New Cameroon Views Blog: The first stage of electoral fraud or rigging---Preventing Cameroonians from Registering (Excerpt of "TWO PATHS OF DEMOCRATIZATION ― CAMEROON AND GHANA: How France’s Political Mafia and the Regime of Cameroon’s Paul Biya Created the World’s Most Notorious Election Rigging Machinery"

Tuesday, October 9, 2018

The first stage of electoral fraud or rigging---Preventing Cameroonians from Registering (Excerpt of "TWO PATHS OF DEMOCRATIZATION ― CAMEROON AND GHANA: How France’s Political Mafia and the Regime of Cameroon’s Paul Biya Created the World’s Most Notorious Election Rigging Machinery"

The first stage of electoral fraud or rigging---Preventing Cameroonians from Registering. Cameroon's 2004 population was the same as the population of Ghana in 1996. See below how Ghana's number of registered voters doubled Cameroon's.

Chapter Two

Paul Biya has fully transformed Cameroon into an autocracy. There is no pretense anymore in his rule. He intends to shove another fake election down the throats of Cameroonians and the gullible in the world, all with the support of forces worldwide that benefit from his misrule of Cameroon, some of which have been maintaining him in power. To understand the extent of Paul Biya’s electoral masquerade, one only needs to make a comparison of Cameroon and Ghana ― two countries in Africa with an identical demographic pyramid or demographic structure, especially the percentage of the population of voting age.

Ghana is a Liberal Democracy, Cameroon is an Autocracy. Ghana’s population in 2018 is estimated at 29,463,643, while an estimation of Cameroon’s is 24,678,234. As seen in the tables below, Cameroon’s population at every given time is about the size of what Ghana’s was seven years earlier. For example, Ghana’s population in 2004 was 20,840,493; meanwhile, in 2011, Cameroon’s population was 20.520,000. In 1997, Ghana had 17.430,000 people, while Cameroon’s population reached that number in early 2005. So, as expected, the number of registered voters in Cameroon at any given time should be roughly the same as Ghana’s seven years prior. But that has not been the case as seen in the tables below. Over the past decades, registered voters in Ghana have made up around 55% of the general population, while in Cameroon the total number of registered voters given by the Biya regime has always been around 27% of the population, which is about half of Ghana’s ― the first major telltale sign of the extent or the scale of vote-rigging that the Cameroonian government undertakes. The French-imposed system and the Biya regime, in particular, eliminate more than half of the Cameroonians opposing the political establishment from determining the outcome of elections at the registration phase of elections.

Ghana’s 1996 Presidential Election & The Two Major Competitors

Total Population of Ghana in 1996	Candidate	Party	Votes	%
	Jerry Rawlings	National Democratic Congress	4,099,758	57.4
	John Kufuor	New Patriotic Party	2,834,878	39.7
	Invalid/blank votes		120,921	–
	Total		7,266,693	100
	Registered voters/turnout		9,279,605	78.3
17.430,000	Percentage of Population Registered			53.24
	Source: Nohlen et al.

Cameroon’s October 25, 2004 Presidential Election & The Two Major Competitors

Total Population of Cameroon in 2004	Candidate	Party	Votes	%
	Paul Biya	Cameroon People's Democratic Movement	2,665,359	70.92
	John Fru Ndi	Social Democratic Front	654,066	17.40
	Invalid/blank votes		72,051	–
	Total		3,830,272	100
	Registered voters/turnout		4,657,748	82.23
17,170,000	Percentage of Population Registered			27.13
	Source: African Elections Database

Ghana’s 2004 Presidential Election & The Two Major Competitors

Total Population of Ghana in 2012	Candidate	Party	Votes	%
	John Dramani Mahama	National Democratic Congress	5,574,761	50.70
	Nana Akufo-Addo	New Patriotic Party	5,248,898	47.74
	Invalid/blank votes		251,720	–
	Total Votes		11,246,982	100
	Registered voters/turnout		14,158,890	79.43
25.731,000	Percentage of Population Registered			55.03
	Source: Electoral Commission of Ghana

...

Cameroon’s October 07, 2018 Presidential Election & The Competitors

Total Population of Cameroon in 2018	Candidate	Party	Votes	%
	Paul Biya	Cameroon People's Democratic Movement
	Joshua Osih	Social Democratic Front
	Garga Haman Adji	Alliance for Democracy and Development
	Adamou Ndam Njoya	Cameroon Democratic Union
	Frankline Ndifor	Mouvement Citoyen National Camerounais (MCNC)
	Cabral Libii	Union Nationale pour l’Intégration vers la solidarité (UNIVERS)
	Serge Espoir Matomba	United People for Social Renovation
	Maurice Kamto	Mouvement pour la Renaissance du Cameroun (MRC)
	Akere Muna	Front Populaire pour le Développement (FPD)
	Invalid/blank votes
	Total
	Registered voters/turnout		6,985,000
24,678,234	Percentage of Population Registered			27.94
	Source: African Elections Database

Election results in Ghana and Cameroon above highlight the extent of election rigging carried out by the Biya regime in Cameroon and the effectiveness of the election rigging machinery put in place by the French-imposed system made up of those who played no role in the cause for Cameroon’s liberation, otherwise known as the struggle for the independence and the reunification of French Cameroun and British Cameroons.

Another case is Rwanda, a country that experienced a horrendous ethnic conflict in 1994, following a civil war that began in 1990. From April 07, 1994 to mid-July 1994, the overwhelmingly Hutu-dominated government orchestrated a genocide against the country’s minority Tutsi people and moderate Hutus that culminated in an estimated 500,000–1,000,000 Rwandan deaths, most of them Tutsis who lost about three-quarters of their population. As indicated below, Rwanda’s population is slightly less than half of Cameroon’s, yet the country could boast of more registered voters than Cameroon when it held its presidential election in 2017.

August 18, 2017 Presidential Election in Rwanda

Total Population of Rwanda in 2018	Candidate		Party	Votes	%
		Paul Kagame	Rwandan Patriotic Front	6,675,472	98.79
		Philippe Mpayimana	Independent	49,031	0.73
		Frank Habineza	Democratic Green Party of Rwanda	32,701	0.48
	Invalid/blank votes			12,310	–
	Total			6,769,514	100
	Registered voters/turnout			6,897,076	98.15
12.210.000	Percentage of Population Registered				57.22
	Source: NEC Rwanda

Rwanda emerged from the trauma of genocide to become one of the exceptional countries in Africa with a sense of direction not only in the economic sphere, but also in the social and political spheres.