BIAFRA NEWS: Cameroonian President Paul Biya signed a decree authorizing the country

 

On Sept. 7, Cameroonian President Paul Biya signed a decree authorizing the country’s first election for members of the Regional Councils in each of the country’s 10 regions.

In describing the preparations for the vote, Essousse Erik, the director-general of Elecam, the government-controlled electoral commission, said: “The elections would be a historic moment and a turning point in our democracy.” In fact, the announcement that the government plans to hold elections for the Regional Councils comes over two decades after it first declared its intent to do so in 1996 as part of a broader decentralization plan that would allow for significant autonomy in how Cameroon’s diverse population would be governed. Unfortunately, it is too little, too late.

The announcement of the elections and the implementation measures comes as Cameroon is embroiled by a conflict in which separatist fighters in the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions seek to create an independent state called Ambazonia. This conflict stems from the systematic marginalization of Anglophones, who comprise nearly 20 percent of the country’s population, but was sparked by the repression of demonstrations of teachers and lawyers in the fall of 2016 who demanded linguistic autonomy within their respective institutions.

Now, four years after these demonstrations and in the midst of a war of secession that has killed thousands of people and displaced hundreds of thousands, Biya’s government—which has consistently been ranked as one of the most corrupt and authoritarian in Africa—is seeking to enact decentralization measures. While enacting such reforms at the outset of the crisis may have addressed some of the demands of the demonstrators, doing so now is simply another effort of the Cameroonian government to present the image that it is responding to the crisis and grievances of the Anglophone population without engaging in any meaningful dialogue or negotiations with civil society or separatist leaders.