ELECAM LEADERS ARE NOT CREDIBLE TO GUARANTEE TRANSPARENT, FAIR AND DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS IN CAMEROON By Hon. J.M. Nintcheu

COMMUNIQUE PAC N° APC/CN/2024/01_003

After the scandal of massive fraud and the results of 100.48% of votes considered as validly cast during the presidential election of 07 October 20218, the leaders of ELECAM have just definitively lost all credibility to guarantee transparent, fair and democratic elections in our country, with the publication, on 10 January 2024, of the revised list of voters registered on its file in 2023.

When it was set up in 2012, the appointment of former pundits who had never been freed from the single party regime to head it did not augur well.

However, many Cameroonians and international observers were betting that the Rdpc militants now called upon to act as referees in electoral competitions could live up to the hopes pinned on them by the nation as a whole.
Unfortunately, in practice and on a daily basis, ELECAM's successive directors have never been able to shake off their allegiance to the party in power. In fact, in ten years of operation, ELECAM has turned out to be a vulgar electoral fraud machine for the benefit of the CPDM.
ELECAM's directors have systematically taken liberties with the legal requirements aimed at making elections transparent, fair, free and fair in Cameroon. This includes the requirement to publish electoral rolls at the end of each year or before elections.
Although ELECAM is required by law to publish the national list of registered voters in alphabetical order by 30 December each year, the directors of the electoral body, aware that compliance with this legal obligation could make it possible to detect false registrations, multiple registrations, registrations of deceased persons, etc., are breaking the law and taking responsibility for it.
At each election, in violation of the law, voters search all day long for the lists of registered voters and their polling stations. Polling stations are set up in the homes of CPDM militants and in army barracks, despite the provisions of the Electoral Code and ELECAM's promises; the presidents of the polling stations are systematically chosen from among CPDM militants.
With regard to the lies about the exact number of people registered on the electoral roll, ELECAM's directors have once again been caught red-handed in the act of forgery and preparation for electoral fraud with the publication on 10 January 2024 of the list of registered voters by region for the year 2023.
This list claims that by the end of 2023, only 7,361,875 Cameroonians would be registered!
In 2011, there were already 7,521,651 registered voters (source: Supreme Court acting as Constitutional Council);
In 2018, at the end of the 7 October presidential election marked by savage fraud, the Constitutional Council established the number of registered voters at 6,667,754.
If we compare the alleged number of registered voters in 2023 with that of 2018, it becomes clear that in five years, and despite the campaigns to mobilise citizens to register to vote conducted by various players including political parties that any objective observer can testify to having seen across the country and in the diaspora, and the colossal budgets mobilised by the State, ELECAM would have registered only 694,121 new voters. That's 138,821 registered voters per year, or 17,352 per month, as the registration campaign lasts eight months. When this figure is multiplied by the country's 360 communes, it gives a ratio of 48 registered voters per month per commune. If we take into account that voter registration takes place from Monday to Saturday, i.e. over 6 days in a week, we have 8 registrations per day and per municipality!
And if we remember that Cameroon has 37 embassies where ELECAM also carries out registrations, this ratio falls even further.

Given these figures, which belie the reality of the daily mobilisation of Cameroonians to register to vote that everyone has been able to observe since the dual legislative and municipal elections of 2013, it is clear and indisputable that ELECAM officials are distorting the electoral game to the advantage of the CPDM as soon as new registrants are recorded. ELECAM records registrations but does not count them all. Its objective is to ensure that the number of Cameroonians authorised to vote coincides more or less with the CPDM's electoral base.

Faced with these serious and dangerous facts for peace and democracy in our country, and considering the post-electoral claims that followed the 2018 electoral Hold UP, the political, social and security situation particularly incandescent in the current context, the POLITICAL ALLIANCE FOR CHANGE (APC) notes that the leaders of ELECAM have turned into obstacles to the holding of free, transparent, fair and democratic elections in Cameroon. They are dangerous for peace in our country. If strong political measures are not taken as a matter of urgency before the next elections, there is a great risk that this body, initially designed to organise peaceful democratic elections, will become the detonator of electoral chaos.
The APC fully supports the Platform of political parties and civil society organisations which, more than a year ago, submitted to the government a proposal for a consensual and participatory amendment of the Electoral Code.
The leaders of ELECAM must get their act together to ensure that our country enjoys a peaceful aftermath of the elections in the crucial year of 2025. The APC calls on Cameroonians to continue to register en masse on the electoral roll, for a change of government through the ballot box in Cameroon.

Signed in Douala on 15 January 2024
For the APC,
The National Coordinator a.i.,
Honourable Jean Michel NINTCHEU
National President of the Forces for Change of Cameroon (FCC)