During the first ordinary session of its Electoral Council on 28 March 2024, ELECAM announced the registration of 144,817 new voters in the first quarter of this year.
At first, we could welcome this figure, which brings the number of registered voters in Cameroon to 7.5 million. In truth, this is a ridiculous figure compared to the current Cameroonian population estimated at 30 million inhabitants, and the number of potential voters estimated at 15 million. But this would mean losing sight of all the manoeuvres of ELECAM to avoid a significant increase in the number of people registered on the electoral lists.
For about ten years, ELECAM has made the stagnation of the electorate the first milestone of massive electoral fraud and the victory of the CPDM in all elections. The regime fears the massive registrations that every objective observer can see across the country, in particular since the beginning of 2024.
Indeed, the mobilisation for registrations on the electoral lists initiated by the CRM is general and observable throughout the national territory and in the diaspora. It clearly indicates the desire of Cameroonians to finally turn the page on the CPDM regime at the polls and in peace in 2025. Therefore, to claim that only 144,817 new voters would have been registered in the first quarter of 2024 is to make fun of Cameroonians and be provocative.
CRM denounces this gross manipulation of ELECAM on the number of voters registered for several years, particularly in 2023 and 2024, to stick only to these two most recent years. This is a clear and unacceptable electoral fraud which the Cameroonian people do not accept.
Is it necessary to recall that ELECAM is essentially composed of members and former members not freed from the CPDM who, through their partisan actions, have demonstrated their inability to act objectively, in accordance with the law and in the interest of the Republic and the democracy in our country?
In violation of the electoral law which requires ELECAM to publish the national list of voters on 30 December of each year, the director-general of ELECAM stubbornly refuses to publish the said list that no one ignores how important it is for electoral transparency. Cases have been brought to courts by various political actors to force them to do so, but the magistrates are taking their time.
Everything therefore happens as if ELECAM did not want more Cameroonians to be registered on the electoral lists, its counter oscillating between 7 million and 7.5 million registered voters since 2012. Otherwise, how can we explain the sudden and repeated breakdowns of registration kits regularly denounced both by our militants, the media and Cameroonians in the diaspora?
It seems that the FCFA 150 billion budget approved by the Electoral Council as part of the 2024/2025 strategic plan would ultimately only serve to maintain the comfort of its members and not to provide ELECAM with the necessary equipment to fulfil its mission.
CRM firmly condemns all these manoeuvres by the management of ELECAM, and holds them responsible in advance for anything that happens because of their desire to once again distort both the progress and the results of the next elections in our country.
CRM would like to remind you that it will never allow again its victory in an election to be stolen.
CRM congratulates, and once again, encourages Cameroonians to register in even greater numbers on the electoral lists. It invites all citizens or groups of citizens who could be faced with an obstacle aimed at discouraging them in their efforts to register on the electoral lists (intimidation from any authority, a traditional or religious leader, member of a party, hateful remarks, absence of kits or broken kits etc.) to film the evidence and publish it on social media as a denunciation.
I urge every citizen not only to register, but also to call loved ones, colleagues, friends, etc. to do the same, so that together, at the ballot box and in peace, we finally send the old CPDM regime and its allies into retirement.
Done in Yaoundé on 7 April 2024
The National President,
Professor Maurice KAMTO,
CRM and APC candidate in the presidential election of 2025 or before.
