The Colbert Factor

The Colbert Factor The Colbert Factor is a social network for citizen journalism. It is informative and influencing

The Colbert Factor is totally informative and wholly entertaining

04/11/2025

12 Reasons Why October 12 Presidential Election Wasn't Free

Colbert Gwain Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)

Cameroon’s electoral contests have repeatedly been distorted through a mix of pre-election legal/administrative manipulation (candidate exclusion, biased electoral rules, voter-roll problems), state-resource and media capture, security-sector intimidation and violence (especially in the Anglophone regions), ballot-box and tally irregularities, and information controls (internet shutdowns, restricted observer access) — all reinforced by judicial and institutional capture that limits effective contestation.

Welcome to Cameroon, the proud inventor of the "Pimma-Election", where voting in the last October 12, 2025, was less of a civic exercise and more of a ritualistic validation of power. In Cameroon, presidential election results since 1992 have hardly expressed the will of the people—they only confirm the will of the president, who has the unique ability to “win” or "eat" elections that people don’t remember having a say in.

Buckle up. You’re about to take a satirical safari through the jungle of electoral fraud, Cameroonian style—where logic goes to die and results are “adjusted” for stability.

The Rigging Playbook: 12 Ways Cameroon Rewrote the Votes of the 12 Candidates last October 12

1- ELECAM: The Referee Who Always Forgets His Whistle

Cameroon’s election umpire, ELECAM, is a masterclass in impartiality—if impartiality means favoring your boss. It was created to ensure free and fair elections but is unfortunately afflicted with selective vision. ELECAM is the football equivalent of being a referee, striker, and VAR all at once. It is like the referee who plays for one team. Its officials wear the badges of neutrality but carry the signatures of Presidential appointments.

Like ushers in a theatre they do not own, they smile as they walk voters toward a ballot that has already been cast - in another room, on another day, and by someone who has never stood in a queue. Burdened by structural and/or soft rigging strategies like the two billion subhead from the Present for ELECAM budget this year, its members can only clear the path for incumbency while blocking accountability.

Its independence is so mythical that unicorns are filing copyright claims.

2- Voter Registration: May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

You want to vote in Cameroon? Great! Step 1: Find a registration center that isn’t closed, and that should be before August 31st of each year. Make sure the registration center you choose doesn't have ELECAM staff who suspect you are an opposition sympathizer. Step 2: Hope your name doesn’t vanish from the list come election day. Meanwhile, the cemetery population never misses a vote. Voters who died years ago still "participate' and in unusually high numbers. Voters cards go missing.

While dead citizens stay on the rolls, living ones - especially in opposition strongholds - find their names missing. When more people queue up at registration centers, registration kids arrive broken, late or never at all.

In Cameroon, registering to vote is like dating your crush - difficult, confusing and half the time they pretend you don't exist.

3- Results collation/Tallying: Democracy’s GPS Malfunction

It was Jimmy Carter, 39th American President who said "the true test of an election is not in voting but in counting the votes or making sure the votes count. In Cameroon, counting the votes at the polling center may not be the problem. Making sure the votes count is the bone of contention. Problems begin with vote tallying at various ELECAM branch offices and right to the national vote counting commission.

The absence of independent and international observers and civil society leaders during the tallying is a major concern. Cameroon authorities restrict access to these independent bodies during vote tallying and that's where all the manipulation is done. Although one may argue and tightly so, that representatives concerned candidates and political parties are always members of the national vote counting commission, the President of the commission and other relevant state bodies always overshadow them.

4- CRTV: Cameroon’s Reality TV—Starring the President

CRTV is what you get when you cross journalism with an infomercial. Campaign season? Coverage is 80% ruling party campaign propaganda, 10% documentaries on how life was worse before Paul Biya came in 1982, and 10% airtime for the rest of the opposition candidates.

Ever seen a TV channel so in love with the government so it makes propaganda look like honest news? Cameroon has. If the ruling party held a rock concert, CRTV would live stream it in 4k. As demonstrated in triumphant detail in the last election, CRTV is effectively a megaphone for the ruling party. Opposite candidates are either shut out or painted as distabilizers.

You pay the media tax. The government owns the screen. Democracy approves—from a distance.

5- Military Lockdowns: When Voting Is a Security Threat

In the Anglophone regions, elections are held with more camouflage than ballots. Tanks roll in, polling stations roll out. Separatist fighters decree lockdowns. Voters face a simple choice: stay home or risk showing up with both courage and a body bag. Either way, only the ruling party candidate ever mysteriously gets all the votes.

6- Ballot Box Yoga: Bending Paper to Fit the Results

Some ballot boxes in the last presidential election were spiritual. They could meditate. They could manifest. They magically filled themselves with ruling party votes—even when no one was watching... especially when no one was watching.

In areas with little or no independent observation (especially rural strongholds), turnout figures reported by ELECAM and the ruling party were suspiciously high - above 90%. Meanwhile urban centers with large opposition support showed lower turnout, indicating a statistical imbalance. Voters are added or manipulated at the pulling station or during collation.

7- The Assisted Vote: Patriotism with Training Wheels

In rural areas, political activists turned into volunteer “ballot whisperers” especially to illiterate and uneducated old mothers. Can’t read? No problem—they would very kindly help you pick the right candidate. (Spoiler: it’s the same candidate for every voter.)

8- Turnout Inflation: Ghost Voters Unite

Hunger, war, apathy? No problem. The ruling CPDM government still reported epic, 95%+ voter turnout in several constituencies. Turnout in the ghosted regions of the North West and South West was so high that even mathematicians called for a recount of reality. A polling agent for one of the opposition candidates in a polling center in Boyo Division was shocked to discover that the ELECAM return sheet (PV) gave his party candidate over 400 votes and the ruling CPDM candidate over 1500 votes when the day was characterized by shooting and heavy rains and when by the close of the voting day, not up to 200 voters, including military officers and ELECAM staff put together, had turned out.

9- Digital Darkness: The Internet Is on Vacation

When things get tense, the government pulls the plug. Literally. Entire regions are plunged into digital darkness. What better time to disconnect the public than during a national decision-making process? Democracy has logged off.

10- Cybercrime Laws: Now Targeting Truth!

Want to expose electoral fraud? Post a picture of a stuffed ballot box online? Congratulations—you’re now a criminal. Jail time and fines await you, courtesy of the 2010 Cybercrime Law. Cameroon updated its laws—but not its conscience.

11-Courtroom for the Condemned (Cases, Not Judges)

The Constitutional Council is where opposition petitions go to die. Evidence? Dismissed. Witnesses? Unheard. The ruling? Predetermined. Protest too loudly? You just might meet the gendarmes. You are told to go home quietly and cry in silence. If you try calling for ghost towns as a non-violent resistance strategy, they say you don't the suffering masses.

In electoral systems that are designed to work, the Constitutional Council would normally order a forensic audit of results given the volume of petitions filed by the contesting candidates. In Camerooon, fat chance!

12-Protest and Perish

After every predictable election comes the predictable crackdown. Tear gas for breakfast. Prison for lunch. Banned protests for dinner. Democracy doesn’t just get silenced—it gets its passport seized. Ask Kamto about 2018. Ask Issa Tchiroma Bakery about 2025.

The Biggest Joke? It's Legal.

Every tactic is wrapped in the warm blanket of legality. Cameroon didn’t just rig elections—it rewrote the script so the rigging is technically “lawful.” This isn’t mere authoritarianism—it’s bureaucracy on steroids.
Perma-Election, I dare say "Pimma-Election" —Cameroon’s most stable export.

A Nation Stuck in Repeat Mode

Cameroon's elections are not just flawed. They are designed to maintain power, not pass it. And every seven years the show goes on, citizens become more audience than actors.

If democracy means the people's voice matters—then Cameroon is running a ghost democracy: empty polling stations in some regions, filled ballot boxes, and a silent, absent majority.

And yet, hope isn't dead—it’s just held hostage. Each new election brings renewed calls for reform. The question is: who will dare break the script?

References

Reuters, “Cameroon judges reject election-rigging complaints,” October 22 2025.

Nation Africa, “Biya’s iron grip tightens: All election fraud claims dismissed amid bloody clashes,” October 23 2025.

AP News, “Cameroon arrests at least 20 protesters as tensions escalate after the presidential election,” October 21 2025.

AP News, “Cameroon governing party says one of its offices was set on fire as election tensions rise,” October 16 2025.

In these perilous times, a truth-seeking and informative local news organization like The Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor) is essential. But, it’s not easy, cheap or profitable. The Muteff Factor is a solution-oriented, independent non-profit content creation medium. It serves as the ‘first draft’ for newspapers, radio and TV stations, online news outlets and blogs. We don’t have ads and we are independent of corporate and government interests.

You can help us continue creating more investigative, balanced, fair, reliable, credible and educative content, by donating your widow’s mighty mite through MTN momo number: 677852476 or Orange Money at 687338370, both numbers bearing Colbert Gwain Fulai

04/11/2025

Happening Now: International Civil Society Week 2025, Bangkok, Thailand, 1-5 November, 2025

Declaration

We met at a time of escalating crises. Civilians are being targeted in conflicts in Myanmar, Ukraine, Sudan Democratic Republic of Congo, and the genocide in Gaza. Rising authoritarianism is driving an onslaught on human rights: under four per cent of the world’s population live in countries where freedoms to organise, mobilise and speak out are respected. Wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a tiny elite who are capturing politics. Disinformation is undermining democracy. Climate change is accelerating as powerful states and fossil fuel companies refuse to take responsibility. The rules-based international order is being replaced by transactional might-is-right diplomacy. Excluded groups are struggling to defend hard-won rights, with women’s rights and sexual and reproductive freedoms under attack.

Civil society faces a deepening funding crisis. Governments are cutting funds to prioritise military spending, and a growing number are passing laws to restrict international funding. But despite these challenges, grassroots organisations and movements continue to provide vital help to communities, advocate for better policies and hold human rights violators accountable. Civil society plays an essential role in defending democracy and human rights. Without us, authoritarianism would go unchallenged, abuses would increase and vulnerable people would face even greater dangers.

Global civil society calls for urgent action

We call on governments, global institutions and fellow civil society organisations to stand up and uphold democracy and civic freedoms. Democracy is vital because it gives people power, enabling them to shape their societies. Civic freedoms - the rights to assembly, association and expression - allow people to demand change and hold those in power to account.

I. Call to governments

a. Protect and advance democracy and good governance

Governments must safeguard democratic institutions and democratic processes, uphold the rule of law, ensure an independent judiciary and respect fundamental freedoms.
Enact and enforce fair election laws, ensure the impartiality of electoral commissions, enhance defences against disinformation and prevent the use of state resources for political campaigning.
Repeal and amend repressive laws that stifle dissent and guarantee the right to peaceful protest and media freedoms. Strengthen transparency, accountability and efficiency measures, including independent anti-corruption commissions, transparent public procurement processes and asset declaration for public officials.
Fund civic education, digital and media literacy and inclusive participation processes. Enact laws that support the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and support independent youth commissions.
b. Unconditionally respect human rights

Do everything in their power to immediately stop, protect and confront all form of aggression, attacks against civilians, crimes against humanity and genocide, including by working collectively in multilateral forums.
Investigate and prosecute all allegations of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other grave human rights abuses.
Refrain from imposing internet shutdowns and censorship and protect people’s right to privacy online.
Create a safe and enabling environment where activists, human rights defenders and journalists can work without fear of reprisals.
Unconditionally release all political prisoners.
Ratify and fully implement key international human rights conventions.
Support independent human rights commissions.
c. Ensure environmental protection and climate justice
Phase out fossil fuel subsidies, invest in renewable energy, promote green jobs and sustainable agricultural practices and fund international climate financing mechanisms.
Strengthen environmental protections and hold corporations liable for climate and environmental harm.
Take urgent action to halt deforestation, protect endangered species and conserve ecosystems.
Protect environmental human rights defenders and involve local communities, Indigenous peoples, and other vulnerable groups in the planning and implementation of climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.
d. Protect the rights of minorities and excluded groups
Adopt comprehensive legislation that prohibits discrimination based on grounds including age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion and sexual orientation.
Guarantee the meaningful participation of excluded groups in political and public life.
Strengthen laws and policies to prevent and respond to all forms of violence against women and girls, and people with diverse sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.
II. For Global Institutions (including UN, ASEAN and European Union):

a. Promote and defend democracy
Condemn democratic backsliding and human rights abuses and apply consistent diplomatic pressure on states that are failing to comply with democratic and human rights norms.
Provide financial and technical assistance to support free and fair elections, independent judiciaries and a vibrant civil society.
Apply targeted sanctions against people and entities responsible for gross human rights violations and undermining rights and democracy.
Cooperate internationally to combat disinformation and improve AI governance.
Ensure responsiveness of regional human rights mechanisms in addressing human rights violations.
b. Uphold international law and human rights
Establish independent international mechanisms to investigate and document serious human rights violations.
Encourage countries to ratify the Rome Statute and cooperate with the International Criminal Court.
Integrate human rights considerations into all development, diplomatic and trade cooperation.
c. Address transnational challenges
Establish channels for regular consultation and collaboration with a diverse range of civil society, including youth-led movements.
Hold regimes accountable for transnational repression that targets civil society beyond their borders, and provide enhanced scrutiny, sanctions and protective mechanisms to confront and limit cross-border authoritarian influence that undermines democracy.
Create platforms for dialogue and cooperation on issues of shared concern, including climate change, transboundary pollution, human trafficking, business and human rights and global tax governance.

Our call for a more just, equitable and democratic future is resounding. State leaders and the international community must respond. And as civil society, given today's challenging context, we must reimagine how we champion democracy, human rights and inclusion. We must mobilise across new frontiers and reach beyond the traditional confines of civil society by widely engaging with grassroots communities, corporations, educators and a broader range of people. We commit to being more imaginative, adaptable and resilient, so we can make our contribution towards building a better world for everyone.

29/10/2025

When Elections Become Theatre: The People Vote, Power Rewrites the Script

Colbert Gwain Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)

In the hillslope village of Muteff, in Fundong Subdivision of Cameroon's then Menchum Division, schooling was a communal affair. Children, youths, and even the elderly shared the same dusty classrooms, united by the belief — or at least the hope — that education was a passport to a better place.

Among them once stood Yam Tohnain, a towering figure whose enthusiasm for the idea of school far outweighed his interest in anything actually taught in it. Tohnain loved the uniform, the noise, the camaraderie — everything except the lessons. Yet every end of term, he marched home with theatrical confidence to announce he had “topped the class.” His illiterate parents, always impressed by the exotic red markings on his report card, never suspected they were actually symbols of academic disaster — not distinction.

On occasions when a literate uncle or returning student demanded to see his report card, Tohnain did not hesitate. In seconds, he would retrieve his report card from his schoolbag — neatly stored in the children's section in front of his father’s compound — and with the precision of a calligrapher, convert every red “0” into a promising blue “10.” Failure, miraculously, became an achievement — with the stroke of a pen.

His size did the trick. Teachers, being younger and not particularly eager to negotiate with a human buffalo, allowed him to go from one class to another, year after year, as the rest of his peers. By the time he reached Class Seven and sat for the First School Leaving Certificate exam, Tohnain didn’t even wait for results. He left. To the coast. Lifted heavy things. Made money. Came back. Married. Settled. No need for epistemology when the physics paid better.

Fast forward to 2025. Cameroonians were called to the polls on October 12 with incumbent President Paul Biya and 11 others seeking the top job. With the enthusiasm and impressive turnout of forces for change, everybody went home hoping Biya's uninterrupted 43-year reign was finally over. Fat chance!

And that's precisely why Yam Tohnain matters. Because if digital manipulation is the future, Tohnain was running Photoshop long before electricity. With the October 12 election results officially proclaimed, Cameroonians find themselves compelled to examine another type of report card.

Because while Tohnain’s creative accounting of his academic life was fairly harmless — and arguably entertaining — the country can ill afford leadership that still believes report cards can be edited in blue ink the night before inspection. The electorate has been at odds since October 27, 2025 (when the official results of the October 12 highly contested presidential election were proclaimed), deciding whether Cameroon's elections management body, ELECAM, and other related institutions graded the winner on performance or penmanship.

As Cameroonians ruminate on the results of the October 12 polls, the ballot risks becoming a prop — and democracy a carefully edited performance, staged for legitimacy rather than accountability. The question haunting this electoral season is no longer who the people chose — but whether their choice survived the editing room. With those handling the tallying of the votes increasingly behaving like scriptwriters rather than referees, elections in Cameroon risk devolving from instruments of sovereignty into stage-managed productions where outcomes are adjusted backstage and the audience is told to applaud on cue.

From what was obtained in the recent election, it would appear that in Cameroon’s political playhouse, the ballot box appears onstage — but the real decisions are made in the editing suite, long after the audience has gone home.

In most democracies, citizens vote and leaders are chosen. In Cameroon, citizens vote — and power politely thanks them for their opinion before producing an entirely different ending. What should be a sovereign civic exercise increasingly resembles a polished stage production: the people perform their democratic duty, the cameras roll, and somewhere offstage, a Yam Tohnain quietly adjusts the script to ensure the “right” actor keeps the lead role.

In this theatre, legitimacy is not earned — it is costumed. Campaign promises return every election cycle dressed as brand-new reform, entire manifestos recycled with the confidence of a student re-submitting last year’s homework under a different font. The people are invited to participate, but never to interfere. Their role is clear: fill stadiums, raise flags, validate the spectacle — and never, ever expect the final script to reflect their lines.

Yet the absurdity is not accidental. It is engineered. Electoral rituals remain meticulously choreographed to appear free, fair, and fiercely participatory — provided nobody asks why results routinely resemble prophecies rather than competition. And as state power through Cameroon's Territorial Administration Minister, Atanga Nji Paul, perfects its performance, it expects applause not only from citizens, but from history itself.

But every theatre has its limit. Even the best-written illusion eventually meets an audience that stops clapping. Across living rooms, WhatsApp groups, and smoky junctions where politics is dissected more honestly than on Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV), a quiet clarity is spreading: this is not participation — it is choreography. And the national patience for beautifully staged irrelevance is beginning to thin.

The irony is brutal. The very system that demands applause has forgotten the most basic rule of performance — the audience can walk out. And when people are tired of being background extras and decide they will no longer play along, legitimacy is no longer lost at the ballot box — it evaporates in public belief, in loyalty, in silence turned refusal.

And so the danger for those still redrafting history in blue ink is not an uprising at the polls — but a mass awakening offstage. For when a nation realizes the script is rigged, the most radical act is not rebellion — it is refusal to continue pretending. Because once the people stop believing in the theatre, the drama ends — even if the actors remain onstage, still performing to an empty room.

Long live President Paul Biya
Short live protests
Long Live Cameroon

24/10/2025

Shutdown or Showdown? Internet Becomes the Casualty of the Elephant Fight

Colbert Gwain Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)

There once lived an ambivalent character in Muteff who was always at odds with a neighbor who lived downstream on contentious community issues. The moment he learned that his rival neighbor was planning to construct a house that could overshadow his years of effort, he hurriedly gathered his children to erect a water blockade upstream, using banana stalks and stones to divert the flow of water downstream.

When the downstream man woke up with his family early in the morning to start molding bricks for the house, he discovered that the water, which had once flowed fluently, was barely trickling down, to the extent that it would take a whole day to harvest just one drum of water. When news reached him that it was his traditional enemy upstream who had obstructed the flow of the water, he raised an alarm, and concerned villagers had to quickly intervene. To defend himself, the man upstream initially claimed he diverted the water because he, too, was in the process of molding bricks for construction, before later insisting that since the water passed through his compound, he had an exclusive right to it. However, it was only when Muteff community leaders reminded him that the stream was a common good and everyone in the village had unfettered access to it, that he reluctantly unblocked the stream for his downstream neighbor to mold blocks and construct his house.

The current hide-and-seek game with the internet in Cameroon over the past few days is reminiscent of the proverbial man who crosses the bridge and then destroys it to prevent others from following. It's also a story of how some politicians use social media to reach out to netizens and canvass for votes, only to abruptly throttle internet access after the hotly contested October 12 Presidential election. President Paul Biya himself announced his intention to seek reelection through social media, specifically Twitter.

If the internet supply had been as disrupted then as it is today, no Cameroonian would have received that announcement. Notably, one of his key promises in the 2025 reelection campaign manifesto was to pursue digital and technological innovation in Cameroon. However, just days after the election, as Cameroonians await the official proclamation of the contested results on October 27, 2025, it appears the President is reneging on this critical campaign promise. If this nationwide internet disruption wasn't intentional, why hasn't the government denounced it or summoned Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to explain, given that the internet has become a public good? The silence is deafening. This other disruption, the third since the first Internet shutdown in January 2017, makes the Internet shutdown to become the new normal in a Cameroon that claims to be emergent by 2035.

Choosing censorship over connectivity because of an election dispute would be ludicrous for a country that claims to be promoting the digital economy as the cornerstone of its development. This only serves to widen the digital divide and exacerbate frustration amongst young Cameroonians who rely heavily on the internet for their livelihood. In today's society, slowing down the internet, even for a single day, costs billions to the gig economy. In 2017, Cameroon's internet shutdown in the Anglophone regions lasted 94 days and cost the country at least $38 billion, an equivalent of XAF21.48 billion.

In a recent open letter to President Paul Biya, Access Now, a global network of organizations that promote and protect the rights of citizens worldwide to the Internet, urged authorities in Cameroon to ensure reliable, continuous, open, and secure internet access before, during, and after the October 12, 2025, presidential election, to ensure a participatory and transparent electoral process.

This letter was based on the fact that in recent months, people in Cameroon have reported the emergence of network throttling and partial disruptions, especially in crisis-hit areas, and during periods of civil unrest. According to Access Now, this was a worrying trend as elections are a well-documented trigger of shutdowns. "Election-related shutdowns restrict people’s access to information and active participation in democratic processes and governance, make it difficult to document irregularities, and erode public trust in electoral processes", states the organization. "Ensuring access to the internet throughout the election process is a key component to ensuring peace, stability, and smooth transitions of government", the statement further reads. Access Now and the coalition urged authorities in Cameroon to uphold their obligation under both national and international frameworks and ensure unfettered access to the internet throughout the electoral period and beyond.

The internet and social media platforms play a critical role in enabling and enhancing participatory governance and transparency in a democratic society. They provide space for advancing national conversations at a national scale, enabling access to critical and updated information about election processes and candidates, facilitating reporting and documentation of events and outcomes, as well as providing an avenue to hold authorities accountable for their actions.

“Internet connectivity is not a luxury, it’s an essential tool woven into the fabric of everyday life — from education to healthcare to democratic participation. The internet is an enabler of essential human rights and is key to sustaining meaningful democracy,” said Bridget Andere, Senior Policy Analyst at Access Now. “Authorities in Cameroon must respect human rights and .”

24/10/2025

Cameron Election Conundrum: "Ifs" and "Buts" and Anxious Days Ahead of October 27

Colbert Gwain Muteff Factor (formerly The Colbert Factor)

In the remote village of Muteff, nestled within Fundong Subdivision of the then Menchum Division in Cameroon’s North West Province, the school-going population was a lively blend of the young, the middle-aged, and the elderly. Among the pupils stood out a towering figure—Yam Tohnain. While Yam didn’t appear particularly eager to absorb new knowledge, he relished being in school and enjoyed the camaraderie of his peers.

Though always present in class and a zealous participant in extracurricular activities, academic achievement was not Yam’s strong suit. At the end of every term and school year, he would return home beaming with pride, proclaiming to his illiterate parents that he had outperformed every other child in his class. To back up his claim, he would point to the red ink marks littered across his report card—symbols of failure—which he insisted were signs of success.

Whenever a literate relative visited and requested to see his report card, Yam would scramble to retrieve it from his schoolbag, tucked away in the children's section at the front of his father's compound. With meticulous care, he would use a blue pen to alter the red ink, transforming zeroes into "10s" and crafting an illusion of academic excellence. When the visiting relative challenged him over the delay and the fact that it had obstructed his program, Yam would first blame the delay on the fact that he had to collect the report card from a classmate who had borrowed it. He would then argue that since it was still daylight, with the sun not yet set, the relative would still have enough time to complete his other chores.

Fast forward to the next school year and thanks to his intimidating size and the relatively young age of his teachers, Yam would refuse to repeat a class, and would instead, forcefully follow his classmates to the next class, regardless of performance. By the time he reached Class Seven and sat for the First School Leaving Certificate (FSLC) exam, he didn’t bother waiting for the results. He headed straight for the coastal regions, where he used his physical strength to earn a living through menial labor. Eventually, he saved enough to return home, marry, and start a family.

As Cameroonians await the official results proclamation of last October 12, 2025, hotly contested presidential elections scheduled for Monday October 27, 2025, we can't help but think of Yam Tohnain, the giant from Muteff village. While Tohnain's antics in school were endearing, his approach to academics was, shall we say, creative. He'd alter his report card to show passing grades, despite struggling in class. Unfortunately, the CPDM government's approach to elections since 1992, and power alternation, seems to follow a similar Yam pattern.

It would appear when well-meaning Cameroonians voted on Sunday October 12, 2025, and happily counted the votes from 6pm before returning to their homes, the real voting started from Monday October 13, and in offices. As if to prove Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States right, when he said, "The real strength of elections is not in voting but in making sure the votes count", polling agents who had signed return sheets (PVs) before going home that Sunday evening, were surprised the next day to see different results filtering in from the very centres and stations they had spent energy the whole day mounting. Some polling agents and party representatives in the war-torn regions of the North West and South West, were also genuinely embarrassed to see results indicating that thousands of people voted in the same polling stations they manned, and when they knew for a fact that fewer than 100 voters turned out in those centers.

One SDF polling agent in a Boyo polling center was scandalized when, despite returning home with evidence that fewer than 200 people, including ELECAM staff and military personnel, had voted in all three polling centers in his council area, he woke up the next morning to find that the results showed 400 people had voted for his party and over 1,000 had voted for the ruling CPDM - a stark contrast to the actual voting day, which was marked by gunshots and rain.

Given reports of widespread vote tampering, one cannot help but revisit the 1992 election observation report by the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute (NDI), which stated that election rigging in Cameroon was "diabolical in its nature, inescapable in its reach, and overwhelming in its dimensions," ultimately concluding that the Cameroonian electoral system was "designed to fail."

The reason why the national vote counting commission would submit its report to the Constitutional Council, and the Council would judge and dismiss all petitions by October 22, yet still plan to keep the results proclamation pending until Monday, October 27, 2025, is a matter of uncertainty and anxious days ahead for Cameroonians. While it's true that the law allows the Council up to 15 days, until October 27, nothing in the law stipulates that the full 15 days must be exhausted. By granting 15 days, the legislature likely anticipated extreme situations where the examination of petitions could be protracted.

Whatever is cooking, like any pregnancy, however painful, always has an end. Those arguing that the Constitutional Council has the right to keep the nation waiting because the law says so fail to understand that although the law gave President Paul Biya the right to convene electors to the polls at least 20 days and at most 50 days before the expiry of his mandate, he didn't have to wait until the 20th or 50th day to prove his compliance. He did so on the 24th day.

Cameroonians deserve more. Cameroonians. Deserve. More.

Adresse

NWCA Building, Commercial Avenue
Douala
237

Téléphone

+237 77 85 24 76

Site Web

Notifications

Soyez le premier à savoir et laissez-nous vous envoyer un courriel lorsque The Colbert Factor publie des nouvelles et des promotions. Votre adresse e-mail ne sera pas utilisée à d'autres fins, et vous pouvez vous désabonner à tout moment.

Contacter L'entreprise

Envoyer un message à The Colbert Factor:

Raccourcis

Partager

Type