YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) — With weeks to go until an election that could extend the world’s oldest president’s 43 years in power, Cameroon ‘s opposition is struggling. Its most popular figure has been barred from running, and the 11 candidates remaining are likely to divide the vote. At 92, Paul Biya has spent nearly half […]
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Cameroon’s divided opposition seeks to stop the world’s oldest leader after 43 years in power
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YAOUNDE, Cameroon (AP) — With weeks to go until an election that could extend the world’s oldest president’s 43 years in power, Cameroon ‘s opposition is struggling. Its most popular figure has been barred from running, and the 11 candidates remaining are likely to divide the vote.
At 92, Paul Biya has spent nearly half his years on earth as president and is Africa’s second-longest serving leader, behind only Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. If he wins an eighth seven-year term in the Oct. 12 vote, he could govern until he’s nearly 100.
During his decades in power, the Central African nation of nearly 30 million people has struggled with challenges from a deadly secessionist movement to chronic corruption that has stifled development despite rich natural resources like oil and minerals. At least 43% of the country’s citizens live in poverty as measured by core living standards such as income, education and health, according to U.N. estimates.
Biya is rarely seen in public and critics say his capacity to govern has been severely limited by his age.
Still, he’s likely to prevail over the 11 other candidates in the race, especially after Biya’s most threatening rival, Maurice Kamto, was barred from running. Katmo ran against Biya in 2018 and won 14% of the vote.
The election commission said it disqualified Kamto from the race because the African Movement for New Independence and Democracy party that sponsored him was also sponsoring another candidate. Kamto’s lawyers and the party’s president denied the claim, calling the decision politically motivated.
Most of Cameroon’s past elections have faced questions of credibility, with election authorities often accused of working in favor of Biya. Some of the election officers previously served in other roles in Biya’s government. A two-term presidential limit was removed through a parliamentary vote in 2008.
In the nation’s capital, Yaounde, Elvis Nghobo, a food vendor, said the election has ended even before it started. “It is needless voting when it is clear that Paul Biya will always be declared winner,” said Nghobo, 34.
Still, a united opposition could have a chance to defeat Biya, analysts say.
After a record 83 candidates applied to run, election authorities approved 12, including Biya, to appear on the ballot.
All 11 opposition candidates agree on the need to unite behind a single leader, but they’re struggling to agree on who that should be, with formal campaigning due to start on Sept. 27..
In a recent post on X, Kamto likened the election to a penalty shootout in a soccer match and urged the candidates to find the best kicker.
“Choose from among yourselves, or at least from among the most experienced, the kicker who has the best chance of scoring the liberating goal,” Kamto said.
Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a long-time Biya ally who quit his government post earlier this year to run in the election, was designated as a consensus candidate by the Union for Change 2025, an alliance of at least 20 political parties and several civil society groups.
However, the other candidates have so far either rebuffed or ignored the move.
“We have only one objective: To liberate Cameroon from the system that has strangled it for more than 40 years,” Bakary said at the time.
Tomaino Ndam Njoya, a mayor and only woman in the race, said in a recent statement that she is open to backing a consensus candidate. That would be “the price to pay to finally offer the Cameroonian people the change they expect and deserve,” she said.
The candidates appear to be more concerned with “individual political survival than with driving meaningful collective change,” said Munjah Vitalis Fagha, a senior politics lecturer at Cameroon’s University of Buea.
The lack of a key challenger for Biya shows how weak the opposition has been over the years in Cameroon, said Wilson Tamfuh, professor of public and international law at Cameroon’s University of Dschang.
“There would be no need for an opposition consensus if an opposition party had become strong enough in its own right to overcome the ruling party,” Tamfuh said.