Biya leads in vote count, government says

President Paul Biya has taken an early lead in Cameroon's presidential election as vote counting gets under way, Interior Minister Marafa Hamidou Yaya said on Tuesday. The announcement came as no surprise. Opposition parties accused Biya, who has ruled this West African country for the past 22 years, of resorting to massive fraud in order to win a further seven-year term. Only 4.6 million of Cameroon's 16 million population made it onto the electoral roll, but opposition parties and a member of the government-appointed elections watchdog committee said many of those who did were issued with more than one voting card. There were numerous reports of individuals casting several votes each as polling took place peacefully on Monday. Diane Acha Morfaw, the vice-president of the National Elections Observatory, the government-appointed body charged with overseeing the electoral process, announced on Monday that over 600,000 names had been removed from the electoral register in the final days before the election. She said they had been struck off because they referred to people who were double listed, under the legal voting age of 20 or dead. Acha Morfaw told reporters that the total number of eligible voters had been reduced from 4.6 million to between 3.5 and 4.0 million as a result of this purge, but it was not clear whether the deletions were made before voters lists were distributed to polling stations around the country. In a further hitch, Black Yondo Mndengue, one of the 16 presidential candidates, was prevented from casting his own ballot in the port city of Douala because he could not find his name on the voters' register and he had not been issued with a voter's card. The interior minister said that although Biya was leading the vote count overall, John Fru Ndi, one of his main challengers, was doing well in his stronghold in the English-speaking highlands of southwestern Cameroon. Full official results from the election would not be available for two weeks, he added. Fru Ndi's party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), said the election was so riddled with fraud it should be scrapped. "In the faces of these irregularities that have greatly influenced the outcome of the poll, we call for the annulment of the elections by the Constitutional Council," SDF Secretary General Tazoacha Asonganyi told a press conference on Tuesday. This SDF alleged in a statement that thousands of unclaimed voter's cards had been issued to members and sympathisers of Biya's Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM), which under different names has ruled the country ever since independence in 1960. The SDF also alleged that the indelible ink used to mark voters' fingers washed off easily, making it easier for individuals to vote several times undetected. A spokesman for the other main contender, Adamou Ndam Njoya, who stood on behalf of a coalition of nine opposition parties, denounced the election as "a masquerade." He did not go into details, but said a full statement on the poll would be issued on Wednesday. The SDF, the largest opposition party in parliament, pulled out of the opposition alliance, the National Coalition for Reconciliation and Reconstruction, after it refused to endorse Fru Ndi as its candidate. That ensured a major split in the opposition vote. Fru Ndi commands strong support among Cameroon's Anglophone minority, which accounts for just 20 percent of the population. But he is less popular in French speaking areas of the country, which was formed from the union of former French and British colonies. Several groups of international observers monitored the election, including one from the Commonwealth, led by former Canadian prime minister Joe Clark. But these have not yet pronounced on the poll. Biya, who is now 71 and rarely makes public appearances, claimed the election had taken place "transparently." The interior minister took issue with local media reports of a low turnout in the election, estimating voter participation at 80 to 85 percent, well above the 72 percent officially recorded at the last presidential election in 1997. That was boycotted by most opposition parties and Biya was officially declared the winner with 92.6 percent of the vote.