In Cameroon, police used tear gas to break up a crowd of hundreds of people who were protesting for the opposition candidate Issa Tchiroma . He says he won the recent presidential elections and told his supporters to march peacefully.
The Constitutional Council is set to reveal the results of the October 12 vote today, and AFP says that authorities have banned gatherings until then.
Most experts think that Paul Biya, who is 92 years old, will win an eighth term. Critics argue that the system has become more skewed over the 43 years he has been in control.
Tchiroma says he got 54.8% of the votes. In Garoua, his stronghold in the north, people waved Cameroonian flags and held up signs that said “Tchiroma 2025” and sang “Goodbye Paul Biya, Tchiroma is coming.”
Police used tear gas to break up the crowd after almost two hours.
For the past few days, scores of people have been gathering near Tchiroma’s house. In a video released yesterday, he said that military troops had tried to take him away.
Our reporters in the capital Yaounde claimed that the call to demonstrate didn’t seem to have been obeyed, even though there were a lot of police there.
In Douala, a city on the southwestern coast, a few dozen people gathered near the airport, breaking the ban on protests that the department’s prefect had put in place.
On Friday, police arrested Djeukam Tchameni, president of the Movement for Democracy and Interdependence in Cameroon (MDI), and Anicet Ekane, president of the African Movement for the New Independence of Cameroon (Manidem), at their homes in Douala. This was according to a group of parties that had chosen Tchiroma as the consensus opposition candidate.
Paul Atanga Nji, the Minister of Territorial Administration, claimed on Saturday that the protests “create the conditions for a security crisis” and help “the implementation of an insurrectionist project.”
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