches – despite being 92 years old, he plans to seek an eighth presidential term in October – and as the demand for historical truth is stirring throughout Francophone Africa, it is time to put an end to the unspoken truths between France and Cameroon.

Source: Le Monde

Elections Cameroon (Elecam), the country’s election body, is moving to change the locations of certain polling places after a formal request from a presidential candidate.

In an official message obtained by SBBC, Elecam Director-General Erik Essousse asked his ten regional delegates to “urgently submit proposals for changing the locations of polling stations, particularly those situated in police stations, traditional meeting huts, chiefdoms, and military barracks.”

The directive follows a complaint from Joshua Osih, the presidential candidate for the Social Democratic Front (SDF), who argued that 1,153 polling stations did not meet legal requirements for neutrality, accessibility, and security.

Osih stated that holding elections in military barracks or headquarters was “legally and materially unacceptable” because these are not neutral or civilian public spaces. He added that the presence of armed personnel and weapons at these sites violates a legal ban on weapons in polling stations.

In response, Elecam’s director-general set an August 16 deadline for regional delegates to propose new locations for the contested polling stations.

Source: Sbbc