Violence mars presidential elections
Yaoundé – Cameroonians voted in crunch presidential polls yesterday, with octogenarian leader Paul Biya seeking a seventh term against a backdrop of unprecedented violence.
The vote follows a last-minute opposition unity bid to dislodge the 85-year-old incumbent, one of Africa’s longest-serving rulers.
Two leading opponents have formed the first electoral union since 1992, but talks between the array of other opposition parties to create a “super-coalition” to deny Biya another seven years were apparently fruitless.
In the Bastos public school in the capital Yaounde, where Biya will cast his vote, voting was brisk.
Voters in the queue were surrounded by a heavy security presence including members of the presidential guard, deployed ahead of Biya’s arrival.
Cameroon’s 6.5 million eligible voters are casting their ballots as violence rages in the anglophone southwest and northwest, which have been rocked by a separatist insurgency launched a year ago against the mainly francophone state.
The violence has claimed the lives of at least 420 civilians, 175 members of the security forces and an unknown number of separatists, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) thinktank.
After voting got underway on Sunday, security forces shot dead three suspected separatists who had allegedly been firing at passersby from a motorcycle in Bamenda, the main city in the northwest region, a local official said.
And in Buea, capital of the southwest, three separatists of the so-called Ambazonia Republic were gunned down on Friday while a priest was executed by soldiers on Thursday, according to witnesses.
The far north is also mired in insecurity, as Nigeria-based Boko Haram fighters mount attacks despite efforts by the US to equip and train Cameroon’s military to battle the jihadists.
In a rare coordinated political manoeuvre, a key opposition frontrunner, Maurice Kamto, agreed late Friday to a unity deal between his Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) and the People’s Development Front (FDP), meaning he will stand for both parties. –