By Atia Tilarious Azohnwi
The files of 28 postulants to the office of president of the republic have been received at Elections Cameroon, ELECAM ahead of the October 7, 2018 presidential elections.
Aside the candidatures of incumbent President Paul Biya of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), Joshua Osih of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), Akere Muna of the People’s Development Front and Maurice Kamto of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, most of the 28 candidates come from political parties that mushroomed overnight, particularly towards this election.
Only the CPDM and SDF are known to have representative structures across the breadth and width of the country.
A growing number of obscure individuals, six of them, have already thrown in their hats and declared their intention to contest for the October 7 political battle. It remains unclear whether or not these so called independent candidates meet the provisions of section 121 of the Electoral Code. It requires that independent candidates secure 300 signatures, 30 per region. Same applies to political parties without representation at the Senate, National Assembly, Regional Council or Municipal Council. The 300 signatures have to come from presidents of the chamber of agriculture or commerce, first class traditional rulers, Members of Parliament, Senators and Councillors. Such a list of signatures is expected to be approved by Senior Divisional Officers or Governors in each of the10 regions.
It could be that they came out to seek the political fame that goes with dropping files at ELECAM.
Some of these mushroom political parties and aspiring politicians are merely eyeing campaign funding. Adding to suspicions is the fact that such outfits and individuals often disappear immediately after the elections.
They are instead a hurdle to the democratic process given that most of them do not contest municipal, parliamentary, senatorial or presidential elections. So what is the purpose of their formation and existence if they are not interested in ceasing, keeping and using power?
Several reasons have been advanced in the past by political analysts. The most repeated has been that some of these family-size parties front for the ruling party so as to divide the opposition. There are others whose interest is to scramble for the left-over of the CPDM dinner table in the name of “presidential majority”.
These pseudo-politicians have been assisted in their misadventure of creating political parties because of the liberal nature of the liberty laws. It is easier and cheaper to create a political party in Cameroon than a civil society organisation such as a common initiative group.
Some of these political parties subsist purely in the imagination of the owners. They have no known office other than the private residence of their founders. They contest no election and do not even have a sheer brochure in which their policies are explained.
Of the 300 political parties in existence in Cameroon, only some 45 took part in the last legislative and municipal elections. In 2007 when 207 political parties were in existence, about the same number participated at the municipal and legislative polls.
At the start of multi-party elections in 1992 when just 69 political parties were registered, 32 of them actually participated in the legislative elections at which the leading opposition party, the SDF boycotted.