24/07/2025
You can’t help but feel sorry for Kamto. The pope of law seems to have been miserably beaten in his own game and to an extend it is his own making.
He was on fire when he took part in the 2018 presidential elections. He emerged a distant second after the incumbent but had a strong base in the Littoral and West regions. However, he failed to build on that momentum.
He boycotted the municipal elections, citing flawed voting laws. The move divided his party, with staunch loyalists like Barrister Ndoki who had hoped to become MPs and mayors leaving the MRC.
Kamto’s boycott meant his party ended up with zero elected officials across the country.
Then Yaoundé changed the electoral law to require that a party must have at least one elected official to field a presidential candidate.
Kamto still had hopes. He was planning to take part in the upcoming municipal and legislative elections, gain some councils and MPs, and then run for president.
But Yaoundé outsmarted him again reversing the electoral calendar to hold the presidential election first and pushing the twin legislative and municipal elections behind. This was the opposite of what had usually happened in the past.
Kamto then allegedly coerced some SDF councilors to resign and join his party, hoping to use them as elected officials. But legal scholars argue that this backdoor arrangement won’t hold, insisting that those who resigned were elected under the SDF banner and will remain so until their mandate expires, even if they change political affiliation.
As his options dwindled, he joined the MANIDEM Party, which has elected officials, and was chosen by the party to represent them.
However, legal scholars maintain that he must first officially resign from his former party (MRC) before standing as a candidate for another. In a hastily arranged press conference, he claimed to have resigned from his own party all in a desperate attempt to stand as a candidate.
Then, quietly, MINAT changed the leadership of MANIDEM from Anicet Ekane, who had endorsed Kamto, to Yebga, who himself filed as a presidential candidate under the same party.
Final result: Kamto, 71, will from all likelyhood not be allowed to stand.
It seems his blunder of 2018 was the biggest he ever made—and it might follow him to the grave.
What now for Kamto?
Should he rally his supporters behind another opposition figure?
Or wait and contest again in 7 years—when he’ll be 78?
But if so, under which party?
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