During a interview with the French channel, RFI, the Cameroonian Minister for Information announced that the results from the country’s October 7 presidential elections are expected to arrive today.
His comments come less than 24-hours after the Constitutional Council dismissed 18 petitions brought before it by individuals and parties seeking the partial to total cancellation of the process.
Earlier, the Council –the ultimate judicial body for poll challenges– struck out 16 of the 18 petitions before listening to submissions from the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF) and the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, CRM, the two that were passed for hearing.
On Thursday evening, after two days of hearing submissions by legal representatives of the two parties, the Council unanimously ruled that the cases lacked merit and subsequently threw them out.
The election body, ELECAM, and the ruling party, Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) mounted strong challenges during the hearing, arguing that the October 7 vote passed the democratic test.
The court’s president, Clément Atangana, declared that ‘debates are over,’ after the petitions were deemed “unjustified” by all members of the Constitutional Council unanimously.
Throughout the election and during the hearing of election petitions that started on Tuesday last week, the Cameroonian electoral body, ELECAM, defended its organisation of the poll and said it had not seen any proof of fraud.
The spokesman for the government, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, also dismissed allegations of fraud.
ELECAM passed nine candidates including incumbent Paul Biya. The 85-year-old is widely expected to be announced winner of the polls, granting him another seven-year mandate that will extend his time in power to over four decades.
Meanwhile, Cameroon’s opposition candidate, Joshua Osih of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), has described the October 7 election as ‘apartheid,’ arguing that the Anglophone people in the North West and South West regions did not vote.
“No election took place in the North West and South West regions…the people could not vote because they are Anglophone and that is apartheid,” Osih argued.
Finally, while awaiting the results of the presidential elections, political tensions in Cameroon are on a new high following a chaotic weekend that was characterised by botched protests, house arrests of opposition politicians, harassment of journalists and restriction of internet access to forestall nationwide protest that might come up with the announcement of President Biya as the winner.
Update:
President Biya has been announced the winner of the Cameroon elections with 71.28% of the votes. According to The Guardian,“Maurice Kamto, the opposition leader who had declared himself the winner a few hours after the polls closed, refused to attend the declaration ceremony after his party was said to have taken just 14% of the vote.”
Threatening further violence, Kamto’s campaign manager reportedly said: “We don’t recognise Biya as the president of the republic. We want Cameroonians to know that things will start happening now. We wouldn’t take this lying down.”
Many Cameroonians were apathetic to the election results, saying: “Biya always wins,” said Suh Emmanuel, an anglophone driver. “His ministers voted in places they didn’t register but those of us who left Buea and Bamenda because of the war couldn’t. I am not interested in the results. Let him rule forever.”
