The Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) has given Maurice Kamto, its declared candidate for the 2025 presidential election, the freedom to decide how he will formally present his candidacy. However, Cameroon’s Constitution offers him three potential paths: securing an endorsement from the MRC, obtaining a nomination from another party, or running as an independent candidate.

This question arises due to the MRC’s boycott of the 2020 local elections, which left the party without elected officials. According to the Constitution, only parties with elected representatives can formally endorse a candidate. Although Kamto argues that elected officials have since joined the MRC—meaning the party could legally nominate him based on Cameroon’s lack of “binding mandates”—this interpretation is disputed. The Constitutional Council could potentially reject the MRC’s right to endorse a candidate under these circumstances.

Securing endorsement from a different party could be the safer route. Several parties within the Political Alliance for Change (APC), a coalition led by MP Jean-Michel Nintcheu, might be willing to endorse him, though the specific parties have not been named. If Kamto takes this route, he would likely choose a party open to an alliance with the MRC, allowing him to leverage the MRC’s political network for his campaign. The MRC has even allocated a confidential campaign budget to support Kamto’s run. “If Maurice Kamto goes left, we all go left. If it’s right, we go right,” a source within the MRC stated.

Running as an independent candidate is the last and most challenging option. This would require Kamto to gather 300 signatures from prominent individuals across Cameroon’s ten regions, including members of parliament, senators, municipal and regional councilors, and traditional chiefs. Since most of these figures are affiliated with the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), this task would be especially difficult.

The clock is ticking, and Maurice Kamto shows no signs of urgency. Remarkably, his colleagues have not imposed a deadline for his decision.

Source: Sbbc

Aboubakary Abdoulaye, the first vice-president of the Senate, signed a decree on October 23 calling for the Senate to meet in November. This is unusual, as it is typically the Senate president, Marcel Niat Njifenji, who signs such decrees.

“The president is once again getting medical treatment abroad,” a parliamentary source said.

The absence of the upper house president has sometimes affected how the Senate works. During the March session, the Senate’s leadership team couldn’t be renewed for several days because the outgoing president was away. Sources in the Senate said he was recovering abroad and could not run for reelection.

The decree signed by the first vice-president aims to prevent further delays. Aboubakary Abdoulaye, a senator appointed by the ruling party CPDM and the powerful lamido of Rey Bouba in the North region, has been leading Senate debates for several years. Marcel Niat Njifenji, also an appointed senator from the Western region, usually only oversees the opening sessions.

The November session is expected to focus mainly on reviewing and approving the 2025 budget proposal presented by the executive. It will feature a general policy speech by the Prime Minister, followed by oral questioning sessions for government members. This speech, a key moment of the November session, will provide an overview of the government’s socioeconomic and cultural actions over the past year and outline the main directions for the next fiscal year.

Source: Sbbc

Cameroonians have been waiting for the return of their president, Paul Biya, but from every indication, Mr. Biya will not be coming back to continue ruling the country. He clearly belongs to the past as major questions emerge about his health and life.

Mr. Biya was last seen in public on 8 October 2024 while attending the China-Africa Summit. After leaving China, Mr. Biya stopped over in Europe where he is in a hospital receiving intensive care for multiple health conditions.

A coded online message by the 91-year-old dictator’s daughter, Brenda Biya, which shows only drops of tears on a piece of paper has gone viral, with many Cameroonians saying that the brutal dictator is dead and it is time for   the country’s Prime Minister, Dion Ngute, to step up to the plate to deliver a rousing speech which will hold the country together and avoid any bloodshed.

Since disappearing from public view some 40 days ago, many, both at home and abroad, have been positing that Mr. Biya is either dead or dying and it is time to declare Biya a former president of Cameroon.

There is a lot of anger in Cameroon, especially against the President’s wife, Chantal Biya, who approved Mr. Biya’s long and tiring trips abroad.

Before heading to China, Mr. Biya had to go to France to watch the Olympic Games and he did so in the rain, an act many observers criticized as preposterous for an old man who was frail and fragile.

From France he returned to Cameroon before heading to China, a long trip that is not designed for old people. Mr. Biya had nothing to prove to anybody. He has won all the presidential elections in his country through massive rigging schemes, making him an evil genius.

He has willfully underdeveloped Cameroon, reducing the country to a humanitarian case; a beautiful and wealthy country handed to him by the country’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo in good faith.

Mr. Biya is a champion in the embezzlement of funds and a huge destroyer of taxpayers’ money. In 42 years, Biya has not developed the country’s infrastructure. There are no modern tarred roads in Cameroon. Hospitals are nothing more than consultation clinics and corruption has been institutionalized to ensure that the destructive dictator last in power.

Today, the country’s economy is in very bad shape. The country’s youths have been reduced to beggars, with many taking to alcohol and drugs just to numb their pain and frustration. Most Cameroonians want to leave the country as the future appears very bleak. The name Biya only suggests hardship and inhumanity.

The country’s youths want to walk away from their country just to put an ugly past far behind them due to the corruption and incompetence of a man who was once seen as a liberator by Cameroonians.

Mr. Biya will not be returning to Cameroon as the country’s president. Cameroon Concord News has obtained reliable information that Mr. Biya is brain dead and he is on life support. There are plans to pull him off life support in the days ahead, though his wife is opposed to such a move as she is maneuvering and plotting to see how she can influence the choice of the next president of the country.

Chantal like the French want to impose Franck Biya on Cameroonians but there is massive opposition within Mr. Biya’s ruling party and there are fears that things are falling apart for a party which has been the architect of the economic hardship which has reduced Cameroonians to walking zombies.

Many Cameroonians at home and abroad are urging Prime Minister Dion Ngute, himself a Biya creation, to take matters into his hands. The country’s business must continue with or without Biya. A brain dead Biya cannot continue to lead the country.

While there are no limits as to how long the president can be out of the country, Cameroonians hold that a 91-year-old and sickly person cannot continue to hold an entire nation captive. Biya has already proven that he is a negative force and he should be dumped on the ash heap of history.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

It is becoming obvious that Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya, will no longer rule the country as his health takes a turn for the worse.

While Mr. Biya is fighting for his life, there is a huge battle brewing in Yaoundé as different factions seek to take control of things. The king is dying but the princes are more interested in his succession.

In the event that President Biya gives up the ghost in the days ahead, his constitutional successor, Niat Njifenji Marcel, is supposed to step in to run the interim, but he too is very ill and it is being reported that he is in a deep coma. Mr. Niat has been out of the country for almost three months and it is gradually emerging that he is not responding to treatment. 

In such a situation, a vacancy can be declared at the Senate and Aboubakary Aboubakar, the 63-year-old Senate Vice President, will take the reins of power and run the country for at most 120 days.

The Lamido of Rey-Bouba was invited last week to Geneva where Mr. Biya is battling for his life and was asked to resign. The ruling mafia does not want him to run the transition period. He was not allowed to see the President. He left Switzerland disappointed and devastated.

Aboubakary has no plan to resign and is not in a rush to yield to any pressure and he is sticking to his guns. The ruling mafia does not want a northerner to be anywhere close to power and there are fears that if Mr. Aboubakary runs the show, he will deploy a game strategy that will not sit well with Chantal Biya and Ngoh Ngoh. The battle lines have been drawn and the pressure is mounting.

Meanwhile, the country’s finance minister, Louis-Paul Motaze, who was called to Geneva was refused access to the ailing 91-year-old Biya. Mrs. Biya who is now restricting access to the dying President rejected Motaze’s request to see his boss.

There is a lot of political drama playing out in Geneva and Yaoundé and the French are principal architects in the break dance. Nicolas Sarkozy, a former French President,  is reported to be rooting for Franck Biya and he is insisting that power be handed to the young Biya who has no place in the country’s constitution.

Several regime insiders are against Franck Biya though not many of them have the courage to openly express their minds.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands the ruling CPDM is quietly planning an extraordinary congress for the end of this year. Though not many party stalwarts are talking about it, the plan is for members to choose another candidate for the 2025 Presidential Election, given that the party’s natural candidate, Paul Biya, is caught up in another battle that he might not win.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Several political leaders have called on the president to seek a new mandate in the 2025 election, despite persistent concerns about his health.

As with every presidential election in Cameroon, the calls for Paul Biya to run again—now 91 and facing many questions about his health—are multiplying. The leaders of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC, the ruling party) began these efforts as early as 2023, but now the movement is spreading to smaller allied parties.

On October 6, the Democratic Movement for the Defence of the Republic (MDR) made its move. At a special convention in Maroua (Extreme North region), the MDR announced that it would keep to its long-standing policy of supporting the president.

“Implementation of Congress Recommendations”

“Remaining true to the path set by its founder, the late Dakolé Daïssala, the MDR will continue to back President Paul Biya’s candidacy in the 2025 election,” said a resolution signed by its president, Senator Paulin Djorwe. “We are preparing calmly. The party is ready. We are urging our supporters to follow this direction,” added the lawyer, who was officially installed as the new leader after serving two years as interim.

A few days earlier, another call for Biya’s candidacy came from the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC) in Yaoundé.

After an October 4 meeting between Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji and Robert Bapooh Lipot, who leads one faction of the historically divided UPC, Lipot said his party would support Biya in 2025. “We are carrying out the congress’s recommendations and honouring the commitments made by our late Secretary-General, Augustin Frederic Kodock, to support the man who made sure our heroes, Ruben Um Nyobe, Ernest Ouandié, Abel Kingué… are celebrated in this nation,” he added.

Battle of Coalitions

The MDR and the Lipot-led UPC are both part of the ruling majority. The MDR aligned with Paul Biya’s RDPC after the March 1992 legislative elections. Defeated by the opposition that year, the ruling party gained a majority only after the MDR’s six deputies joined them. That same year, the MDR entered the government, securing four ministerial posts.

The UPC joined a few months later. After tough negotiations with its then-Secretary-General Augustin Frederic Kodock, it also joined the government in October 1992, gaining four ministries and a position as Minister of State in 1994. However, decades later, both parties have greatly weakened.

Hampered by internal infighting, both the MDR and UPC have lost much of their influence. In the 2020 legislative elections, the MDR managed only one seat, while the UPC was barred from running due to its divisions. Nevertheless, these parties remain symbolic, and the RDPC continues to rely on them to promote its policy of inclusiveness. In 2018, the ruling party leaned heavily on the support of the G20—a coalition of allied parties—to counter the opposition, particularly the campaign of Maurice Kamto.

Who will mobilise more this time? As the next elections approach, the battle for coalition support has resumed in full force.

Culled from The Africa Report