Protests erupt as the 92-year-old Paul Biya gets another seven-year term

Pavan Kulkarni

Protests rock Cameroon as its president 1982, Paul Biya, the world’s oldest and longest-serving head of state at the age of 92, is set to be sworn in for another seven-year-long term that will last until he is almost 100 years old. 

On Monday, October 27, the Constitutional Council proclaimed him the winner of the election held on October 12, with 53.66% of the votes, ahead of Issa Tchiroma Bakary’s 35.19%. 

Ahead of this announcement, on Sunday, Tchiroma’s supporters took to the streets in Cameroon’s commercial capital, Douala, in response to his call for protest, alleging that votes were being manipulated, and demanding that his victory be acknowledged. 

As the protests spread to several neighborhoods of the city, the police used force, including live ammunition, to disperse the crowd, shooting and critically injuring several people. As news of the shooting spread, protests also erupted in several other cities, including Maroua, Meiganga, Kaélé, Bertoua, and the northern city of Garoua.    

Garoua is Tchiroma’s hometown, where his supporters had already taken to the streets on October 21, crying fraud after the National Vote Counting Commission announced on October 20 that Biya had won as per the tally it was submitting to the Constitutional Council.

“With their backs against the wall, the people will have no choice but to take their destiny into their own hands and seek victory wherever they can find it,” Tchiroma retorted, hinting at further escalation.

Opposition parties, civil society groups, and other organizations filed eight separate petitions to the Constitutional Council, which is the body constitutionally authorized to announce the official results after validating the data compiled by the National Vote Counting Commission. Alleging widespread irregularities, including ballot stuffing and voter intimidation, petitioners sought partial or complete annulment of the election.

Dismissing all the petitions on October 22 on grounds of “insufficient evidence of irregularities” or “lack of jurisdiction”, the Council said it will announce the official results on October 27. Tchiroma himself had not petitioned the Council, deeming it a compromised body constituted of members chosen by Biya.

Instead, he took to social media to declare himself the “legal and legitimate president”, claiming to have won with about 55% of the votes.

Biya reportedly sought to de-escalate, offering Tchiroma the post of prime minister last week at a secret meeting blessed by foreign diplomats, according to Jeune Afrique.

Tchiroma, after all, is a veteran of Biya’s regime. Jailed for a failed coup against Biya in 1984, Tchiroma started out after his release as an opposition member of parliament in 1992, before joining the government later that year as the transport minister till 1996.

He was the communications minister from 2009 to 2019, until he was appointed the employment minister – a position he held until resigning only months ahead of the election to contest against Biya.

He was among the most vocal mouthpieces of Biya’s regime in his role as the Communications Minister, denying the military’s atrocities on civilians from the Anglophone minority in the North-West and South-West (NWSW) regions.

Tensions came to a head in late 2016 when mass protests broke out in NWSW against the government’s imposition of French-speaking lawyers and teachers on the courts and schools in English-speaking regions.

When Biya’s regime unleashed the military, peaceful protests gave way to an armed separatist insurgency. At least 6,000 people were killed in the subsequent violent confrontations, displacing over half a million, and leaving 1.3 million in need of aid.

Dismissing the reports as “phantasmagorical” and “a clumsy attempt at disinformation”, Tchiroma, as the government spokesperson, had accused human rights organizations documenting the atrocities of being in cahoots with the secessionists.

Offering amnesty for political prisoners, he has proposed a national reconciliation process with the separatist leaders.

The Francophone area, which makes up the majority of Cameroon, has also been wracked by insecurity. Civilians in the far north, from where Tchiroma hails, are reeling under Boko Haram attacks.

The eastern region is suffering from a spill-over of the armed groups fighting in the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR). Competition for land and water between settled farmers and nomadic herders of the broader region has been the main driver of this conflict, which has also manifested as communal violence in other agrarian regions of Cameroon. Last year alone, a million people were displaced. Nearly three million people are suffering acute food insecurity in the conflict-affected regions.

Buildings, crumbling due to a lack of maintenance, regularly collapse in Cameroon’s cities. Mirroring its decaying infrastructure are rumors about Biya’s failing health, media discussions about which have been banned.

Undeterred, Biya has sought another seven-year term at 92. In this backdrop, Tchiroma resigned as the Employment Minister this June, only months ahead of the election, and announced his decision to contest against Biya.

Biya’s main opponent at the time was opposition leader Maurice Kamto, the runner-up in the previous presidential election of 2018, also marred by allegations of widespread manipulation. In July. Cameroon’s Election Commission (ELECAM) rejected the candidacies of 70 of the 83 applicants, including that of Kamto.

With Biya’s main challenger thus out of the way, Tchiroma was positioned as his main contender. A coalition of opposition parties and civil society organizations, the Union for Change, backed his candidacy in the election on October 12.

On the night of October 13, Tchiroma declared victory in a video address he read out from a tablet with a portrait of himself and the national flag as the backdrop. “In the coming days”, he said, he would prove his victory with a “detailed” compilation of votes from regions from “publicly” displayed results.

It was an open defiance of Interior Minister Paul Atanga Nji, who had reiterated at the close of polls the evening before: “Only the bodies responsible for centralizing and counting votes will take over … No other initiative outside this legal framework must exist.”

He had warned, “Those who contravene the law, regardless of their political status or social rank, will face its full rigor without the slightest leniency.”

A few dozen young men have been standing guard outside Tchiroma’s villa in Garoua, armed with clubs. “We have sentinels. If the police come, all the young people will come,” one of them told Le Monde. The police have not yet attempted to arrest Tchiroma.

While the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) condemned his self-declaration of victory as a “grotesque hoax … inadmissible act in a state governed by the rule of law,” Biya reportedly made him an offer to share power as the Prime Minister. However, Jeunne Africa reported that Tchiroma has rejected the offer and insisted that his victory be acknowledged.

* This is an edited version of the article originally published at https://peoplesdispatch.org/

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.