Bleak prospects for 2004 elections

The constitution demands that Cameroon hold a presidential election within the next two months, but no date has been set for polling day and opposition leaders and international observers doubt how free the election will be. One thing is certain, though. At the age of 72 and after 22 years as head of state, President Paul Biya shows no sign of relinquishing power. Biya originally became head of state in 1982 when took over from Cameroon's founding president Ahmed Ahidjo, whom he had previously served as prime minister. Following Cameroon's conversion to multi-party democracy a decade later, Biya legitimised his continued rule through presidential elections in 1992 and 1997. But these polls were criticised at the time by international election observers for being deeply flawed and peppered with voting irregularities. The parliamentary elections in 2002 fared no better. Disgruntled ghost voters told the press afterwards that the government had given them up to nine voter cards and promised cash if they travelled to opposition strongholds to cast a deluge of supporting votes for Biya's ruling party, the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM). They spilled the beans after the promised money failed to materialise. The prospects for Cameroon's coming elections look equally bleak, according to independent consultants Oxford Analytica. "There is a general acceptance that presidential elections scheduled for October will be neither free nor fair," the British-based group said in a recent report. "Irregularities are expected to follow the example set by legislative elections in June 2002." Ordinary Cameroonians on the streets of the capital Yaounde are also resigned. All six multi-party elections since 1992 have handed victory to Biya and his party and voter apathy is setting in. "Why go to vote when the winner is already known ahead of the elections?" said Alphonse Essomba, a 32-year-old businessman, echoing a widely-heard sentiment in this diverse nation, created from the union of former French and British colonies. Cameroon's umbrella opposition group, the Coalition for National Reconciliation and Reconstruction (CNRR), has called for the 2004 voter registers to be computerised to prevent electoral fraud. "The names and identification of all the voters would be secured in the same database, making it impossible for multiple entries of the same names and multiple voting by the same individual," John Fru Ndi, leader of the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), told IRIN in an interview this month. One person, one vote "It would truly ensure 'one person, one vote'," said Fru Ndi, who narrowly lost to Biya in Cameroon's first multi-party elections in 1992. Sources within the government, the opposition and the diplomatic community said there should be about eight million eligible voters in this country of 15.5 million inhabitants. However, the electoral roll in past elections has remained steady at 3.7 million voters, about half the number indicated by Cameroon's demographic profile. The ruling CPDM has pledged to mount a massive registration drive this year to rectify the problem.

Cameroon's capital Yaounde

"So far we have registered 3.58 million voters throughout the national territory," Interior Minister Marafa Hamidou Yaya told a press conference two weeks ago, to which only government-run media were invited. "By the time of the elections, we should have reached the expected number of registered voters," the minister added, though he did not say what the target was. The Interior Minister dismissed opposition demands for the computerisation of electoral registers. He said such a move would cost at least 9 billion CFA ($US 17 million) and was too expensive. He also suggested that computerisation would provide no real guarantee against fraud. "While the computerisation could permit us to track down and prevent instances of fraud, it could also amplify fraud since we have to deal with computer technology," Yaya said. Another problem is that to be registered to vote, a Cameroonian must have a national identity card which costs about 2,000 CFA (US$ 4). The deadline to get the ID cards ended in June and police sources say that although most people in Cameroon's big cities have the cards, about half of the rural population have not. In the run-up to the elections, it is procedure and not policy that has hogged the limelight. Scant attention has been given to political manifestos or visions for the country's future. Biya has yet to announce his candidacy for what would be his second seven-year term thanks to a constitutional change made in 1996, but everybody thinks he will stand. And although the president's achievements are far from outstanding, political analysts believe that he will once more emerge victorious. "Biya's likely re-election will provide continuity, but do little to resolve issues relating to transparency in governance, constitutional development, presidential succession and low-key but high-risk border disputes," Oxford Analytica said in its report, published at the end of July. Biya's scorecard Cameroon, which with its francophone and anglophone mix is a rarity in the region, is rich in natural resources and has seen growth rates hover at around five percent for the last five years. That is well above average for Africa, but international financial watchdogs like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank say the economy could be generating much stronger growth of around 10 percent if its oil, timber, cocoa, coffee, aluminium and rubber industries were better managed. Corruption is the prime drag all over the country from the hot desert plains in the north, to the cool mountains in the centre and the lush tropical rainforest in the south and east. Transparency International's annual corruption survey ranked Cameroon 124 out of 133 countries in 2003. And the Berlin-based organisation found that almost 55 percent of the country's inhabitants expected the problem to get worse over the next three years. Civil servants salaries have been slashed by 70 percent in real terms over the last decade, largely as a result of the massive devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994, but people continue to work amid the wide-spread belief that the government turns a blind eye to them dipping a hand into state funds. Another black spot is human rights. Diplomats say Cameroon's human rights record is poor with extra-judicial executions, protracted detention without trial, torture of detainees and appalling prison conditions. On the international relations front, Biya has presided over a thawing of relations with neighbouring Nigeria after the countries came to the brink of war in 1981 and again in the early 1990s over the Bakassi peninsula. This is a tongue of swampy forest that juts into the Gulf of Guinea, whose offshore waters are believed to be rich in oil. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Cameroon had sovereignty of the Nigerian-occupied peninsula and a formal handover is scheduled for 15 September. Progress has already been made with Nigeria and Cameroon swapping several villages along their 1,600 km border in December 2003 and July 2004. But the president has a low profile in international affairs. He often sends Prime Minister Peter Mafany Musonge to represent him at international meetings and Oxford Analytica notes that Biya keeps out of the public eye at home. He leaves day-to-day control of the government to a small group of trusted and loyal associates and rarely attends cabinet meetings. Last June, a spate of rumours that Biya had died in a Swiss hospital created much unease in Cameroon, as people worried about who would succeed him and whether there would be a potentially destabilising battle for power. But 48 hours later, the presidency issued a statement dismissing the reports as malicious and inaccurate. And soon afterwards a smiling and healthy Biya stepped off the plane from Geneva, saying that he was as right as rain and had enjoyed a good holiday. Some diplomats speculated at the time that Biya himself had engineered the entire incident to remind Cameroonians of how much they still needed him to retain peace and stability in the country. Opposition headaches On the other side of the political spectrum, the opposition remains fragmented and repressed. Some sources within the opposition movement say that the two potential presidential candidates -- the SDF's Fru Ndi and Adamu Ndam Njoya of the Democratic Union of Cameroon (DUC) -- are fighting about which of them will be the coalition's official flagbearer. Other opposition sources say that the absence of a decision is an election tactic to prevent the government launching an early smear campaign. Fru Ndi has the disadvantage of being born of anglophone parents. Only about a quarter of Cameroonians are English-speakers and they live mainly in the northwest and southwest provinces flanking Nigeria. Fru Ndi challenged Biya for the presidency in 1992, but lost by a slim margin, collecting 36 percent of the votes to Biya's 39 percent. Ndam Njoya, on the other hand, has government experience as a former minister of education. And being a Muslim he could probably carry the votes of Cameroon's Muslim minority, which accounts for 20 percent of the population. The opposition coalition boycotted the last presidential election in 1997 in protest at being given only 30 days notice of the poll. And it can expect similarly short notice this time as well. With just two months to go before the constitutional deadline expires on 14 October, the government has yet to set a date for the nation to head to the ballot box. The opposition have been staging demonstrations to demand free and fair elections in the capital Yaounde every Tuesday since the beginning of July and have promised to keep up their action until polling day. So far, all the opposition marches have run into a wall of paramilitary policeman who have used batons, belts, gun butts and armoured vehicles to disperse the protestors. Last week police fenced protesters in as they tried to march to the prime minister's office and kept them penned in for four hours. Two members of Fru Ndi's SDF were arrested and held for most of the day, the opposition said. "No computerisation of voter registers, no elections!" read a placard brandished at last week's demonstration. However, the opposition have been keeping mum about a deadline for their electoral demands to be met and about what they would do if the government fails to meet them. The opposition coalition has drawn up a nine point wish-list. As well as computerising voter registers, it wants the government to publish voter lists on the internet and in all constituencies as well as at all polling stations. It also wants all voters to be made to dip a finger into indelible ink at polling stations to prevent multiple voting and it is demanding transparent ballot boxes identified by previously published serial numbers. On that last issue, progress has been made. Last week the Cameroonian government signed a deal with Japan and Britain to take receipt of 25,000 transparent ballot boxes -- more than enough for the country's estimated 23,000 polling stations. But other British attempts to provide electoral assistance to Cameroon have fallen flat on their face. British elections expert Simon Osborne flew to Cameroon earlier this year to help speed up voter registration and conduct a nationwide voter education campaign. He had done similar work in Tanzania and other African countries, but he quit Cameroon in April after just one month. A source at the Interior Ministry told IRIN that the government was reluctant to let other people interfere in the country's internal affairs.