Election Rigging in Cameroon: A State of the Devil's Art

Election fraud in Cameroon is enhanced, advanced, state of the art and even refined with every election. In fact government systems that do not know how to heist an election should com to Cameroon and meet ace Professor Emeritus and Doctor the Honourable Mr. Paul Biya, two times winner of Planet Earth’s Most Corrupt Country Award, who has invented and used every election-rigging gimmick known to man.
Mr. Biya’s has also invented and used every election rigging system unknown to man.
Herewith a near exhaustive list of vote-heisting procedures perfected by Mr. Biya always before, during and after every election. By Ntemfac Aloysius Nchwete Nkong Ofege

Hidden Population Figures
The table below, published by the government of Cameroon in 2002, is said to be of Cameroon’s current population. In fact, despite the billions pumped into a population census pompously announced by the government and funded by the United Nations Development Programme, the figures in this chart are only a government extrapolation from the 1987 comprehensive Census. Government swiped the funds from the UNDP and then produced its own figures. Proof of that fact is in another fact. Cameroonians know that nobody came over to count them and find out some other relevant data common to all head count.
Cameroon’s Population Census 2002
Province URBAN RURAL
Population Males Females Males Females
ADAMAWA 818,465 142,273 149,998 257,412 265,782
CENTRE 2,729,843 713,568 736,774 629,514 649,987
EAST 854,849 124,247 128,287 296,339 305,976
FAR NORTH 3,069,886 298,873 308,573 1,121,530 1,250,910
LITTORAL 2,233,321 888,016 916,894 210,778 217,633
NORTH WEST 2,045,148 220,470 227,640 785,742 811,296
WEST 2,214,470 350,764 362,170 738,756 762,780
SOUTH 617,831 84,592 87,342 219,381 226,516
SOUTH WEST 1,375,442 210,570 217,418 470,927 486,241
NORTH 1,375,442 190,750 196,958 485,963 501,767
TOTAL 17,344,413 3,227,125 3,332,054 5,216,342 5,478,888
According to the government, Cameroon today has a population of 17,344,413 (Seventeen million, three hundred and forty-four thousands, four hundred and thirteen. Now ahead of the upcoming elections Cameroon’s Minister of State in Charge of Territorial Administration and Decentralization, Mr. Marafa Hamidou Yaya sonorously announced that there were 4.529.000 Cameroonians registered to vote for the October 11th presidentials. If the above figures are correct and they are not (there are actually less than 3.000.000 voters), at least 12.000.000 (twelve million!) Cameroonians will not vote. Voter apathy created by years and years of election rigging and disenfranchising voters account for the fact that here again is another election without an electorate.
The issue becomes even more frightsome when it is considered that police sources say that over 10.000.000 Cameroonians have their National Identity Card hence they are qualified to vote and their names are present on the COMPUTERISED NATIONAL IDENTITY CARD LIST. Were we dealing with anything but a fraudulent, corrupt, kleptocratic regime the National ID Card register could have been easily transformed into the National Voters Register. Almost 2/3 of potential voters in Cameroon have been disenfranchised for one reason or another. Election rigging in Cameroon begins with inventing phony national, provincial and poll by poll voter’s registers.
What so-called Independent Observers and monitors ought to know about elections in Cameroon is that the rigging goes on before, during and after the polls. Hence monitors who arrive one week before every election are already very late. In Cameroon the administration (Senior Divisional Officers, Divisional Officers and District Officers) manufacture elections results two years before the after vote. The figures are then preserved in the drawers ready to come out like magic declaring the incumbent winner by moon slide!

Rigging before Elections
1. Creation of Fake Voters Registers. After every election, Mr. Biya, by decree, arranges to change the voters register. Opposition names like Ngwa, Niba, Tientche, etc who, by some error of the administration, still managed to vote against the regime, are deleted.
2. Clandestine registrations: The administration allows CPDM hands (ministers, directors, businessmen, chiefs, etc) to compile their own registers in clandestine locations which are later validated as the official registers. Tyrants like the Fon of Balikumbat Doh Gah runs at least four polling stations in his palace.
3. Non respect of legal dateline for registration: Cameroon law states that voters registration obtains from January to June. The administration and its hands arrange to violate the date line. Regime supporters are even registered on the day of the election.
4. Refusal to announce voter registration dates: It is standard practice in known opposition areas that the SDOs and DOs have special days (usually once a week) to conduct registration. Such dates are given the least publicity possible. Even when the administration announces the date for the registration these vicious officials start registration late and they leave early.
5. Stringent registration procedures: In other countries the driving license, the social security card, the birth certificate, etc. are valid documents for voter registration. In Cameroon the National Identity Card is the only valid document. Government has made it quasi impossible for Cameroonians especially those in known opposition areas to obtain ID cards. To get an ID card demands, the provision of a Certificate of Nationality, a 500FCFA fiscal stamp, passport photos, and bribe money of at least 1000FCFA to the police superintendent who signs on the card. Consequently, an ID card costs anything between 2,500FCFA (in backwood Misaje) to 7,000 (in Douala). The average citizen cannot afford this amount. Regime hands (Chantal Biya) even arrange to personally? pay for ID cards for CPDM citizens from state coffers, naturally!
6. Residence permits: For Cameroonians to be registered and to vote in certain localities (the South West, the Centre and South provinces) they must poduce a Residence permit in addition to their National Identity Cards;
7. Ghost voters registers: The regime invents bogus voters registers and fake polling centres. The names of non-existent or dead people are inserted into these fake registers and the corresponding ballot papers dutifully inserted into these boxes. Then the administration tallies the phony scores and life goes on.
8. Registration of foreigners. The administration quietly registers Chadians, Gabonese and Equatorial Guineans in the Far North and South provinces respectively.
9. Refusal to deliver voting cards immediately: Cameroon law states that voters can only touch their cards 15 days before elections. The administration arranges to forward the voting cards of known opposition hands to the wrong polling stations. In Douala-Bonaberi, for example, during the 2002 Municipal-Parliamentary election, the cards of Anglophone-Bamileke residents were forwarded across the bridge to the wrong polling stations. Thousands of other unclaimed voting cards were found swimming in the Wouri on Election Day dumped there by the then DO for Bonaberi, without doubt!
10. Gerrymandering with the voter registers: In violation of the law, often only one half of the electoral list per polling station is published when such lists are published at all. Consequently, voters can never say where exactly they will vote. Voters who register in one polling station can have their names transferred deliberately transferred to a distant polling station. Voters in Bonaberi, for example, can have their names transferred to Logpom, almost 15kilometres away. And since it is customary for all transport to be grounded on Election Day such poor devils will not vote.
11. Disqualifying candidates in known opposition Areas: A party leader, Mr. Jean Jacques Ekindi of Progressive Movement, MP, had just filed a case at the Supreme Court saying that Mr. Biya’s candidacy for the October 2004 polls offends against the law for the man is incumbent president and heads a party. The Supreme Court will do nothing. Selective amnesia. The administration banished some 29 candidates out of the 45 who declared their intention to run for president this year.
Rigging during the Elections
12. Stuffing ballot boxes: Hopefully this tendency will be curbed this year by the availability of transparent ballot boxes. However, the CPDM s not beyond manufacturing its own version of the imported transparent ballot boxes. With Mr. Biya and his clique all things are possible. Ghost polling stations will still produce results in favour of regime hands and regime candidates. In 1997 after registering some 8000 ghost voters, Doh Gah Gwanyim of Balikumbat spent all night with the then DO of Balikumbat stuffing 8000 ballot papers into fake ballot boxes for ghost polling stations.
13. Sending voters to wrong polling stations: Crowds of anti-regime voters are sent the wrong way to the wrong polling stations all in an attempt to prevent them from voting.
14. Polling stations in the wrong places: The palaces of some fons, army camps, police academies, professional schools, etc. In such institutions the staff and students are coerced to vote for the ruling party while in the villages, the fons intimidate their chindas to vote for the CPDM. In Cameroon, the fons are auxiliaries of the administration meaning that they get a salary from the government. Consequently, they are coerced to defend their salaries by producing a huge fake score for the ruling party.
15. Teenage voters: Under-aged children are ferried from polling station to polling station to vote for the regime.
16. Absence of indelible ink: When the regime is not producing chemicals to take off the so-called indelible ink from the thumbs of its militants so that they vote as often as possible the regime simply refuses to provide the indelible ink. That way pro-regime hands and supporters can vote as often as possible.
17. Absence of opposition ballot papers: The regime is not beyond creating a strategic shortage of the ballot papers of its adversaries.
18. Savaging of opposition officials: Tribesmen and private militia run riot in CPDM home grounds and opposition officials are ethnically-cleansed from all polling stations in the territory.
19. Tampering with ballot boxes: Cases abound where regime officials with the blessing of the gendarmes simply hijack ballot boxes and take them to their own destinations. Then the regime hands either produce stuffed ballot boxes or the produce tallies claiming victory. Mr. Inoni Ephraim, Secretary General in the presidency of the Republic almost got lynched long ago in Limbe when in a fit of defeating rage in Limbe the man tried to transfer a ballot box to his own destination. The Mukete Gang in Kumba has been known to violently grab ballot boxes and run.
Rigging after the Elections

20. Fraudulent Counting Committees: Often, even before the officially recognized counting committee sits to validate the tallies, the SDOs and DOs produce phony score sheets which are tabled to the central counting units. Such results are proclaimed in advanced. Some of the administrators are so dumb that they announce the results of past elections. The administrators are not beyond producing manufactured score-sheets at every election.
21. Changing tallies: 93% can easily become 39% in opposition areas and vice versa.
22. Changing scores: The administration is not beyond canceling valid votes for flimsy reasons.
23. Declaring the CPDM winner: Oftentimes, the actually voting does not really matter. The CPDM is just declared the winner, period.
Rigging by False Pretence
24. Hijacking the electoral calendar: The time table for every election in Cameroon is a state-secret. Mr. Biya keeps that calendar close to his chest and uses it for his own glory.
25. Gerrymandering: Mr. Biya is adept at creating phony constituencies called “Special constituencies.” Pockets of regime supporters in certain provinces (Balikumbat, Misaje, Mbiame, etc) are declared special constituencies where the regime can heist the vote in peace. Often the votes of one part of a town are shuffled into another section. During municipal elections, Mr. Biya is not beyond adding a section of the Yaounde Briqueterie neighbourhood (where the Hausa-Bamileke opposition hands thrive) to Nkondongo (where his tribesmen live), for example.
26. Hijacking the State Media: During all elections the state media is hijacked to diffuse pro-regime messages and news especially and this in violation of the law.
27. Hijacking state property: Government vehicles staff and money are hijacked to campaign for the ruling party.
28. Hijacking the military: The army, the police, the navy, the air force are misused to campaign for the ruling party.
29. Bribing the private media: Under a so-called ‘subvention scheme’ some private newspapers and radio stations are coerced to campaign for the ruling party. Bribe money given to the private radio stations can go up to 5.000.000FCFA $10.000) – a tidy sum in these parts where a top civil servant earns 150.000FCFA ($300) a month.
30. Opinion surveys: Government bans opinion surveys ahead of every election.
31. Creation of a phony Election Observatory: Cameroon’s so-called National Election Observatory, ONEL-NEO, is supposed to control the electoral process from voters registration; to the delivery of voting cards; to the identification of polling stations; to the publication of voters lists per polling station; to the actual presence of voting materials (ballot boxes, etc); to the security of All officials from tribesmen and the private militia; to the orderly conduct of the vote; to the counting of votes; to the publication of results; and the declaration of the winner and the loser. In reality ONEL-NEO is a fraud. It controls nothing. ONEL-NEO does not know where voters are registered and who by; ONEL-NEO can do nothing if ghost polling stations and fake voters lists are present; ONEL-NEO cannot force the administration to deliver voting cards; ONEL-NEO; ONEL-NEO cannot do a thing if polling stations are located in the palaces and even in the bedrooms of regime hands; ONEL-NEO can do nothing of the administration refuses to do a proper count and hand over score sheets to all candidates; ONEL-NEO can do nothing if the SDOs and DOs produce fake results; etc. In sor,t ONEL-NEO is just a pack of regime hands and clowns parading for a small fee. That is when ONEL-NEO is not acting like what it actually is – a CPDM sub-section.

Comments

[Glenn Wilson]

During the 2002 election in Cameroon, a friend of mine worked as a scrutineer for the CDPM at one of the polling booths. There was also a scrutineer from the SDF and plus two others representing minor parties. My friend told me he was supplied with 10,000cfa by the CPDM party that was used to purchase drinks for the scrutineers. When the SDF scrutineer had to leave "to make water" the ballot box was stuffed. The scrutineers from the minor parties were afraid to speak up. I was told that this was a widespread practice. This was the same election that was cancelled on the Saturday morning at 8am (1 hour after opening) and 2000 votes were counted in the ballot box from the Prime Ministers village. Anyway, as the expression goes " s*** runs downhill". Good luck with the election Cameroon, you're going to need it.
Glenn Wilson

[wanaku]

Is "scrutineer" an English word?
Just curious.
Thanks for your help.
~w~
I will check..Ofege

[FON.E.G.KUM]

I am His Royal Highness, FON.Ekia Gilbert KUM of the Kung village in Cameroon menchum division, in the Zhoa sub-district.Well, as a respondent to your question, I purport that scrutineer is an english word, in its own right as an adjective to "scrutiny".
It will be of great significance to me as a citizen,reader in poltics and elite of Cameroon, to actively exchange and analyse the socio-political situation in Cameroon especially at this moment that, Cameroon politicians have become self interested in pursuing their own proper interests.

YRH. Greetings from Bamenda. Please feel free to forward any contribution to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] eventual uploading.
God Bless You
Ofege

[Divine]

THis is magnificient. More grease to your elbow.