For the first time since our country’s independence, the United Nations (UN) has been invited to intervene in the organization of an election in Cameroon. The October 2025 presidential election in Cameroon is therefore an unprecedented one.
In 2018, neither the UN nor the European Union sent observers to Cameroon. The CPDM regime had demonstrated unprecedented hostility toward these two international organizations. Instead, the regime opted for fake election observers from Transparency International, a choice more compatible with its electoral approach and practice, which is characterized by fraud, intimidation, repression of opposition candidates and activists, and falsification of election results. The world then discovered the hideous face of this regime and the extent of its misdeeds. In no other country on the planet have political “leaders” gone so far in behaving like common thugs.
It is therefore curious that in 2025, behind closed doors and excluding political parties and civil society, the outgoing CPDM regime is now showing a willingness to collaborate with the UN.
In his press release of May 15,2025, the President of the Electoral Council stated: “Electoral technical assistance for the 2025-2027 electoral cycle is thus part of the ongoing commitment of the United Nations system to place its proven electoral expertise at the service of member states.” It is curious to note that Mr. Paul BIYA’s regime is discovering the UN’s proven electoral expertise in 2025, after 43 years at the head of state and just a few days before the electorate is convened for the October presidential election. Why not sign a convention with the UN for the organization of the presidential elections of 1992, 1997, 2004,2011, and 2018? During the 2018 presidential election, why was Transparency International’s fake election observers planned and staged instead, when theUN’s “proven expertise” was just waiting to be called upon and utilized?
What is at stake with the signing of this UN-ELECAM Convention appears increasingly obscure and dangerous for democracy in our country.
We hope that the prestigious position of President of the United Nations General Assembly, currently held by former Cameroonian Prime Minister Philémon Yang, a senior member of the CPDM, has not been tarnished by his involvement in underhand maneuvers within the United Nations system to facilitate the desperate calculations of the exhausted Cameroonian dictatorship.
The CRM, the PAC, and the People of Change demand the publication of this infamous UN-ELECAM Convention, which must be made public, just like the Constitution of Cameroon and its Electoral Code.
Signed in Yaoundé, May 24, 2025
Maurice KAMTO
