On Sunday, October 12, 2025, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Cameroonian voters went to the polls “in a calm atmosphere,” according to a statement from the two international observation missions dispatched by the African Union and the Economic Community of Central African States. It was at the close of polling that the electoral ritual was disrupted. On their own initiative, and called by parties or organisations, voters returned to monitor their votes by the light of mobile phones, both inside and outside the polling stations. The noisy enthusiasm of these citizen poll watchers circulated widely on social networks.
Since then, tension has prevailed: the opposition favourite, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a former minister and president of the Front for the National Salvation of Cameroon (FSNC), announced his victory in the night of October 13–14, while authorities and supporters of the incumbent president, Paul Biya, threatened anyone who published results before the Constitutional Council. Thus, Cameroon finds itself plunged into a post-electoral crisis, which is not unprecedented, either in the country or elsewhere. Challenges to electoral verdicts have multiplied in recent years, from Kenya to Brazil, and the United States, in countries where political history is particularly conflictual and violent.
In Cameroon, a massive challenge did indeed take place in 1992, following strong mobilisations (the “ghost towns”), then in 2018, when the Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) believed it had won the vote.
The current mobilisations are distinguished both by their intensity and their precocity – before official results were even announced – and by their stakes: they aim to impose what candidate Issa Tchiroma Bakary called “the truth of the ballot box,” meaning results that reflect the votes cast. This is the singularity of these struggles, online and now in the streets: in a country where trust in institutions is low 4, where past electoral frauds have been admitted by some authorities, and where “fakes” (documents, diplomas, international observers) are regularly uncovered, opposition parties, civil society activists, and citizens have decided to reveal their own electoral truth against that of the authorities in charge of tallying the votes.
An Unexpected Electoral Mobilisation
The rules of the electoral game have been contested since the return of multipartism in 1990. Calls for reform come from opposition parties, the Catholic Church, NGOs and some international partners. They concern the voting method for the presidential election (currently a single round, which favours the incumbent), the electoral materials (for the adoption of a single ballot, which is harder to falsify, for full biometric registration and authentication), and the independence of the institutions responsible for organising and supervising elections. At each election, half-measures are taken that satisfy the expectations of those financing them, but not those of political parties that boycott certain ballots.
Faced with these skewed rules, and also with proven fraudulent practices that are difficult to detect due to the lack of accredited observers and the presence of partisan scrutineers, voter turnout declined throughout the 1990s–2010s. In 2018, barely more than half of registered voters went to the polls, according to official figures. Citizen engagement faces a range of administrative obstacles, from the difficulty of obtaining a national identity card and an electoral card, to the withdrawal of those cards, notably in certain regions known as opposition strongholds. This demobilisation therefore seemed likely to repeat itself for this presidential election, in which Paul Biya – aged 92 and in power since 1982 – stood for re-election, and in which Maurice Kamto, the main opponent who came second in 2018, was not allowed to run following a highly criticised constitutional dispute.
Voters decided otherwise. The momentum of the campaign played its full part. After resigning from ministerial posts he had held for fifteen years, Issa Tchiroma Bakary gathered unexpected support around him during the last week of the campaign. Until then, the eleven opposition candidates had shown reluctance to unite behind a single champion. Several initiatives had failed until a “Union for Change” brought some candidates together around Issa Tchiroma Bakary6. Images of crowds at these rallies, notably in the Far North and North regions, from where he comes, spread and suggested popularity gained in these regions usually described as vote “reservoirs” for the ruling party, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (RDPC). The handful of rallies in the Littoral and West regions and the apologies 7 expressed to all those who might have had strong grievances against him (in the Anglophone regions, for example, where he had justified certain excesses) convinced some civil society figures and other candidates to lend their support. In a few days, and while the RDPC’s campaign was tarnished by the absence of President Biya–“on a short private stay in Europe” – and by displays of senility among some dignitaries, this former minister, ex-spokesperson for the RDPC government, became the receptacle of a generalised exasperation with the ruling party.
Tchiroma, the “good devil”
Debates among activists and the middle classes present on social networks express hesitations about a former regime dignitary aged 79. By designating him as a “good devil”, public rumour expressed a kind of protest lucidity. This term refers to remarks by the bishop of Yagoua, who had said in January: “Even the Devil – let him first take power in Cameroon and we’ll see afterwards.” Tchiroma would thus be the devil preferred to the current president.
This vigilant electoral monitoring took on an unprecedented turn from the start of the counting. The presence of partisan and citizen scrutineers at the windows of polling stations is not new. But they had previously remained relatively silent, impressed by the institutional and police apparatus that made the polling station president, a member of Elections Cameroon (Elecam), and RDPC scrutineers the only ones in charge. This time, according to videos posted and verified by journalists, notably in the Anglophone regions, citizens made their presence felt, counting aloud and contesting when the number of ballots did not match the number of voter signatures. They even extracted confessions from some Elecam staff, who admitted to having committed fraud.
This monitoring is not entirely spontaneous. Actors and newcomers from civil society organised 9, without external funding, observation and vote-monitoring tools in order to compile independent results. This practice has become common during elections around the world: Parallel Voting Tabulation (PVT) procedures are used in Africa, Latin America, and Asia and, of course, in so-called consolidated democracies, where polling institutes or media outlets announce the first results.
In Cameroon, these platforms have not yet produced definitive results due to difficulties encountered during the operation: the list of voters and polling stations allowing the selection of representative stations was published barely a week before the vote, the Minister of Territorial Administration issued threats against them, and volunteerism is not usual in a society accustomed to monetising exchanges. But ultimately, it was the voters who took matters into their own hands and who continued, three days after the ballot, to monitor operations at the departmental level, which closed on the evening of October 15. That day, a crowd gathered in front of the Bafoussam court, explaining that an FSNC scrutineer had been locked up because she refused to sign a fraudulent report. Finally, the official results of that commission gave Issa Tchiroma Bakary the victory with 79.79% of the votes cast in the Mifi department.
Motorbike Taxi Drivers Protect Their Champion
This popular mobilisation plays out as much on social networks as it does in the streets. The usual platforms – Facebook, TikTok, to a lesser extent X, but above all WhatsApp loops – host photographs and videos of early counts, images of minutes, and various comments. “Fakes” (fake international press articles, fake circulars, old videos recycled…) are obviously abundant, and the methodical collection of evidence is not easy.
The ultimate goal of organisations and political parties is to hold at least a representative portion of the minutes in order to produce their own results based on statistically robust trends. They also want to be able to demonstrate their good faith in the event of a dispute over what promises to be a contested ballot. Some ministers assert that these parallel counting operations are doomed to fail because only the territorial administration would be capable of collecting all more than 31,000 minutes. The controversy centres on the mathematical production of this electoral truth. But in fact, it is deeply political.
That is why, since October 15, the debate has shifted: in the streets of Bafoussam and Dschang, where the RDPC party headquarters and the courthouse were set on fire, or in Douala, where large demonstrations took place in front of the buildings housing vote-counting operations or representing authorities. Before that, citizens – and notably motorbike taxi drivers – had deployed in Garoua on election day to protect candidate Tchiroma, against whom arrest threats had been levelled. Since then, these motorbike taxi drivers have guarded their champion’s home.
This street mobilisation is surprising in a country where the organisation and repression of demonstrations have often discouraged citizens from expressing their discontent in this way and where threats punctuate official speeches, particularly in recent days. Today, it is the conjunction of online mobilisations and on-the-ground action by motorbike taxi drivers, political activists, young people and veterans of past mobilisations, in the north as well as in large cities and in the Anglophone regions, that seems to give new substance to these demands. The production of the vote results is no longer confined to electoral bodies. It is now the business of an entire country.
