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YAOUNDE, Cameroon – Africa's oldest president, Cameroon's Paul Biya, easily won his seventh term on Monday, after the Constitutional Council he appointed rejected all court challenges related to the election. The United States identified irregularities that "may not have affected the result, but gave the impression that the elections were not credible or truly free and fair".
Analysts now say the country threatened by the separatists is facing new turbulence if Biya, who turns 92 when the new term ends, will not prepare Cameroon for life without him after decades in power.
Troops from major cities experienced a large deployment of troops before the election announcement, with the government having banned opposition rallies suspected of fraud. Biya received more than 71% of the vote, far ahead of the 14% of Maurice Kamto.
The October 7 elections saw few voters in anglophone regions after nearly a quarter of a million people fled the troubles caused by English – speaking separatists. The participation rate in the southwest was 15% and in the northwest 5%, while Biya won in both regions with over 77% of the vote. The voter turnout was 53%.
Clashes between separatist political gangs and security forces accused by human rights groups have killed hundreds of people and posed a serious challenge to Cameroon, a close ally of US security against extremism and new member of the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The US statement does not provide details on "irregularities". But the fraud charges and low voter turnout mean a weaker term for Biya, 85, who has been in office since 1982. The government lifted the presidential term several years ago. , part of a trend in Central Africa that has dismayed many.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has taken note of the official announcement of the results and called for all disputes to be dealt with "through established legal channels," the deputy spokesman for the states said. United, Farhan Haq. He added that Guterres said dialogue is the best way to unity.
"What I can tell you is that Cameroon will never be the same again," said The Associated Press, a human rights lawyer, Felix Nkongho Agbor Balla. While legal options to challenge the election results have been exhausted, Cameroonians are more aware of their rights after following the hearings of the Constitutional Council, he said.
The fractured opposition brought more than a dozen court challenges, but all were rejected by the council, a group of senior judges and members of the Biya administration. The election was held largely without Western election observers.
The council said the elections were free and fair despite security concerns. A close associate of Biya, Dion Ngute, said he was not surprised by this victory because the president is "very perseverant … who tells the Cameroonians what can be done and what can not be done".
Opposition candidate Joshua Osih, who compared the inability of English-speaking voters to go to the polls with the former apartheid system in South Africa, accused Biya of using the state machine to provide another mandate.
The deployment of the troops on Monday was aimed at "punishing the majority of Cameroonians who are unhappy with the long-term maintenance of Biya in power and want his release," Osih said.
Soldiers were seen at the homes of opposition candidates Kanto and Cabral Libii, who had urged Cameroonians to defend their rights if they felt deceived.
The Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, said the troops were not meant to intimidate people but rather to protect them from "politicians pushing naive youngsters into the streets".
The Anglophone South West and North West are very unhappy. The analyst Hans De Marie Heungoup, of the International Crisis Group, said that only a few polling stations had been opened in the counties. Biya did not campaign there.
"Normally, the head of state should worry about being elected when two of the ten regions of the country have hardly participated," Heungoup told the AP. "But in the Cameroonian reality, the president does not care."
English-speaking unrest erupted after lawyers and teachers in English-speaking areas protested peacefully against what they called the rampant marginalization of Cameroon's French-speaking majority. Anglophones make up about 20% of the population.
After the government crackdown, armed separatists emerged and declared the independent state of Ambazonia. Civilians caught in the fighting have pleaded for peace.
Now, it all depends on how Biya will interpret his new mandate, Simon Munzu, a former US diplomat and coordinator of the English General Conference next month, told AP. The conference organized by religious leaders focuses on a possible national dialogue.
If the president sees a chance to respond to the grievances of the English speakers, "we should be optimistic," said Munzu. But if Biya, influenced by the extremists, sees the vote as an endorsement of the status quo, "it will be a disaster. This means that he will adopt an authoritarian attitude, not wanting to talk to anyone … preferring to pursue the military approach.
Biya, whom observers describe as a distant figure even for ambassadors and some of his ministers, will be invited to the English-speaking conference, Munzu said.
Munzu and Heungoup warned that Cameroon would face a disaster if Biya suddenly left power without preparing for a transition, even within the ruling party, with its own generational and ethnic tensions.
"I can only hope that he will think about the interests of the nation," Munzu said. Cameroonians thirst for true democracy, he added, noting the colonial past and the country's autocratic legacy: "They did not think it would last that long."
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Edwin Kindzeka Moki, editor of the Associated Press, told this story in Yaoundé and Cara Anna, author of the AP, in Johannesburg.
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