The decision by Cameroon’s electoral board to exclude Maurice Kamto, a key opposition leader and challenger to incumbent President Paul Biya, from the country’s upcoming presidential elections raises concerns about the credibility of the electoral process, Human Rights Watch said today.
On July 26, 2025, Cameroon’s Election Commission (ELECAM) approved 13 out of 83 prospective candidates, including the 92-year-old Biya, who has been running the country since 1982. Elections are scheduled for October 12. Excluded candidates had 72 hours to appeal the decision to the constitutional council.
“The election commission has raised doubt on an election before the votes are even cast,” said Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Excluding the most popular opponent from the electoral process will leave a shadow over whatever results are eventually announced.”
The decision to bar Kamto from the presidential race reflects the government’s long-standing intolerance for any opposition and dissent and comes amid an increased crackdown on opponents, activists, and lawyers since mid-2014, ahead of elections later this year.
The commission justified its decision to exclude Kamto, saying it was because the African Movement for New Independence and Democracy (Mouvement africain pour la nouvelle indépendance et la démocratie, MANIDEM), the party that sponsored him, was also sponsoring another candidate, Dieudonné Yebga.
However, Kamto’s lawyers and Anicet Ekane, the party’s president, said MANIDEM was not sponsoring Yebga and that the decision is arbitrary and politically motivated. The party sought to hold a news conference at its headquarters in Douala, Cameroon’s largest city, but security forces shut it down.
Kamto, who used to be the leader of the opposition party Cameroon Renaissance Movement (Mouvement pour la renaissance du Cameroun, MRC) and had already challenged Biya in the 2018 elections, sought to run as MANIDEM’s candidate for this year’s election because the Cameroonian electoral code bars parties with no elected officials from sponsoring a candidate.
Kamto’s lawyers have appealed the election commission’s decision and filed a petition with the Constitutional Council on July 28. Yebga also announced that he will appeal to the Constitutional Council.
“ELECAM’s decision has no legal basis and only aims at eliminating a key challenger from the elections, supporting the ruling party’s long-term strategy of power confiscation,” Menkem Sother, a member of Kamto’s legal team, told Human Rights Watch.
Biya is serving out his seventh term. He was last reelected in 2018, after which Kamto challenged the official results and declared himself winner of the election.
Biya’s 2018 election sparked a wave of political repression. After the vote, opposition-led protests erupted across the country, and the government responded with a heavy crackdown deploying the police, army, and gendarmes who used excessive force against protesters. In January 2019, Kamto and over 200 of his supporters were arrested and detained. Kamto was charged with insurrection, hostility against the homeland, and criminal association, among other charges. He was freed on October 5, 2019, and the charges were dropped, though the crackdown on the opposition continued.
In early September 2020, the authorities banned demonstrations across Cameroon after Kamto’s MRC encouraged people to protest the government’s decision to call regional elections for that December. Opposition parties had expressed concerns that the elections could not be conducted freely and fairly without reforming the electoral code and addressing the lack of security in the country’s minority Anglophone regions, where separatist groups and security forces have repeatedly clashed.
On September 22, 2020, Cameroonian security forces fired tear gas and water cannons and arrested over 550 people, mainly MRC members and supporters, to disperse peaceful protests across the country. Many of those arrested were beaten and mistreated. While the majority of them were eventually released, others including Olivier Bibou Nissack and Alain Fogue Tedom, two MRC leaders, remain behind bars after being sentenced to seven years in prison.
In December 2023, Kamto announced the creation of the Political Alliance for Change, an opposition coalition led by Jean-Michel Nintcheu, a member of Cameroon’s parliament. In March 2024, the territorial administration minister banned the coalition, saying it was “illegal,” and “clandestine.”
Cameroon is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and as such is required to ensure that every citizen, without discrimination on the basis of political opinion, has the opportunity to take part and vote in genuinely free elections. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has found that “freedom of expression, assembly and association are essential conditions for the effective exercise of the right to vote and must be fully protected.”
“The Election Commission’s decision de facto reduces the upcoming vote to a mere formality, buries what remains of Cameroon’s democracy, and triggers fears of renewed violence,” Allegrozzi said. “The commission should reverse its decision and allow Cameroonians to decide their own future.”
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
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