Cameroon's Paul Biya Gives a Master Class in Fake Democracy – Foreign Policy

It's no accident that Paul Biya is the second-longest-ruling head of state in the world who is not a monarch. Biya, who has been in power for 36 years, has won a term of office and is set to lead the country until 2025.

By any objective standard, the Cameroonian election on Oct. 7 was a farce, according to outside observers. Voter turnout was marked by apathy, and in some regions, outright fear, with credible sources saying that less than 1 percent of voters cast ballots in some areas. In the country's English-speaking regions, harsh crackdowns on an emerging secessionist movement kept many polling stations closed and left others attended by soldiers.

But the country's media want you to know that the elections went just fine, and they can quote "outside monitors" to prove it.

On Oct. 8, Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) Interviewed a group of international observers who praised the country's elections as credible and fair. One election observer, filmed by CRTV and identified as Nurit Greenger, told Transparency International, called Cameroon's elections "extremely good." She added, "I do not think there is a way you can cheat."

There was just one hitch: Transparency International has no election observers in Cameroon, and the organization has no ties to the group that appeared on CRTV.

"It's still a bit of a mystery that they have been a Transparency International group," Michael Hornsby, spokesperson for the organization, told Foreign Policy. "But I think it's very telling that we're repeating that they've been trained by us-long after we had said we had nothing to do with them."

The strange spectacle reflects what has become a growing trend of autocrats using new methods to add a gloss of legitimacy to elections that are deeply flawed. This particular tactic of using outsiders cropped up with such frequency around the world-from Azerbaijan to Equatorial Guinea-that real election experts "zombie observers."

But Paul Biya is one of the most accomplished, but one of the autocrats who claims to be democrats. And yet experts agree that he may be making more mistakes than usual, this has not undermined his hold on the presidency.

"What really stands out in Cameroon and elsewhere is the degree that highly abusive, repressive, and, in this case, dictatorial regimes will go to, to somehow get this stamp of approval," said Jeffrey Smith, the executive director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit organization focused on democracy in African states.

Part of that strategy involves just enough to keep the United States and other major Western powers from bothering to record. In Biya's corner is a small but powerful constellation of lobbying and public relations firms that the government has embraced in the buildup to the 2018 vote in an effort to buy the prestige of outside approval. These firms have shouldered the weight of managing the country's media relations and keeping in touch with U.S. lawmakers.

The filing date of the following is $ 184,000. Squire Patton Boggs is currently receiving send $ 100,000 a quarter from Cameroon. Glover Park Group-which just cut ties with the Saudi government-is providing good public affairs and communications support for the Embassy of Cameroon in Washington for $ 51,000 a month, and in September, Mercury Public Affairs secured a media relations contract with the government worth $ 100,000 a month. Squire Patton Boggs and Glover Park Group while Michael McKeon, a partner at Mercury Public Affairs, said "It does not represent Cameroon" at present, despite its name being contracted until 2019.

"Biya in this case is really trying to play the game PR … they're trying to somehow [nearly] 40 years as a credible guarantor of the democratic rights and aspirations of its people, "Smith said. "Once you start peeling back the layers, the opposite is true."

Kah Walla, who became the first woman to run for president in Cameroon in 2011, calls the country an "electoral dictatorship." She told FP"Keep in mind in electoral dictatorships, the opposition is running against the incumbent, his party, the civil service, the state media, and even more of the private media, which tends to be run by party executives, as well as the armed strengths."

In Walla's run against Biya, she experienced the tampering first hand. "On voting day, our party representatives were thrown out of polling stations," he said. "As an opposition party, not only do you have the existing rules apply to you, but they'll go along," she added. That has continued in 2018 as well-leading opposition candidate Maurice Kamto, allegedly in the forefront of the Constitutional Council that members of his party, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, were chased out of polling stations this time around.

The country's Constitutional Council offers a 72-hour window for candidates to lodge complaints about the electoral process. Purpose Biya appoints the members of the council, and claims to be released before leaving their claims.

Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, a high-profile Anglophone human rights lawyer in Cameroon who spoke in support of Kamto at the Constitutional Council this week, said that He told FP that the judges "can not get their hands dirty, they can not go against their master. These are people that would never allow Mr. Biya to lose an election. "

The Cameroonian Embassy in Washington declined a request for comment.

For years, biya has remained in power by co-opting elites who could potentially challenge him, undermining a fragmented opposition, and bending state institutions-including those overseeing the election-toward his own interests.

In part thanks to Biya's agile maneuvering, few in Washington were paying attention to Cameroon's election. But the fight against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram is winding down, with reportedly fewer than 1,000 active fighters in the country's north, Cameroon still has to face the distrust and displacement caused by the insurgency. And it is now facing a widespread political strife and conflict on the face of the country's very foundation, the combination of French- and English-speaking regions into a single state.

These deeper demographic divisions could eventually undermine Biya's hold on power-though some experts expect the 85-year-old president to live on the strength of its life in the insurgency continues to smolder, given the strength of Cameroon's military. Cameroon is fraying along with a familiar seam-one that divides its 5 million English-speaking citizens and its Francophone majority, which makes up around 80 percent of the country. It's an arrangement that has been established since the creation of Cameroon-which emerged as an independent nation-colonial rule in Nigeria.

Experts say that the independence of the government, the government in Yaoundé has gradually taken over from the government and supports its citizens. "Since 1961, all encompassing the Anglophone legal system, the educational system, and identity has been reduced to the present day," said Christopher Fomunyoh, director of the Africa program at the National Democratic Institute.

In the northwest and southwest of the country, what started off in 2016 as a result of teachers and lawyers in the English-speaking world. Some Anglophones have gone away as far as advocating for the creation of a separate state-Ambazonia-which they want to see split off from Francophone Cameroon entirely.

Thhe Anglophone crisis intensified to the point where gunfire and threats have nearly emptied entire towns. "Disp"This is a lot of violence," said Richard Moncrieff, the program director for Central Africa at the International Crisis Group. The group, a nongovernmental organization that tracks conflicts and crises around the world, has reported that as many as 300,000 people have fled their homes in the northwest and southwest of Cameroon.

The violent government crackdown, which has seen about 400 people killed, has had dramatic political impact. Voter turnout in the English-speaking regions Brett Carter-reflecting the almost universal election in Biya among the English-speaking population.

"I do not really think the government has much of a legitimate effort to make sure that Anglophone citizens voted," said Carter, a professor at the University of Southern California. "It's important for observers to understand the extent to which the country has been reshaped in the Cameroonian political landscape."

Polled stations in the southwest: "The security presence in town was very intimidating … most people, who were scared of the military, decided to stay at home." He added, "in one polling station, close to my house in Buea, at least 300 members of the military voted there. "

"There is an emerging civil war. Anglophones feel completely disenfranchised, but they did not need the elections to tell them that, "Moncrieff added.

But the brewing crisis has hardly made a blip in Washington, United States of America Oct. 11 statement from the U.S. State Department reiterating America's neutrality in the elections and calling for "calm and the careful [sic], non-partisan conclusion of the remaining phases of the vote tabulation process. "

The State Department has been treading lightly with its comments about the US ambassador, Peter Henry Barlerin, earlier this year. In June, Barlerin suggests in a meeting with Biya the president "should be thinking about his legacy and how he wants to be remembered," citing George Washington and Nelson Mandela as role models. The government jumped on the comments, accusing him of criticizing Biya and trying to sway elections, and later several local media outlets allegedly paid $ 5 million to opposition candidates. The U.S. Embassy called the claims "entirely false."

Violence and longstanding rampant corruption has taken a heavy toll on Cameroon's economy. But the country remains one of Central Africa's most stable and economically significant countries. And Biya has consistently emphasized the relative stability of the country in comparison to its neighbors like the Central African Republic and its key platform for his re-elections. "For decades, Biya has run on a campaign of, 'Look at our neighbors. Look at Nigeria, what a mess. Look at Chad, what a mess. We're stable, we're unified. Natalie Letsa, a scholar on sub-Saharan Africa at Stanford University. "I think that the Biya is trying to keep the narrative alive the best they can, which is relatively easy given the lack of access to information in the country."

But for Biya to emerge from the 2018 election with no coherent plan to resolve conflict in the Anglophone regions will have far-reaching consequences.

"Forty percent of the region's economic output comes from Cameroon. It's a highly important country in terms of its political influence and the influence that Biya has on neighboring countries, "Smith said. "I think as Cameroon continues to regress, it's going to continue to drag the rest of the region down."