This past week in the African country of Cameroon has been rather turbulent, as the process to elect their new president has gone underway. Incumbent President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 35 years, faced off against a coalition between two other stride-making political parties, the People’s Development Front (FDP) and the Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC). Within the week before elections, FDP candidate Akere Muna withdrew his candidacy in order to support MRC favorite Maurice Kamto, thus forming an impromptu coalition between the parties. Two days ago, unofficial results of the election surfaced, showing that Kamto had won against President Biya. A strong response from Biya’s team saying that the release of these result were illegal suggests that the votes accurately reflected the results. While Biya and his team may be struggling to accept the results, he definitely had many things going against him during the campaign trail.
For one thing, Paul Biya has done little in putting down insurgent separatists within the region. Historically, Biya has had the people’s majority for the better part of his presidential career. However, the fighting between Cameroon’s military and rebel groups such as Boko Haram has caused many people to be displaced. This goes badly for Biya, since it either means that these people cannot cast legitimate votes in their region going in his favor, or families have simply stopped supporting him. The combined effect has been detrimental in his polling results, and translated promptly into the election.
Another reason the election resulted the way it did was simply because the two opposing parties had solid political followings, and their combined effort had great effect in inspiring people to vote despite the violence. Candidate Muna withdrew his candidacy and formed the coalition on the basis that overthrowing Biya was the main goal. Supporters in both groups showed strong turnout, something that can be compared to prospective results of the midterm elections in the United States. Many organizations in the U.S are promoting the vote in hopes of swaying the political shape of Congress. The MRC and the FDP used similar tactics, making sure that they could get as many of their supporters to vote for them as possible.
Finally, many people claim that President Biya overall has not represented the ideas of the people and the country as a whole. While Cameroon is doing relatively well among its neighbors, the country still suffers high infant mortality rates and a large prevalence of people carrying and transmitting HIV. Many of these things are what Biya has said he will mend, but yield little results over his decades long presidency. Muna and Kamto both ran on similar platforms of solving these issues, and many people are looking for a fresh perspective on long running issues, which led to more votes based on fundamental issues within the country.