*THE BIGGEST WINNER*- Maurice Kamto:
To say Maurice Kamto is the biggest winner of these elections is an understatement. Not only was he able to, in a very short time, shoot himself to the top of the rankings (if one may call it so) but he was able to pull together enough votes to claim victory and challenge the incumbent. The secret to his success lies in one thing; he “heeded” to the people’s call for a coalition.
For long, online and offline chatter from the electorate has been a clamour for a coalition. People fail to understand that coalitions are harder to form than they seem. On top of ego issues, we have to take into account political programmes, strategy, different visions, party dynamics and even something as simple as mutual respect and friendship. Kamto was able to pull that off and I daresay many voted without even knowing what his political program is. They simply did so because he formed an alliance with Akere.
*THE OTHER BIG WINNER*- Akere Muna:
He is the other really big winner. I hold the firm conviction that Akere got into this race for really altruistic reasons. I feel somewhere that he was (1) exasperated by the poor handling of the Anglophone crisis, and (2) felt directly responsible for the mess that his father had been involved in which resulted in the Anglophone crisis as we see it today.
But somewhere along, his campaign lost steam. He was not pulling the crowds that the likes of Kamto and Cabral were pulling and I believe he knew he could not do it on his own. So he sacrificed the main idea he was running on (Federalism) to join a man who offered no concrete solution to the Anglophone problem.
Today he is upheld as a messiah. The man who abandoned everything to answer the clamour of the people. The man who agreed to take second place so a coalition could be born. Cameroonians are celebrating him now. The same guy who did not stand a chance. Big win.
*THE BIGGEST LOSER* -The Anglophone people:
Thanks to the AGC and the reckless communications of Ivo and Mark, the people of Southern Cameroons missed their golden ticket to having a federation. At the start of the crisis in September 2016, leaders should have seen that elections were just two years away. I do not exaggerate if I say Anglophones were faaaaaaaaaar more United in the struggle in November 2016 than they are today. That was a time when Gofundmes were popping up and down and people were contributing without question.
That would have been the perfect opportunity to ask people to go register for elections. Anglophones are a pragmatic, organised, and cohesive group. 2 million Anglophones, at home and abroad, could have easily been convinced to register. The AGC could have used that as a leverage to back the opposition parties that pushed for federalism. The likes of Kamto would have come begging. Instead, Sisiku and co sold the dream of a free country. Today we all know where we are.
It’s more complicated than that I know. Nothing says that people would not have been dragged out of their homes and killed. But overall it was a better strategy, I believe. One that could have been used as leverage to get a lot of things accomplished.
*THE BIGGER LOSER*- Cabral Libii:
Let’s just say Cabral got it all wrong. He got it wrong from the moment he set his foot onto the stage at Stade CICAM in Douala. I remember speaking to a friend after I saw pictures of his rally and I said to my friend that sadly, Cabral’s supporters are like him (my friend); people that watch Canal Presse and other political debates on Sunday mornings but are non-registered voters.
Before the elections started he was calling for coalitions. After Stade CICAM he wasn’t so much interested. And it showed in the results that he misfired. He wanted to be president. At 38 years old, he is still a very young man. He could have given his votes to Kamto, thereby cementing Kamto’s claim to victory even more, and waited the next elections to run for the highest office. He was offered that, I hear, but he turned it down. Too bad for him. Now, he is just an anecdote.
*THE OTHER BIGGER LOSER* - THE SDF:
I am talking here about the party and not the candidate. The SDF had the best political programme if you asked me. Ambitious, attainable and succinct. However, these elections show that the party (1) is becoming a shadow of itself and (2) they suffered terribly as their base in the Anglophone region basically did not vote.
Their lack of clarity in the Anglophone crisis and the late blooming of their chosen candidate was a huge deterrent. Kamto made waves in Yaoundé when he resigned from the government in 2014, and Cabral has been a voice on TV political debates for years. Joshua Osih was introduced very late and was relatively unknown. Even fewer people knew the person. The SDF had too much belief in their strength and wanted a coalition on their terms, but it backfired. Even their legendary base in Bonaberi voted for Kamto. Ouch!
*DID THEY EVEN LOSE?*: Matomba and Ndifor. They fought a good fight, they ran a good race, but they stood no chance. People mistake hordes of bikes following you around for popularity. Give an okada man a campaign tee-shirt and 3,000frs for fuel and he would follow you around. The next day somebody else would give the same guy a campaign tee-shirt and fuel money and he would follow that guy around.
Ndifor and Matomba didn’t get that memo. They made a few waves here and there. They should have transferred that to Kamto for something in return. A position in the cabinet perhaps. Too bad for them.
*THE UNCLASSIFIED*: Ndam Njoya and Garga Haman Adji. Between Ndam Njoya who was sick, basically did not and only flew in the day before the elections and Garga Hamn Adji who was still licking the wounds of his misogyny and condescendence towards Cathy Toulou, a journalist at CRTV, not much happened here. I have seen many election scoreboards and these two gentlemen had terrible scores.
They represent the old generation of politicians. Old, tired, out of date, and out of ideas but still clinging to power in their respective parties and not wanting to pass the baton to the younger generations. They are like cobwebs behind the shelf – forgotten.
*I decided not to put Paul Biya and the CPDM in this classification. For the sake of objectivity and clarity, I should have. But I won’t. You’ll all have to forgive me but I will not waste a minute of my time writing about that man. At least, not today.
- Wandji Wilfred.