An Outsider Who Surprised Everyone

Just a few months ago, no one would have bet on Issa Tchiroma Bakary as the voice of “change.” The leader of a micro-party, he joined the regime in the early 1990s after a stint in the opposition. As communications minister and government spokesperson from 2009 to 2019, he delivered some of the most grotesque speeches of the Biya era to justify regime actions. Subsequently appointed employment minister, he surprised everyone by resigning in June 2025 and immediately announcing a presidential campaign.

Among the eleven candidates standing against the incumbent Biya — and in the absence of opposition leader Maurice Kamto, barred from running — Issa Tchiroma Bakary took center stage. Backed by a coalition of small parties, he harangued crowds and begged forgiveness from those he had spat upon when in government. Without convincing everyone, leaders and activists called on people to vote for him, arguing that only a “bandit” could remove another.

While, by his own admission, his only ambition was to position himself for the upcoming parliamentary elections, he ultimately rallied an electorate motivated above all by the desire to punish Biya.

But even though activists continue to highlight inconsistencies in Elecam’s official figures — reinforcing doubts about the result — chances of turning the situation around seem slim. Accused by authorities of seeking to destabilize the country, Issa Tchiroma Bakary discreetly left his stronghold of Garoua for Nigeria. Authorities in the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé have reportedly been negotiating with their Nigerian counterparts to secure his extradition, while social media is circulating some of his old speeches praising the “greatness” and wisdom of his then champion, Biya, capable of extricating himself from all “areas of turbulence.”

In 2018, Maurice Kamto had already faced similar repression after claiming victory in the presidential election: he was arrested, charged, and detained along with at least a hundred supporters.

A Colonial History of Repression and Fraud

Suspicions of electoral manipulation are nothing new in Cameroon. They are rooted in a long history dating back to the colonial period. When France was forced to introduce electoral processes in its colonies, it was quick to limit their scope and control the results to ensure the victory of candidates deemed “safe.” Physical and verbal pressure on voters, manipulation of electoral rolls, ballot-stuffing, and fraud in the count itself were almost systematic practices in the colonial territories.

Colonial authorities also restricted voting rights to a minority — notables, former military personnel, merchants, and traditional chiefs — as long as possible. The objective was clear: to give the appearance of democracy while entrusting electoral power to a small, loyal, and controllable elite. Combined with outright violence, electoral manipulation became a central instrument for maintaining the colonial order.

This was also the dominant pattern in Cameroon. From the mid-1950s onward, France did everything it could to permanently neutralize the Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC), a progressive pro-independence party.

France waged a relentless war against UPC supporters: tens of thousands of people were murdered. One of them was UPC secretary-general Ruben Um Nyobè, whom historian Achille Mbembe called “the first modern Cameroonian intellectual, in the sense that he was the first to think critically about the conditions for the emergence of a free subject in this part of the world.”

France also managed to sideline the UPC from the electoral process. In July 1955, French authorities officially broke up the party, preventing it from participating in the first elections held under universal suffrage in December 1956. Voters thus had no choice but to vote for carefully selected candidates, all of whom were hostile to independence.

In this way, Paris succeeded in imposing a loyal figurehead, Ahmadou Ahidjo, trained in the colonial mold, at the head of independent Cameroon. The aim: to guarantee that France still held sway even once it had formally ceded sovereignty. Hence, even before independence was proclaimed on January 1, 1960, the French authorities had him sign a series of “cooperation agreements” covering everything from currency and economic decisions to diplomacy and culture, to keep Cameroon under French tutelage for the exclusive benefit of the former colonial power.

In subsequent years, the French army supported Cameroonian government forces in the war against UPC militants, who were labeled terrorists. This conflict, marked by manhunts, torture, and countless executions, did not officially end until 1971. It made it possible to crush any opposition that might challenge the new postcolonial order. For decades, this war was erased from official accounts: the ideals of the UPC were stifled, and mentioning the name of Ruben Um Nyobè could lead to imprisonment.

Same System, New Face

From its origins, the Cameroonian state was thus built as an authoritarian, centralized regime closely tied to French interests. Throughout his presidency, Ahmadou Ahidjo replicated the colonial administration’s techniques of electoral fraud and manipulation. These often crude practices were intended to give the appearance of popular legitimacy to an unchallenged power. One incident from the parliamentary elections of April 1964 remains particularly infamous. At 2:00 p.m. on the election day, the prefect of Nyong-et-So’o announced that 106 percent of voters had voted for the Cameroon National Union (UNC), the sole political party.

When Paul Biya succeeded Ahmadou Ahidjo on November 6, 1982, he embodied the continuity of the system. Educated by French priests in his native region in southern Cameroon, then in France at the National School for Overseas France — a breeding ground for colonial administrators – Biya belonged to a generation of elites trained to defend French interests. Returning to Cameroon in 1962, he was immediately appointed, on the recommendation of Louis-Paul Aujoulat — a prominent figure in the postwar Fourth Republic and architect of French colonial policy — as a presidential adviser. He then quickly rose through the ranks of the state apparatus before becoming prime minister in 1975, a position he held for seven years before becoming president.

True, Biya’s early years in power hinted at the beginning of a liberalization of the regime. But an attempted coup in April 1984, led by officers close to his predecessor, changed everything. Traumatized by this event, Biya reorganized the security apparatus and focused his energy on preserving his power. He locked down the whole political arena, permanently weakening the opposition and placing the state administration at the exclusive service of his unending rule.

The multiparty system, reestablished in 1990 under pressure from the streets and the international community, did not end this logic. The Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC), the party he founded in 1985, functions as a single party: it absorbs local elites through corruption, diverts state resources to finance its campaigns, and controls electoral institutions.

To ensure his longevity, Biya has perfected the art of “divide and rule,” already used by the colonial administration: he fuels rivalries within the ruling elite, fragments the opposition, and maintains regional divisions. Loyalty takes precedence over competence, and positions become rewards distributed to those who ensure the regime’s survival.

To neutralize ambitions within his own camp, the “lion man,” as he is nicknamed, has also allowed — even encouraged — ministers and senior officials to embezzle public funds on a massive scale. In 2024, Cameroon ranked 140th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Those among his collaborators who harbored dreams of the presidency ended up in prison, accused of embezzling public funds. Today, there is something like the equivalent of a government sleeping behind bars, with some former ministers sentenced to decades of imprisonment.

Ambiguous Relationship

While this system, a legacy of colonialism, continues to serve the joint interests of France and a small local elite, its effectiveness has eroded over time. Since the attempted coup in 1984, relations between Yaoundé and Paris have shifted from tutelage to mutual distrust. The Cameroonian security services believe that France supported, or even encouraged, the coup, considering Biya too independent. The details of this episode remain unclear, but its consequences are lasting: since then, the head of state has not fully trusted Paris.

However, Biya cannot break with France, which retains structural control over Cameroon: it still governs the currency (the CFA franc) and dominates a large part of the economy. Yaoundé therefore maintains the privileges of the large French companies operating in the country, which in turn reward the small ruling elite: some, for example, include members of the government on their boards of directors, while others pay bribes. For some years, the former French oil giant Elf secretly paid Biya a percentage of each barrel extracted off the coast of Cameroon. These close ties between economic interests and political power, characteristic of “Françafrique” — as continued French hegemony is widely known — are still organized in a opaque manner.

In 1992, during the first multiparty presidential election campaign, France openly supported Biya, who was declared the winner of an election marked by numerous irregularities and contested by the opposition. For France, it was a question of preserving its “pré carré” (or as Americans might say, backyard): the president’s main rival, John Fru Ndi, leader of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), enjoyed the support of the United States, and his rise to power could have jeopardized French interests in the region.

In subsequent elections (1997, 2004, 2011, and 2018), Paris adopted the same stance of cautious public reserve, while implicitly supporting the regime: the French authorities have always favored the stability of the ruling power as a guarantee of the continuity of the French state’s economic and geopolitical interests in Central Africa.

But this support comes at a price: it fuels criticism. In 2009, a US diplomatic cable exposed by WikiLeaks referred to a striking “level of anti-French sentiment” among many Cameroonians. It especially explained this in terms of the strong French economic presence, perceived as supporting the Biya regime and promoting corruption through opaque networks. US diplomats also noted that France is “seen to have significant influence over the Biya regime” and that it was criticized for never using this influence to promote democracy or improve economic governance.

Not only have French leaders never promoted democracy in Cameroon, they have never given up their sway on the country’s political direction. On several occasions, they have discreetly attempted to sideline Biya, betting on younger figures considered more pliable. Before the 2011 presidential election, French president Nicolas Sarkozy had hoped to see Marafa Hamidou Yaya, a minister and former secretary general of the presidency who was well-connected in French business circles, take his place. The plan failed and Biya took revenge: Marafa Hamidou Yaya was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to twenty years in prison for corruption. At the same time, Cameroon began to strengthen its ties with China, which has since become its leading supplier, supplanting France.

Over the decades, France seems to have gradually resigned itself to dealing with an ally it no longer really controls. It is concerned above all with preserving its interests in the region, at a time when it is losing ground in West Africa, where several countries in the Sahel region have broken with it.

Gerontocracy

Cameroonians, for their part, are more than weary. Once considered one of the most prosperous countries on the continent, Cameroon suffers from a severe infrastructure deficit, a dilapidated road network, a ruined education system, and a chronic energy crisis. Despite abundant resources (gas, oil, wood, minerals) and strong agricultural potential, nearly 40 percent of the country’s thirty million inhabitants live below the poverty line.

Whereas over 40 percent of Cameroonians are under age fifteen, the regime has turned into an outright gerontocracy, reflecting a worn-out authority of which Paul Biya is only the most visible figure. The president of the Senate, Marcel Niat Njifenji, his constitutional successor, is ninety-one years old. The president of the National Assembly, Cavaye Yéguié Djibril, eighty-five, has held his position for a third of a century. The president of the Constitutional Council, Clément Atangana, is eighty-four, and the head of the police, Martin Mbarga Nguélé, is ninety-three. Most ministers are well over sixty. Two Cameroons face each other: that of the old men in charge and that of a youth tired of waiting and living in poverty.

The security crises plaguing the country are evidence of the general breakdown. In the north, the terrorist group Boko Haram has kept up a high level of violent attacks since the early 2010s. In the English-speaking regions of the Southwest and Northwest, the army has since 2017 been fighting separatist groups who have resorted to large-scale banditry. This conflict has brought a heavy toll: thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons.

But as long as elections continue to be designed as rituals of legitimizing the already powerful rather than real instruments of democratic choice, nothing will really change. Sixty-five years after independence, this presidential election has confirmed, once again, that Cameroon remains trapped in the system inherited from colonial France. It is an order designed to concentrate power in the hands of an elite, guarantee the continuity of the dominant interests, and stifle any genuine expression of the popular will.