Issa Tchiroma Bakary, who is running against Paul Biya, the current president of Cameroon, said he won the election today. Biya has been in power for 43 years, but official results won’t be available for two weeks.
“Our win is evident. Tchiroma wrote on Facebook, “It must be respected.”
He told the government to “accept the truth of the ballot box” or “plunge the country into chaos,” and he vowed to reveal precise results by region.
“The people have made their choice,” he said.
The administration says that the country’s Constitutional Council must declare the final official results. This is a “red line that must not be crossed.”
The day after the 2018 presidential election, opposition candidate Maurice Kamto said he had won.
After that, he was detained, and tear gas and water cannons were used to break up protests for his followers. Dozens of others were arrested.
Biya, who has been in power for decades, is running for an eighth term as the world’s oldest leader of state.
But former employment minister Tchiroma got people in the Central African nation excited in a way that no one saw coming, and a duel was starting to break out, with supporters on both sides claiming victory.
Pictures of sheets and blackboards counting the votes have been shared on social media, adding to the claims of triumph from both Biya and Tchiroma’s camps.
A lively campaign
Biya had 11 opponents, one of whom was Tchiroma, who left the administration in June after 20 years with Biya to join the opposition.
After the Constitutional Council stopped Kamto from running, he became the main challenger.
Biya has been in charge since 1982 and has won every election in the last 20 years with more than 70% of the vote.
Most of the eight million Cameroonians who could vote in the one-round election on Sunday have only known one leader in their lives.
Before the voting, Cameroonian political scientist Stephane Akoa warned our reporter, “We shouldn’t be naive.” We know that the ruling system has a lot of ways to get what it wants.
He did say, though, that the campaign had been “much livelier” in the last few days than it typically is at that point, thus the vote was “more likely to throw up surprises.”
When Biya became president for the first time in 1982, the Cold War was still going strong and US president Ronald Reagan was in office.
Biya, who has been Cameroon’s second head of state since the country became independent from France in 1960, has ruled with an iron grip, personally hiring and firing important officials and brutally suppressing all political and armed opposition.
He has been able to stay in power despite social unrest, economic inequality, and bloodshed from separatists.
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