By Chief Charles A. Taku
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
The upcoming Presidential election in Cameroon is a poisoned spear of deception aimed at securing a lifeline of legitimacy on the faltering influence of France-Afrique in its Cameroon neocolonial project. The reality is that there can be no democratic change of government in neocolonial Cameroon through a democratic election. There has never been a democratic election in the Republic of Cameroon since it achieved neocolonial independence without freedom on 1 January 1960. The supposed election of 12 October 2025 cannot be an exception. Indeed, the 12 October 2025 election will potentially be an endgame of perfidious entrapments and false elections. It can also be an elegy of hope for genuine independence and freedom.
Democratic elections can only be realized in a system which has an enforceable legislative framework which guarantees the exercise of popular sovereignty, a democratic culture and a robust legal frameworks to protect it. These are lacking in Cameroon.
The paucity of a democratic culture and legislative framework which guarantee popular franchise is rooted in the Republic of Cameroon’s colonial history. Ahmadou Ahidjo the puppet President to whom presidential power was entrusted by France, was appointed President. He did not become President through a competitive election. In other words, he did not accede to the Presidency of La Republique du Cameroon through the popular sovereignty of the people. He was installed President by the appointment and fiat of France. He was therefore a France-Afrique puppet overseer of its vassal state of Cameroon which was established under the Loi-cadre which was imposed by General De Gaulle during the conference of Brazzaville in 1956. The loi-cadre guaranteed French sovereignty over key areas of sovereign governance in its Africa vassal states as a condition for a grant of controlled independence.
Cameroon at independence on 1 January 1960 had a president who did not emanate from a constitutional democratic election. The Constitution of independent one and indivisible Republic of Cameroon was adopted in a referendum which was organized on 1 April 1960 and came into effect on 4 April 1960. Despite the coming into effect of this constitution, it took five years for Ahmadou Ahidjo to organize Presidential elections in 1965 to reactively confer a modicum of constitutional legitimacy to his reign of terror from when he was appointed by France into the position in 1960.
During these five years, he reined an orgy of terror with absolute impunity and complicity of colonial economic predatory powers- Great Britain and France. With absolute impunity, he annex Southern Cameroons and eviscerated its sovereign democratic architecture. He extended the state of emergency which he had declared in parts of the Republic of Cameroon to the Southern Cameroons, abducted and deported Southern Cameroons civilians to concentration Camps in French Cameroon, declared a cultural genocide against the distinctive cultural identity of the Southern Cameroons. In 1966, he abolished multiparty democracy in the Southern Cameroons and imposed one party system. The one party system made democratic elections impossible. He ruled from thence without challenge.
In 1971, Ahidjo used the court-martial of Ernest Ouandie, Mgr Dongmo, Wambo Le current, Tenkela Sebastian and Mathieu Njatsep at the Military Tribunal in Yaoundé to impose a state of emergency which provided an atmosphere of fear and terror for the abolition of the Federal Republic which he had railroaded the Southern Cameroons under annexation into barely 12 years after. The referendum for the abolition of the federation took place during the pendency of the state of emergency in which the exercise of free and fair franchise was impossible. Voting was mandatory and laisser-passers were required for commutation in the territory of the Southern Cameroons and many parts of French Cameroon. Ahidjo assumed plein pouvoir and ruled by ordinances. He tacitly abandoned the independence date of his country and imposed 20 May 1972 as the national day of Cameroon, which he nick-named the peaceful revolution and Paul Biya in 1984 renamed it the feast of national unity. He voluntarily resigned in 1982 and following neocolonial tradition, appointed Paul Biya as his constitutional successor. This again was subject of an election.
On assuming Presidential power, Paul Biya tinkered with the constitution during political crisis and alleged security challenges. He activate emergency powers, used systemic and egregious violations which provided the occasions for him to enact liberticidal civic liberties laws and human rights laws; among them, the legislation for the organization of elections. With the judiciary tightly under his control, and an electoral code which is highly flawed, he organized elections which he was sure to be proclaimed winner.
Elections under Paul Biya are a farce and intended to deceive international opinion and perception. With France-Afrique’s fig leaf of impunity guaranteed, with brute force, corruption, with its killing machinery blighting the Southern Cameroons, a highly deficient and a subservient election commission, Paul Biya has over the years perfected the art of using rigged elections as a means of legitimizing his grip on power and safeguarding France-Afrique’s neocolonial interests and legacy.
The election of 12 October 2025 is taking place when the foothold of France-Afrique in Africa is under sustained assault. France-Afrique is troubled with the election in Cameroon. Paul Biya in his neocolonial power grab did not contemplate that the Southern Cameroons war of liberation would still be going on at this point in time. The challenge from North Cameroon, may be bordering on an outright revolt complicating the war against Boko Haram. In the East, insurgents from Central Africa Republic are rendering parts of the territory hard to control. Elections may not take place in these conflict zones.
There is widespread corruption. The war and its economy has provided very lucrative sources of wealth Cameroons civilian and military commanders. They do not care about elections, particularly in conflict zones. Indeed, elections will not take place in the dangerous territory of intense warfare, conflicts and potential death.
Paul Biya and his regime are irremediably aged, lacking in mental acuity, in physical energy and in cognitive ability. He requires hospice care or committed nursing home care assistance in Mvomeka his village of birth. The reality of his condition can no longer be concealed or faked for long. Over the past five years, he was taken to diplomatic events in France and in the USA. There is uncontroverted proof before international audiences outside the manipulative confines of the care of his handlers pointing to the fact that he is irredeemably impaired in health and mental acuity. Although he may be drinking from the bitter poisoned chalice of the ruthless power he sought to eternalize on the blood of millions of innocent men, women and children, the deceptive ploy to use him as cattle fodder to achieve an already stolen mandate in a deceptive election is cruel and deserves serious condemnation.
Persons who may be vying for this election as well as past ones, which they know are fake and whose outcome is predetermined, are not hopeful that a miracle which has been elusive since 1960 will occur this time around. For some of them and a sizeable portion of the population, they may be pining their hopes that the supposed election, may provide a platform for an implosion and a revolutionary change. The indicators for a free and fair democratic election are simply absent. A population census was not carryout in order to have a record of the population which the electoral process is intended to serve. It was simply too dangerous to carry out a population census in a territory at war. Furthermore, voters registration in the war zone in Southern Cameroons where restoration fighters and Southern Cameroons leaders have made declarations banning the elections has simply not taken place, if at all, it has been very timid and insignificant. Besides conducting a poll under war situations are not evidence of the free expression of franchise by voting under the barrel of guns and other constraining circumstances. Any results proclaimed from these conflicts zones will be void, only supply fraudulent and rigged.
The campaign machinery of the regime is scared and appears reluctant to go out to carry out the campaign of lies which is its hallmark during every election circle. War is ongoing and with intense ferocity in some locations. Some Catholic Bishops who have often lent their ecclesiastical weight for pecuniary gain to an aged drowning regime like many CPDM militants, are aware of one reality over which they have no control. The reality is that, in the case the handful of persons who France-Afrique is using to use the dinosauric Paul Biya to legitimize their hold on this powder keg, they may simply be postponing by a few month, may be a few years, the smothering devastation of the explosion of this neocolonial powder keg.
For keen observers of the political situation in this France-Afrique colonial project, the upcoming Presidential election is a poisoned spear of deception which is aimed at securing a lifeline of legitimacy for the faltering influence of France-Afrique in Cameroon. For a majority of the civilian population, this election may be a launching pad for liberation, genuine independence and freedom. The price of attaining these objectives may be painful, perhaps bloody. This outcome will not be surprising.
The neocolonial project which will be rolling out its machinery of oppression to secure another lifeline, was built on the blood of nationalist martyrs who laid down their lives for an elusive truly independent and free Cameroon. The elections of 12 October may just be the launching pad for the reactivation of this genuine independence and freedom struggle so that the blood of the martyrs and millions of others ever since will not go in vain.
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