As Cameroon prepares for its presidential election on October 12th, political scientist and analyst, Dr Munjah Vitalis has issued a stark warning that the poll is poised to reinforce an “electoral autocracy” rather than deliver genuine democratic change.
In a damning assessment, Dr Munjah Vitalis argues that an expected victory for the incumbent, President Paul Biya’s Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), will be less a reflection of popular will and more a product of the ruling party’s entrenched advantages and a profoundly weak opposition.“
Cameroon’s upcoming presidential elections are expected to yield another victory for the ruling CPDM, not necessarily due to genuine popular support but because of the structural weaknesses of the opposition and the entrenched advantages of incumbency,” Dr Vitalis stated.
Despite the adoption of multiparty politics over three decades ago, he contends that the political landscape is a hollow shell of true competition. “Despite the introduction of multiparty politics through the 1990 Liberty Laws, opposition parties remain fragmented, under-resourced, and regionally confined.” He paints a picture of an opposition unable to mount an effective national challenge, explaining they are “lacking national organizational capacity, ideological coherence and programmatic clarity,” and thus fail to present a viable alternative. This disorganisation, he notes, is starkly visible in their “inability to deploy representatives across thousands of polling stations (3,653 Nationally and 108 in the diaspora) and build durable coalitions.”This situation, according to Dr Vitalis, reflects what political theorist Giovanni Sartori described as “a façade of multipartyism without meaningful competition.”
Meanwhile, he argues, the ruling CPDM consolidates its power by leveraging the state itself. “The CPDM leverages state resources, media control, and security apparatuses to maintain dominance, thereby reinforcing what Robert Dahl warned as a hollow form of democracy lacking real pluralism and contestation.”
Dr Vitalis also questions the authenticity of public political engagement, suggesting that the fervour seen at rallies is often superficial. “Public rallies, often interpreted as signs of popular enthusiasm, are largely performative and driven by economic necessity rather than ideological commitment,” he said, noting that many attendees are not even registered to vote. This, he suggests, aligns with political theorist Chantal Mouffe’s “critique of depoliticized democracies where genuine ideological struggle is absent.”
The overall diagnosis for Cameroon’s political system is grim. Dr Vitalis concludes that the country’s model fits Fareed Zakaria’s concept of an “illiberal democracy,” where elections are held but lack the essential “institutional safeguards of liberal governance, such as fair competition and political freedoms.”
His final warning is a sobering one for the nation’s democratic future. “As long as opposition parties remain disorganised and the ruling party monopolises state resources, Cameroon’s elections will continue to function more as instruments of authoritarian resilience than democratic renewal.”
Without significant reforms, he fears the nation “risks perpetuating an electoral autocracy under the guise of democratic legitimacy,” an outcome that falls far “short of the democratic standards envisioned by theorists like John Rawls and Dahl.”
