Nairobi — Exclusion of Maurice Kamto Harms Election Credibility
The resolution by Cameroon’s electoral board to exclude Maurice Kamto, a key opposition leader and challenger to incumbent President Paul Biya, from the country’s upcoming presidential elections raises considerations about the credibility of the electoral route of, Human Rights Watch acknowledged on the present time.
On July 26, 2025, Cameroon’s Election Rate (ELECAM) accredited 13 out of 83 doable candidates, together with the 92-three hundred and sixty five days-feeble Biya, who has been running the country since 1982. Elections are scheduled for October 12. Excluded candidates had 72 hours to charm the resolution to the constitutional council.
“The election commission has raised doubt on an election before the votes are even cast,” acknowledged Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Excluding the most popular opponent from the electoral process will leave a shadow over whatever results are eventually announced.”
The resolution to bar Kamto from the presidential walk displays the executive’s long-standing intolerance for any opposition and dissent and is derived amid an elevated crackdown on opponents, activists, and attorneys since mid-2014, ahead of elections later this three hundred and sixty five days.
The commission justified its resolution to exclude Kamto, pronouncing it modified into once for the reason that African Circulate for Fresh Independence and Democracy (Mouvement africain pour la nouvelle indépendance et la démocratie, MANIDEM), the celebration that backed him, modified into once also sponsoring one other candidate, Dieudonné Yebga.
However, Kamto’s attorneys and Anicet Ekane, the celebration’s president, acknowledged MANIDEM modified into once no longer sponsoring Yebga and that the resolution is unfair and politically motivated. The celebration sought to abet a facts conference at its headquarters in Douala, Cameroon’s largest metropolis, but security forces shut it down.
Kamto, who pale to be the leader of the opposition celebration Cameroon Renaissance Circulate (Mouvement pour la renaissance du Cameroun, MRC) and had already challenged Biya within the 2018 elections, sought to scamper as MANIDEM’s candidate for this three hundred and sixty five days’s election for the reason that Cameroonian electoral code bars events with out a elected officials from sponsoring a candidate.
Kamto’s attorneys maintain appealed the election commission’s resolution and filed a petition with the Constitutional Council on July 28. Yebga also presented that he’ll charm to the Constitutional Council.
“ELECAM’s decision has no legal basis and only aims at eliminating a key challenger from the elections, supporting the ruling party’s long-term strategy of power confiscation,” Menkem Sother, a member of Kamto’s exact workforce, told Human Rights Watch.
Biya is serving out his seventh period of time. He modified into once final reelected in 2018, after which Kamto challenged the official results and declared himself winner of the election.
Biya’s 2018 election sparked a wave of political repression. After the vote, opposition-led protests erupted across the country, and the executive responded with a heavy crackdown deploying the police, army, and gendarmes who pale excessive force in opposition to protesters. In January 2019, Kamto and over 200 of his supporters were arrested and detained. Kamto modified into once charged with riot, hostility in opposition to the put of starting put, and criminal affiliation, among other fees. He modified into once freed on October 5, 2019, and the costs were dropped, though the crackdown on the opposition persevered.
In early September 2020, the authorities banned demonstrations across Cameroon after Kamto’s MRC impressed of us to jabber the executive’s resolution to call regional elections for that December. Opposition events had expressed considerations that the elections can even no longer be conducted freely and barely with out reforming the electoral code and addressing the dearth of security within the country’s minority Anglophone areas, the put separatist groups and security forces maintain over and over clashed.
On September 22, 2020, Cameroonian security forces fired walk gas and water cannons and arrested over 550 of us, primarily MRC members and supporters, to disperse tranquil protests across the country. Diverse these arrested were beaten and mistreated. Whereas the huge majority of them were within the ruin launched, others together with Olivier Bibou Nissack and Alain Fogue Tedom, two MRC leaders, remain within the support of bars after being sentenced to seven years in jail.
Test in free of charge AllAfrica Newsletters
Uncover doubtlessly the most modern in African facts delivered straight to your inbox
In December 2023, Kamto presented the introduction of the Political Alliance for Alternate, an opposition coalition led by Jean-Michel Nintcheu, a member of Cameroon’s parliament. In March 2024, the territorial administration minister banned the coalition, pronouncing it modified into once “illegal,” and “clandestine.”
Cameroon is a celebration to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and as such is required to be obvious every citizen, with out discrimination on the premise of political thought, has the chance to hang fraction and vote in in actual fact free elections. The United Countries Human Rights Committee has learned that “freedom of expression, assembly and association are essential conditions for the effective exercise of the right to vote and must be fully protected.”
“The Election Commission’s decision de facto reduces the upcoming vote to a mere formality, buries what remains of Cameroon’s democracy, and triggers fears of renewed violence,” Allegrozzi acknowledged. “The commission should reverse its decision and allow Cameroonians to decide their own future.”
