Kah Walla wants opposition’s boycott of presidential elections, demands electoral reforms
By Nchendzengang Tatah
Firebrand opposition leader Edith Kah Walla of the Cameroon People’s Party (CPP) has called for a boycott of the October presidential elections. Kah Walla made her remarks during an interview on Douala-based TV station My Media Prime on Monday, June 23.
The CPP leader argued that nothing had changed in 35 years of opposition existence in Cameroon and that 20 of those years have seen opposition parties calling for reforms which the Biya regime has largely ignored. She enumerated lapses needing urgent reform.
She recalled the outings of opposition leaders following the 2018 presidential election and warned her peers that unless they took a different approach, the same would repeat. She said a coalition of opposition leaders was necessary to attain these reforms. “The law in Cameroon states that the register was supposed to have been published since the 1st of January. We are in June, where is the electoral register? The electoral body is about to be convened without that being published” she noted.
Kah Walla also argued that since 1992, Cameroonians have been protecting their votes at polling stations without significant results, contending that election results only being announced at the national level was problematic.
The CPP party leader established that the opposition must move this year from putting proposals for electoral reforms to battling for these changes.
“What will pressure the government is for us to come together as actors for action. To start with, we say no to elections until we get reforms. Secondly, we say Cameroonians are coming out for a protest until we get reforms” Kah Walla declared. The CPP president said the move by many political parties to participate in the elections was selfish; it did not mean well for the people, but for their ambitions.
To her, the opposition has been derailed in its quest for council and parliamentary seats, making it complicit in the cries of the Cameroonian people over the years. “The electoral process of Cameroon doesn’t work. This is 30-year-old news” Walla concluded. Her remarks come as several opposition parties are carrying out campaigns in a bid to garner voter support ahead of the polls in October.
