Municipal, Legislative elections: ELECAM can do better.

But why is the focus on youth and women? The two are a dominant voting bloc in the country. 

Ironically, they are disenfranchised by a frustrated mindset and popular trepidation that "whether you vote or not, the results are already known".

Pessimists may not be wrong, especially given that at the last presidential election, the incumbent had just one campaign stop.

He won, which is unprecedented in any democracy for a candidate to win with just one campaign in a competitive field where contestants traditionally crisscross the national territory to explain their manifestos, achievements, vision, and even hold televised debates to prove their mastery of issues at play.

Doubting Thomases, however, need change, which though the last presidential election didn't offer, did at least give some lessons for expected municipal and legislative elections; where massive voter turnout can bring change.

That change, be it in regime or policies, can come through the legislative elections if there is massive registration and voting by women and the youth.

Understandably, youth of 18 and 19 are disenfranchised by a legislation that put voting age at 20, despite calls by international elections observers, civil society actors and credible opposition leaders for its revision. 

Understandably, the ruling CPDM party, with its obsessed majority in parliament, has not bulged.

Can the opposition, drawing from the relatively marginal result of the CPDM candidate at the last presidential election, not sweep enough votes to get a majority in the house so as to vote for laws that bring policy change?

Will an opposition majority not enact a law to declare assets and tackle corruption head-on, instead of the lip service that continues to give overnight millionaire with illicit wealth in the civil service, the bite of impunity?

At the launch of the registration exercise, the Director General of Elections at ELECAM, Dr Erik Essousse, said as part of preparations for the Head of State, Paul Biya, to convene the electorate, which is in line with the Electoral Code, voter registration officially opened nationwide on January 2, 2026, across all ELECAM branches, allowing eligible citizens to register, update their information or correct discrepancies in the voters’ roll.

According to him, the annual revision of the electoral register is a cornerstone in maintaining a healthy and credible voters’ list, acceptable to all stakeholders.

He praised ELECAM staff for working "tirelessly every year to ensure that we can organise credible, peaceful and objective elections; whose results can be accepted by all.”

While ELECAM, working with a staff, majority of whom are temporary workers, beats its chest, it must be honest to accept that the last presidential election was notorious with unprecedented violence.

Some of the triggers of the mayhem were attributed to ELECAM. Return sheets at voting stations are produced by ELECAM but engineered to be falsified since all of the pages are not signed.

Before the October 12, 2025 presidential election, the National President of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC, Prof Maurice Kamto, indicted the electoral management body for allegedly sabotaging voter registration process, by deleting names of MRC supporters.

Accusing ELECAM of an "electoral coup d’état”, Kamto had cited numerous hurdles in the voter registration process such as obstructing voter registrations by intentionally making registration kits unavailable.

In terms of registering Cameroonians abroad, Kamto criticised ELECAM for only initiating the process in April, four months after the regulatory commencement of registration.

ELECAM also had acerbic criticism from opposition parliamentarian, Jean Michel Nintcheu, for not publishing the electoral register law on time as required by law.

It should be noted that at President Biya's behest, in August 2024, lawmakers passed a bill extending legislative and council elections to March this year.

Given the experience from last year's presidential election, there is no doubt that ELECAM had a lot of constraints, but being in position of new equipment now, The Guardian Post believes it can, and it should, perform better than what it did at last year's election, even if other shouting flaws in the electoral law beyond its competence to amend remain in place.

Its staff were accused of altering return sheets or attempting to do so, inflation of voter turnout and stuffing of ballot boxes, which ELECAM should take the blame and prevent so as to avoid another post-election violence, often sparked by rigging in all its ramifications. 

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3673 of Wednesday January 14, 2026