Cameroon plans February polls under shadow of violence

YAOUNDE, Cameroon: Cameroon is poised to hold parliamentary and municipal elections in February but a bloody separatist conflict and political tensions are set to cloud the vote, experts say.

Anglophone separatists are fighting government troops in western Cameroon while the north of the country has come under attack from Boko Haram militants.

"These elections will not have optimum credibility," Cameroonian academic Richard Makon told AFP, contending that in the present climate, "peaceful" polls were impossible.

"The security challenges in the Northwest and Southwest Regions are enormous," he said, referring to a conflict between English-speaking separatists and security forces that have claimed more than 3,000 lives in two years. The two regions with an anglophone colonial past are home to around 16 percent of the population of 25.8 million in the mainly francophone country. In a remote region called the Far North, about a tenth of the population lives in deep poverty and at the mercy of Boko Haram.

Southern Cameroon long avoided such troubles, until men from the west recently launched ethnic attacks, wounding several people and setting businesses ablaze. Despite the unrest, in a surprise move veteran President Paul Biya recently announced elections on February 9. Members of parliament and town councils were last elected in 2013. Their five-year mandates ran out in 2018, but Biya has extended them twice.

The 86-year-old Biya has ruled the country for 37 years. He was returned to office in an election last year, which saw a significant drop in votes in the English-speaking regions.

The 2018 presidential election triggered a major political crisis. The runner-up, Maurice Kamto, immediately challenged the result and his Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) held protests. Arrested at one of the demonstrations, Kamto was jailed in January but released in October following foreign pressure.

The 65-year-old opposition leader has since been denied permission to organise rallies. The MRC has for months insisted that holding elections should depend on a definitive return to peace in the anglophone regions.