My dear compatriots,
On many occasions, and recently again in my address of 19th May, I drew your attention to the manoeuvres aimed at organising the succession by mutual agreement at the head of our country. I can tell you today that things are becoming clearer. More than ever, over-the-counter architects are at work. In this way, they want to accelerate the course of history for their own profit, in defiance of all the democratic rules of power devolution and the sufferings of the Cameroonian people, I meant your sufferings.
Let it be clear to all: we will never accept any form of mutual agreement succession to the helm of the State. We will stand against any manipulation, even constitutional, tending to the accession to the supreme office by means other than elective means. We will mobilise against the organisation of new popular elections in Cameroon without fulfilling the two major prerequisites that are the resolution of the armed conflict in the North-West and the South-West, and the consensual reform of the electoral system. Nothing and no political circumstance, even exceptional, can be invoked to organise new elections without respecting these two prerequisites. We have never stopped making concrete proposals for the resolution of both crises.
My dear compatriots,
As you know, at the end of the 7th October 2018 presidential election, the Constitutional Council dealt a heavy blow to Cameroonian democracy, by declaring as winner a candidate who had not met the majority of the votes in the ballot boxes. Following this forfeiture, militants and sympathisers of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement were brutalised, tortured and then illegally thrown in prison for having peacefully protested against this electoral hold-up, against the war in the NOSO, and against the misappropriation of resources dedicated to the organisation of the Africa Cup of Nations 2019, finally withdrawn from Cameroon.
All the levers of power were activated against national resistance to the electoral hold-up. Whether it is the police, the gendarmerie, the territorial administration, the public media and even justice, supposed to be the last resort of the citizen, the architects of the succession by mutual agreement at the top of the State have spared nothing to wage battle against the people, against you, my dear compatriots.
But you remained standing, proud to lead the fight for the liberation of our country. Your exceptional response to the call for boycott of the 9th February 2020 legislative and municipal twin elections that the CRM made on 25th November 2019 is irrefutable proof. By your “NO” to these twin elections, you hammered and reiterated your “No to electoral hold-up”. After all, we must face the fact that the regime of Mr Paul Biya remains deaf, indifferent and disdainful in the face of the suffering of our martyred populations of NOSO and the legitimate expectations of the Cameroonian people regarding the consensual reform of the electoral system. They know that such a reform, if carried out properly, would certainly spell the end of the fraudulent elections that have sadly punctuated the history of our country.
You can understand why those who do not want a democratic succession in our country are at work and ready to cross all boundaries, with the endorsement of their external supporters. All of this is happening before your eyes. I am alerting you so that no one is unaware of it, neither today nor later.
We are at a turning point in our history. These are the moments when each people must find in the depths of itself the spring and the wake-up call which is essential to choosing the course of its destiny. Through our collective vigilance and our sense of patriotic duty, we must spare our country a new disaster of almost half a century that has been in preparation through the usurpation of power.
This is why I reiterate in all seriousness that in the absence of a political resolution of the civil war that the BIYA regime triggered in the North-West and South-West, and without a consensual reform of the electoral system in which the main political parties and credible civil society organisations, the CRM and people striving for change will not accept that a new popular election be held in Cameroon. Nor will they accept any manipulation of the Constitution aimed at organising a succession to the head of the State by a non-elective mechanism.
Suffice to say that the announcement of the organisation of an election in Cameroon without the prior resolution of these two crises which are undermining our country will sound like a declaration of war. And all those who will engage the country in such an adventure will answer for it before our people and before History.
Enough is enough! The Cameroonian people have suffered enough from the gluttony of a few people whose incompetence, irresponsibility and cynicism still spread dramatically to the world as part of the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and who believe they can keep power forever only through State terror. Time has come for the devolution of power in our country to finally pass through democratic processes accepted in all modern societies; for the Cameroonian people to have the opportunity to freely and transparently choose legitimate leaders, who are accountable to them for the management of public affairs.
We are ready! Tortures, arbitrary imprisonments and humiliations, we already know about! Fifteen of us, including the first Vice-President of the CRM, Mamadou Yakouba Mota are still there. And if death is to come for this cause, let it come!
Be ready, my dear compatriots, so that together we spearhead the final phase of the fight for the liberation of Cameroon and the advent of democracy in the political life of our country. You must finally be able to influence the destiny of our nation, count on a better future for your children, build a strong country, and ensure its international influence.
Because we have resolutely chosen since the beginning of our political engagement the way of democratic elections for access to power, I invite you and reiterate my call to you to register massively on the electoral registers, so that when the time comes, the expression of your choice be massive, clear and irrevocable.
This is a call to the general mobilisation of Cameroonians of all stripes, to get our country out of the night of a dictatorship drunk with power and the fruit of greed, and open a new page of national construction, that of a free society, founded on the rule of law, open and which gives each of its children a chance.
Never forget, I will never betray you!
Long live Cameroon!
Yaoundé, 1st June 2020
The President-Elect
Maurice KAMTO
