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Cameroon Politics 101: Election Boycott Advocacy as an Effective

"Voting Abstinence" is voter apathy, which is a legitimate exercise of liberty. At the end of the day, the question is: to what end? The Anglophone paradise paraders say the outcome it is to tell the world that they are separate.

Tool for Political Protest: (Being a Response to Evelyn Kinang Joe)

In her very interesting and controversial article1 in response to calls by the SCNC forAnglophone Cameroonians to boycott the forthcoming Presidential elections inCameroon, Evelyn Kinang Joe argues that:There is no ancient or modern world where a quorum is needed for popular anddirect election. Results are not invalidated because a segment of the people -- thedisaffected, separatists, or otherwise -- choose not to participate as a pol"Voting Abstinence" is voter apathy, which is a legitimate exercise of liberty. At the end of the day, the question is: to what end? The Anglophone paradise paraders say the outcome it is to tell the world that they are separate.iticalstatement. Obviously, the "Anglophone No Vote Posters" cannot claim to reflectthe unanimous consent, or the majority intent, of English speakers from South andNorth West provinces.

On this premise she concludes that:"Voting Abstinence" is voter apathy, which is a legitimate exercise of liberty. Atthe end of the day, the question is: to what end? The Anglophone paradiseparaders say the outcome it is to tell the world that they are separate. Howlaughable is this concrete telltale?

I must admit that the article is based on sound GENERAL political theory but itcompletely misses the point regarding the constant calls for electoral boycotts inCameroon, be it from Anglophone Nationalists or from opposition parties. Evelyn Joe’sanalysis holds in a political system where elections are generally free and fair, and wherethe issue of legitimacy is generally a foregone conclusion. This is not the case inCameroon where - boycott or no boycott - election results are generally pre-ordained,with the ruling party invariably the victor thanks to the doctoring of electoral returns andthe manipulation of voter registration lists. In such a system boycotting electionsbecomes a powerful political tool in the hands of the marginalized; in fact it is actually aform of voting - what we may term the protest non-vote.

Consequently, unlike in Western democracies, low voter turn-out in Cameroon is rarely,if ever, attributed (even by the Government) to voter apathy. In fact the protest “nonvote”, often promoted by some of the most politically engaged segments of thepopulation, has become an integral part of the Cameroon electoral system to the extentthat all political actors acknowledge that it is another form of gauging the political

climate of the country, and a source of political legitimacy.Thus, since 1992, it has not been enough, for example, that one is elected into Parliamenton a 98% vote. A high voter turn-out is necessary for purposes of legitimacy – which iswhy voter registration is such a source of contention in Cameroon years before elections;why voter participation figures are almost always the source of so much acrimony afterthe elections; and why even with pre-ordained outcomes, the Government still doeseverything in its power to have a high voter turnout.

The classic case of the effects of an electoral boycott remains the 1992 legislativeelections in Cameroon. Prior to these elections, there were widespread calls for boycottfrom all the major parties and pressure groups in Anglophone Cameroon – the SDF, theLiberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the National Democratic Party (NDP), and the profederalist CAM (Cameroon Anglophone Movement). These calls for boycott weresupposed to show the level of Anglophone disenchantment with the bilingual CameroonRepublic. Low voter turn-out in Anglophone Cameroon would be a slap in the face of theGovernment and a repudiation of the unification experiment while high voter turn-out, onthe other hand, would indicate a rejection of Anglophone federalist movements like CAM(back then the secessionists were a fringe minority).

These elections, therefore, “became for the Anglophone electorate a referendum on thestatus quo or, better still, the Second Plebiscite on the question of reunification.”Both the Government and the pro-boycott groups knew what was at stake and thestruggle over the boycott became as prominent as the struggle for actual votes. Hence,when the majority of voters in the region heeded to the call for a boycott, this wasconsidered as “nothing but a total repudiation of the way politics has been conducted inCameroon since 1972”.

A breakdown of the results in the region done by Prof. Ndiva Kofele Kale gives credenceto this observation:In sharp and dramatic contrast to the respectable national average, voter turnout inAnglophone Cameroon was not only low but considerably below what isacceptable in the majority of working democracies. Of approximately 653, 308registered voters in the English-speaking region only 182, 463 or roughly 28%went to the polls to cast their ballot. That is, for every 3 registered Anglophonevoters who went to the polls in March, 7 stayed home. To give these figuresanother spin: the 35 Anglophones who now sit in parliament were elected by lessthan 30%, or rejected by well over 70% of the Anglophone electorate. Thisrejection rate is sufficiently high that it mocks any claims put forth by theseparliamentarians that they enjoy the mandate of the people of this region....One of the most glaring case to support Prof. Kale’s argument was the case of CPDMPM, Achidi Achu, who was voted into Parliament by 8,994 of the 109,186 registeredvoters in his constituency, that is, by a mere 0.82 per cent of voters…

Now, did the successful boycott campaign hurt the political fortunes of AnglophoneCameroon the same way that an all-black electoral boycott in America would hurt theBlack caucus to use Evelyn Joe’s example? Of course not. The contrary happenedinstead: The Government read the signs correctly and immediately realized that the lowvoter turn-out was not a sign of voter apathy but a sign of intense political activismwithin the Anglophone camp and a confirmation of the mounting influence of AntiGovernment forces, particularly the pro-federalist groups like CAM.It therefore became obvious to the Biya regime that even more than the Foulbe of theGrand Nord, the Anglos had to be placated and “brought firmly into the fold” by allmeans. What followed was a series of measures to placate the Anglophones, the mostprominent being the dismantling of the North-South power axis and the appointment ofan “alibi Anglophone” (to quote the radical Douala Tabloids) named Achidi Achu asPrime Minister, and the beginning of timid attempts at development and other projects inAnglophone Cameroon.

The Lessons LearnedTo put it differently, the message that all political forces in Cameroon got from the 1992legislative elections (and rightly so) with regards to the elections in AnglophoneCameroon was not so much that the CPDM was unexpectedly knocked out cold in theSouth West province by the UNDP, but that the majority of Anglophones had in fact casta sanction-vote by not going to the polls. The Government learned its lesson well, andthis explains why the doctoring of electoral rolls has become an integral part of itsrigging machinery since then.

ConclusionSo are calls for electoral boycotts within the Cameroonian political scene “a case of“unbridled naiveté and sociopolitical infancy” as Evelyn Joe argues? I don’t think so.Even though the effects of electoral boycotts may not be as severe as in the 1990s, theynonetheless remain (in an electoral system where voter participation has little effect onthe pre-ordained electoral outcomes) a potent political tool for politically active butmarginalized segments of the population wishing to express their disenchantment with,and repudiation of, the powers that be.