By Laura-Stella Enonchong
Cameroon’s Constitutional Council has announced that it will declare the winner of the recent presidential election on October 27. As Cameroonians await the official results, some hope that President Paul Biya’s rule may come to an end. In her op-ed, Laura-Stella Enonchong explains why Cameroonian voters face an electoral system designed to undermine the democratic will of the people.
Cameroon’s incumbent President Paul Biya has been in power for 43 years and is vying for an eighth term. He has presided over an inefficient government of a country with a worsening economic crisis, rising government debt, endemic corruption, high youth unemployment, armed conflict in the Anglophone regions, and Islamic insurgency in its Northern regions. Paired with increased pro-democracy advocacy and youth mobilization by Cameroon’s civil society, these failures of the government presented ideal prospects for the opposition to finally oversee a change of government.
The popular conviction is that Isa Tchiroma, leader of the opposition party Cameroon National Salvation Front (FSNC), won the elections. Results published at polling centers across the country show a trend whereby Tchiroma, a longtime ally of President Biya and former minister who resigned in June to join the opposition, has won an overwhelming majority of the votes. Nonetheless, there is wide speculation that Biya will stay in power. This controversial situation has heightened political tension among the electorate, who have been uncharacteristically alert to fraudulent attempts by the electoral institutions to alter the results in favor of Biya’s Cameroon Peoples’ Democratic Movement (CPDM).
A proper understanding of Cameroon’s electoral system, specifically its key institutions, provides context for the skepticism in the integrity of the election process and the potential for the popular will to be thwarted.
Although Cameroon is sometimes described as a multi-party democracy, a more accurate characterization is that of a competitive authoritarian system – electoral competition exists, but it is fundamentally unfair. Elections are held routinely; there is universal suffrage, and political and civil liberties are generally respected. Nevertheless, violations of these liberties are systemic and rife. Political opposition leaders and human rights activists are regularly targeted through both the use of coercive forces and the judiciary. Moreover, the incumbency advantages enjoyed by the CPDM are considerable. These include unscrupulous use of state resources and the administrative machinery for the benefit of the incumbent, thereby creating an uneven playing field for the opposition. Coupled with the government’s sabotage of democratic standards, these conditions partly explain how President Biya’s CPDM has won every presidential election since the introduction of multi-party democracy in the early 1990s.
The more insidious dimension is the presidential control of key institutions in the electoral system and their nebulous interaction.
These institutions include the elections management body, Elections Cameroon (ELECAM), the Constitutional Council, the Divisional Supervisory Commission (DSC), and the National Commission for the Final Counting of Votes (NCFCV).
All of them have been packed with appointees loyal to President Biya and his party. For instance, the eight members of ELECAM’s governing Board are all presidential appointees, with some of them being prominent figures of the CPDM. ELECAM has consistently drawn broad condemnation for doing the CPDM’s bidding; recently, it demonstrated its ongoing willingness to do so by rejecting the candidacy of opposition leader Maurice Kamto. This decision eliminated the then-strongest opposition challenger to President Biya, consolidating an already uneven playing field.
Like ELECAM, the Constitutional Council has demonstrated unwavering loyalty to the current government. It is captured by presidential appointees, some of whom even remain affiliated with the CPDM. This is of particular significance, since two of the Council’s responsibilities are to declare the final election results and to give final rulings on electoral petitions. Objections to the situation have been systematically disregarded. For instance, following the contentious presidential election in 2018, the main opposition candidate, Kamto, petitioned the Constitutional Council for the recusal of some of its judges, alleging that their CPDM membership compromised their independence and impartiality. The Constitutional Council made no substantive observations on the allegation but simply referred to the absence of a legal provision on recusal to dismiss the petition. Given the improbability of the Council turning against President Biya through an impartial judgment, the current main contender, Tchiroma, has stated that he’ll refrain from challenging the results of the 2025 election despite significant allegations of widespread electoral irregularities.
Two unsuspecting institutions with enormous influence on the course of the elections are the DSC and NCFCV. Their operations can be decisive.
The DSC’s operations are dependent on reports signed by members of the Local Polling Commission (LPC) of each polling centre. The LPC is composed of representatives of ELECAM, the administration, and opposition candidates. They are required to sign a report confirming the election results at the polling centre. While none of these circumstances are defined in the Electoral Code, the DSC may ‘correct’ the LPC’s report in case of ‘minor irregularity’ and ‘miscalculations’. A copy of the report is given to each signatory. However, crucially, only ELECAM’s copy of the report is considered authentic for evidential purposes, irrespective of any discrepancy that may arise between ELECAM’s report and those retained by the other signatories. In some of the electoral petitions relating to the 2018 presidential election, the opposition had no recourse to challenge discrepancies in some reports published by ELECAM.
In the current presidential election, during the interregnum between the close of polling and the operations of the DSC, there is mounting speculation regarding the possible ‘correction’ of ‘minor irregularities’ or ‘miscalculations’ which may be affecting the outcome of the election.
Another institution whose existence is indefensible is the NCFCV. Its superfluous operations lend credence to the questionable integrity of the electoral process. Its main purpose is the ‘final counting of votes’ during which it can also ‘correct’ the reports submitted by the DSC if it identifies ‘clerical errors’. It should be recalled that, once the NCFCV’s work begins, the same votes have already been counted and published at the local polling stations, and subsequently verified by the DSC, which by then already had the authority to correct any ‘minor irregularities’ or ‘miscalculations.’ At the end of its operations, the NCFCV must submit a report to the Constitutional Council. The Council proclaims the official results on the basis of this report. Therefore, it is concerning that the NCFCV’s operations are surveyed by an overwhelming majority of ELECAM and government representatives, in comparison to only one representative from each candidate in the election. Moreover, the chair of the NCFCV also serves as a judge of the Constitutional Council. As such, the same judge would adjudicate petitions challenging the very results that he or she previously helped certify at the level of the NCFCV. It is not far-fetched to doubt this judge’s independence and impartiality. Thus, the additional processes at the level of the NCFCV not only seem superfluous, but as Tchiroma’s representative in the Commission recently pointed out, might lead to the endorsement of electoral malpractices.
The long anticipation of the 2025 presidential election result has reignited debates on the challenges posed by Cameroon’s electoral system. In light of the institutional and political context, prospects for regime change are grim. While Cameroonians have enthusiastically cast their ballots, it is ultimately the institutional mechanisms that will determine whether those ballots translate into regime change or continuity.
Laura-Stella Enonchong is a Reader in Law at the College of Law at SOAS, University of London
This article is published under the sole responsibility of the author, with editorial oversight. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the editorial team or the CEU Democracy Institute.
