Political alternation in Cameroon, between boycotting elections and a closed electoral system

By Ngo Tong Chantal Marie

The Cameroonian political scene opened in the early 1990s with the adoption of a law which established the legislative framework for political parties ( 1 ). The law of 19 December 1990 establishing the regime of political parties puts an end to the reign of the single party and brings clandestine parties out of the shadows. Thanks to this law, several political parties are legalized, including: the Social Democratic Front (SDF), the Cameroon Democratic Union (UDC), the Union of Populations of Cameroon (UPC), the National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP), the Movement for the Defense of the Republic (MDR). These political parties are positioning themselves to confront the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) in power since its creation in 1985 and until then the only party. Committed to the democratization process, Cameroon plans to organize legislative and presidential elections for the year 1992. The legislative elections are organized on March 1, 1992, and the presidential election takes place on October 11, 1992 in order to elect the President of the Republic of Cameroon. The UDC and the SDF will boycott the legislative elections but will curiously run for the presidential election. In 1997, the UDC, like the SDF, participated in the legislative elections, but boycotted the presidential election. In 2019, after participating in the 2018 presidential election, the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (MRC) decided to boycott the municipal and legislative elections. And in its current speech, this party calls for change, determined to compete for the presidential election of 2025. This inconsistency of the political parties in opposition to alternation is quite disconcerting. Whereas year after year, all those parties position themselves with a view to a possible future alternation. The issue of electoral deadlines whatever they may be (legislative, municipal, and presidential) is built around political alternation. But the strategies implemented, rather than leading to alternation, on the contrary strengthen the positions of the power in place and reduce the probabilities of democratic alternation. It seems that these opposition parties do not understand what political alternation is and how to build a political strategy to achieve a democratic alternation in the institutions of power that are the Presidency and Parliament. Based on this observation, how can we understand political alternation in a political system like that of Cameroon? And once political actors have understood the games and issues around political alternation, what strategies can they implement to achieve the objective of a democratic alternation?

The notion of political alternation

Specialists in electoral and institutional analysis use the notion of alternation to designate a change in government majority ( 2 ). In this perspective, “ political alternation occurs when parties belonging to different political currents succeed one another in power ” ( 3 ). It can occur either through the presidential election or through the legislative elections. Ousmane Diallo ( 4 ) maintains that political alternation can only be effective in Africa under two conditions: a real political will of the outgoing President to organize elections considered credible by all, including the opposition. He takes President Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria as an example. The second condition would be a single candidacy from all political opponents who are seriously seeking alternation in power. The example cited here is the candidacy of Macky Sall, the sole candidate of the opposition parties which allowed the latter to succeed Abdoulaye Wade as head of the Senegalese state. The case of Gambia in 2016 can also be cited ( 5 ). Upon observation, these two conditions have never been effective in Cameroon. Hence the difficulty of this State in experiencing political alternation.

Political alternation is a democratic requirement to the extent that it is admitted that “political alternation […] promotes quality democracy” ( 6 ). In this sense, it is important that the alternation be constitutionally organized. Of course, it is not an end in itself, but it appears to be “constitutionally necessary, insofar as it establishes the permanent presence of an institutionalized alternative to political violence” ( 7 ). In Central Africa, alternation is seen mainly, if not exclusively, as “alternation in the occupation of the presidential office” ( 8 ). The change at the head of state is posed in these states as “a major and not central condition for the democratization of the continent” ( 9 ). It is therefore easy to understand in this logic why political parties can find it “strategic” to boycott legislative elections but to invest in going in for presidential election. When political parties do not boycott legislative elections (1992, 2020), they boycott the presidential election (1997). These various boycotts have always served the interests of the party in power and undermined any possibility of an alternation.

The boycott of elections and its negative impact on political change

The boycott of elections, which is similar to “the politics of empty chair” ( 10 ), is a strategy implemented by opposition parties to block, sabotage or prevent the smooth running of elections. The obvious aim is to discredit the electoral process. The basis of this strategy is the denunciation of the non-transparent rules of the political game and an unreliable and unfair electoral process. What raises questions and highlights the inconsistency of those involved in the boycott is the fact that in the same electoral year, they boycott one election and participate in another even though the denunciations underlying their boycott were not taken into account. For example, in 1992, the SDF and the UDC boycotted the legislative elections in March under the pretext that the system for organizing elections was unreliable and did not guarantee transparency. But a few months later, in October of the same year, when no substantial improvement had been made to their demands, they decided to participate in the presidential election. The same scenario occurred on the contrary in 1997. The two parties participated in the legislative elections and recorded very poor performances against a CPDM which had time between 1992 and 1997 to strengthen its ramparts and implement a strategy of doubly defensive and offensive conquest of power. After their participation in the legislative elections, they decided to boycott the October presidential election and did not participate, thus facilitating the re-election of outgoing President Paul Biya with a better score than that of 1992.

Since 2000, with the creation of the National Elections Observatory (ONEL) ( 11 ) and its subsequent modifications until the creation of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM) ( 12 ), the demands of the opposition parties have always been fixed on the conditions of organization and conduct of elections. The improvements made are not satisfactory. The electoral code ( 13 ) adopted in 2012 is contested. But history repeats itself in 2018-2019. Despite the protests and denunciations of the inadequacies of the Electoral Code, the opposition parties decided to go to the presidential election of 2018. And during the legislative and municipal elections of 2019, the opposition party came ^2nd in the presidential election decides to boycott the legislative and municipal elections on the basis of an electoral code unfavorable to transparency and alternation. And even though this electoral code has not undergone any amendment or modification, this party is repositioning itself to go to the 2025 presidential election.

The lessons of past boycotts have clearly not been learned. This strategy is ineffective and discredits not the process, but the opposition parties. It appears that if, as Ousmane Diallo has pointed out, political alternation is conditioned by the existence of a real political will of the party in power to organize credible elections for all, it is just as conditioned by the existence of a real political will of the opposition parties to work in synergy for political alternation.

Conclusions and recommendations

The opposition parties have fixated on the change at the head of the presidential office as the only possible path of alternation in the political system which nevertheless presents strong parliamentary overtones on the textual level. The system of Cameroonian democracy offers the opportunity for parliamentary alternation with a change of majority in Parliament. This alternation could have taken place in 1992 if the SDF and the UDC had not boycotted the legislative elections. A takeover of parliament by opposition parties would clearly have changed the course of history. But the boycott of the SDF and the UDC kept Cameroon for many years in the CPDM system. It is appropriate for current political actors to note that alternation is not simply a change of man, but of system and ideology; a change in political strategies and approaches to power. It can be done by the presidential election or by the legislative elections. The results of the 1992 legislative elections revealed the importance of political alternation through legislative elections. That the actors of political alternation and those who aspire to it no longer limit themselves to the sole path of alternation through the presidential election, but that they explore and exploit the path of alternation through legislative elections by coalitions across the entire territory to have a majority in Parliament. The coalition is not only for a single candidacy in the presidential election, it can also be made for single candidacies of deputies in electoral districts during the legislative elections.