The Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) has learned, through an article circulating on social networks, of the signing of a ‘collaboration agreement’ between ELECTIONS CAMEROON (ELECAM) and the United Nations Organisation (UNO) on 9 May 2025 in Yaoundé. The aim of this agreement is to ‘optimise elections in Cameroon, with a view to strengthening the transparency and inclusiveness of the electoral process’.
The CRM deplores and denounces the exclusion of political parties, major players in the electoral process, from the preparation and signing of such a Convention. Need we remind you that although ELECAM is responsible for organising elections, there can be no elections without the political parties that present the candidates? The CRM firmly condemns ELECAM’s unseemly approach at THIS important and sensitive time in the country’s political life.
The CRM observes that several days after the signing of this convention, neither ELECAM nor UN officials felt the need to make any communication on this event, in order to inform political parties, civil society and the Cameroonian people in general of the content of the commitments made by all parties, and how THE signed convention could contribute to the organisation of free, inclusive, transparent and peaceful elections in our country. We still have no idea of the content of this agreement, which will apply to the upcoming presidential election, for which the electoral body will be convened in a few weeks’ time.
This agreement has been signed in a context marked by the stubborn refusal of the current government and ELECAM to provide the slightest solution to the serious problems posed by the current electoral process, which have been raised by the CRM, other political parties and several civil society organizations and personalities.
These include the contemptuous refusal to reform the Electoral Code, the need for which ELECAM itself recognized following the 2018 presidential election; ELECAM’s refusal to respect the Electoral Code in force, the provisions of which it blithely and obstinately violates, as illustrated emblematically by the non-publication of the national electoral list by the Director General of Elections, in clear and assumed violation of Article 80 of the Electoral Law.
All this is taking place against a backdrop of repression of public freedoms, in particular through the systematic banning or disruption of meetings and demonstrations by opposition political parties. The UN is fully aware of this situation, as the CRM has always made it its duty to bring to its attention these acts of repression and other obstacles to democracy.
In recent months, we have reiterated this at a meeting with a UNDP mission on 10 July 2024 in Yaoundé, and again at a meeting with the High Commissioner for Human Rights on 7 August 2024 in Yaoundé. By signing this ‘collaboration agreement’, the UN is endorsing one of the continent’s most repressive and undemocratic regimes, which has taken the people of Cameroon hostage. By making such a choice, the UN is taking full responsibility for the pre-electoral, electoral and post-electoral fraud that could distort the results of the forthcoming presidential election in Cameroon.
Africans in general and Cameroonians in particular still remember the UN’s regrettable interference in the electoral process in Côte d’Ivoire in December 2010, which helped to accelerate and amplify one of the worst post-electoral crises of the 21st century in Africa, resulting in thousands of deaths and the desolation of almost every Ivorian family.
The CRM is therefore exercising here and now its duty of vigilance and alert, by denouncing and condemning these manoeuvres which, FAILURE of inclusiveness and transparency, are likely to bring even more misfortune to our country.
Yaoundé, 14 May 2025,
For the CRM, the General Secretary of the party.
