Biya, the world’s oldest serving head of state, is likely to extend his 43 years in power in the Central African nation.
Polls have opened in Cameroon in an election in which the world’s oldest sitting head of state could extend his mandate for another seven years.
Sunday’s single-round election is likely to return incumbent President Paul Biya, 92, as president for an eighth term in the Central African nation of 30 million people.
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Biya, in power for 43 years, faces 11 rivals, including former government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary, 79, who has generated unexpected momentum for a campaign calling for an end to the leader’s decades-long rule.
Bakary – a close ally of Biya for 20 years, who agreed to join the opposition from the government in June – is considered the leading contender to unseat the incumbent after another top opponent, Maurice Kamto, was excluded from the race.
But analysts predict Biya’s re-election, given his firm control of the state machinery and a divided opposition.
‘Divide to rule’
“We must not be naive. We know very well that the ruling system has ample means at its disposal to obtain results in its favor,” Cameroonian political scientist Stéphane Akoa told the AFP agency, although he noted that the campaign had been “much more lively” in recent days than previous versions.
“Therefore, this survey is more likely to throw up surprises,” he said.
Francois Conradie, senior political economist at Oxford Economics, told Reuters news agency that while “a surprise is still possible,” “we predict that a divided opposition and the backing of a formidable electoral machine will give the 92-year-old his eighth term.”
“Biya has remained in power for almost 43 years by skillfully dividing his adversaries and, although we believe he is not fully aware of what is happening, it appears that the machine he built will divide to rule for the last time,” Conradie said.
Biya, who has won every election in the past 20 years by more than 70 percent of the vote, ran a characteristically low-key campaign, appearing in public only on Tuesday for the first time since May, AFP reported.
Their only rally in Maroua, the regional capital of the strategic Far North region, drew a crowd of only a few hundred people, far smaller than a rally in the same town in Bakary this week, which drew thousands, AFP said.
‘We want a change’
Cameroon is the most diversified economy in Central Africa and a major producer of oil and cocoa.
But voters in a country where about four in 10 people live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank, complain about the high cost of living, high unemployment and a lack of clean water, health care and quality education.
“For 43 years, Cameroonians have been suffering. There is no work,” Hassane Djbril, a driver in the capital Yaoundé, told Reuters.
He said he planned to vote for Bakary. “We want change because the current government is dictatorial.”
Herves Mitterrand, a Douala mechanic, told Reuters he wanted to see changes.
“For me, things have only gotten worse,” he said. “We want to see that change, we want it to really happen. We don’t want to hear words anymore.”
The vote comes in the shadow of a conflict between separatist forces and the government that has affected the English-speaking northwest and southwest regions since 2016.
More than eight million people have registered to vote. The Constitutional Council has until October 26 to announce the final results.
