Biya vs. the Opposition: Cameroon’s High-Stakes 2025 Vote

On 5 October 2025, Cameroonians will vote to elect their president. Earlier this year, in January, the 91-year-old incumbent Paul Biya (CPDM, centre-right) officially announced his candidacy for what would be an eighth consecutive term if he wins in October. Biya is one of only two people to ever hold the presidency since the country gained independence in 1960, highlighting his complete dominance of modern Cameroonian politics.

In late 2024, rumors of his poor health and possible death were floating around the Cameroonian civic space. However, these rumors abated when, in what has become a common theme with Biya, he emerged alive and reasonably well after weeks of public absence amidst allegations of his premature death.

Biya’s Rise

Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, was a former mentor of Biya after the latter entered Cameroonian politics. For twenty-five years, Cameroon was effectively governed as a one-party state, first under the Cameroon National Union (CNU, centre-right) and later its successor, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM, centre-right). However, by the early 1980s, after Ahidjo’s resignation in 1982, the two men had a falling out. After Ahidjo resigned the presidency for health reasons, Biya officially became president. Biya would increasingly assert his political independence, drifting more and more away from Ahidjo. In August 1983, Biya claimed to have discovered a coup plot, allegedly supported by Ahidjo, a claim that would result in a death sentence for Ahidjo, carried out in absentia one year later. Ahidjo died five years later in exile in Senegal. 

After obtaining full control over Cameroonian politics in 1985, Biya embarked on a series of economic and social reforms known as the “New Deal.” Civil liberties, including freedom of speech, were expanded, and the worst abuses of the Ahidjo regime were removed. New independent media outlets also emerged during this time, and Cameroon began a program of infrastructure and health care modernization. 

Soon after implementation, Biya would reverse course. In addition to reneging on his promise of supporting free speech and a free press, he was also reluctant to carry out some of his other promises. The economic downturn of the late 1980s and Biya’s decision to change the name of the country to the Republic of Cameroon — which ended any pretense of continued federation with the English-speaking regions of Cameroon — saw broad opposition coalesce against his rule.

In 1992, the country officially had its first multi-party presidential election. The election was also notable in that Biya won without a majority of the vote, and won by a margin of only 119,000 votes out of a total of nearly three million cast. This would be the last time that Biya would win the Presidency without an official majority of the vote, winning just under 40% of the vote. The election was also the closest Biya has come to losing re-election so far. It would also mark the highest percentage of the vote that any opposition candidate would win in a presidential election thereafter, with the main challenger John Fu Ndi (SDF, centre-left) having won 36%. Although the Cameroonian Constitution stipulates that a candidate needs to receive a majority of the vote to be elected, a constitutionally required runoff has never been held. 

The political system

Cameroon is run effectively as a unitary presidential system. Under this system, the prime minister is appointed by the president as head of government, but has little power. Regional assemblies, in theory, act as decentralized, autonomous units, but in practice, the Cameroonian political system is highly centralized. Some prominent politicians in government have called for Cameroon’s further decentralization, and others have called for a return to a federal system that was formed after independence. Despite this, the government has been slow to grant more regional autonomy due to a lack of political interest in Biya’s inner circle — as well as a lack of specially earmarked funds.

The Cameroonian Parliament is a bicameral one, consisting of the Senate as the upper house and the National Assembly as the lower house. Of the 100 seats in the Senate, 70 are elected indirectly by the country’s regional councils, while an additional 30 are appointed by the president. Unlike many other bicameral regimes, the Senate has significant legislative powers more akin to the United States Senate than the upper houses of other countries. Both the Senate and the directly elected National Assembly are heavily dominated by the CPDM. If the post of president is ever vacated, the next in line of succession is the president of the Senate.

In December 2020, promised regional elections were held for the first time. Each region was given an equal number of regional councillors, sitting at 70 for each. In these elections, nine out of ten regions were won by the CPDM, with one regional council going to the allied UNDP (centre-right). Regional governors, meanwhile, are still appointed by the President. The heads of the 58 departments are also appointed directly by the president.

Municipal governments are likewise dominated by the CPDM. The communes, which are the third tier of government, are the country’s third-level entities below regions and the national government. 316 communes out of 340 are currently under the control of the CPDM. Municipal elections are held under a modified party-block-vote system, where parties submit lists of candidates to stand for election. If a party’s list wins a majority of seats in the district, all of the seats go to that list. If no party wins a majority, the party with a plurality of the votes gets half the seats, and the remaining half are distributed proportionally to the other parties’ lists. 

Opposition Dynamics

Historically, only two opposition parties have won more than 10% of the vote in a presidential election. These include the Social Democratic Front (SDF, centre-left), a party that also represents Anglophone interests, currently led by Joshua Osih, and the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM, liberal), headed by Maurice Kamto. A prior attempt to create a coalition to unseat Biya in 2018 ultimately failed, and Biya officially won with over 70% of the vote. 

According to polls conducted by English Cameroon for a United Cameroon (EC4UC), Kamto was well in the lead for the presidential race, with 53% of voters polled preferring him in their most recent poll from September 24. However, these polls need to be met with healthy skepticism for three reasons. The first is the potential for polling error or bias, given the pollster’s preference for a federal Cameroon. Second, a poll conducted by the more respected Afrobarometer in 2025 showed the CPDM comfortably in the lead ahead of opposition parties. Third, the lack of quality polling, especially in a country considered an “electoral autocracy” by V-dem, makes accurately assessing the political climate difficult.

In late July 2025, ELECAM rejected Maurice Kamto’s candidacy for president. Resting on a technicality in the initial application, the move triggered a large amount of coverage in the Cameroonian press and triggered large-scale opposition to the move. 

According to the results from the 2018 election, Biya’s stronghold comes from the southeastern cabralportion of the country. In Littoral and West regions, where Biya fared relatively poorly, Kamto and Cabral Libii (Univers,*), a syncretic party, won pluralities in some of the departments and denied a majority to Biya in others. Among these departments is Douala City, the country’s largest metro area and capital of the Littoral Region. What’s surprising is that Biya won majorities in the departments of the Anglophone Northwest Region. This result is counterintuitive and may seem unusual given the strong opposition to Biya in the Region. However, the combination of threats of election-related violence and political repression in the region undoubtedly contributed to this electoral result. 

The Anglophone Crisis

What began as demands for autonomy by the English-speaking population of Cameroon in late 2016 eventually developed into a full-blown insurgency featuring “violence and abuses against civilians,” according to France24. The protests that broke out during that period were consequently repressed by the Cameroonian authorities, with militant activities beginning in September 2017. The 2018 presidential elections were the first to be held after the start of insurgent activities that ended up killing nearly 5000 people. Though largely believed to have been in a low-level insurgency since then, a piece from the Africa Confidential reported that the crisis remained a “bloody stalemate.” The conflict is one where separatists have attempted to enforce a boycott of Cameroonian elections in the departments they claim as their own. By prospective voters being forced to stay home, the legitimacy of the electoral results from these regions will be called into question.

So far, separatist groups aligned with the Ambazonia movement — the name of the English-speaking state they wish to create — control much of Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions. There is a strong chance that the ongoing fighting will prevent the conduct of elections in the regions under Ambazonia control, which is likely to hurt Osih’s candidacy in particular.

Increased engagement?

Since 2015, internet penetration in Cameroon has risen to nearly 12.5 million people, more than 40% of the total population. According to the country’s elections body ELECAM, 8.2 million people are registered to vote, compared with 6.7 million in 2018. Between January and June 2025, around 373,000 new voters were registered. Civil society groups such as the Network for Solidarity, Empowerment, and Transformation for All (NEWSETA) have sprung up to increase political participation in the electoral process.

Regime Defections

In late June 2025, two ministers serving in Cameroon’s government officially resigned and declared their intention to run for the presidency: the former Minister of Vocational Employment Issa Bakary (FSNC, centre) and Minister of Tourism Bello Miagari (UNDP, centre-right). Bakary and Miagari each hail from Cameroon’s north region and are heads of their respective parties. Both of these parties have furthermore been in the CPDM’s parliamentary coalition. If the opposition can coalesce around a slate of candidates to target the multimember districts of the country’s parliament in next year’s regional election, it could see a substantial reduction in seats for the CPDM and its control over the country’s legislature, independent of the October presidential election. This would require a broad coalition encompassing the centre-left SDF alongside the centre-right UNDP, as well as the main opposition CRM party, and likely some smaller parties, which may prove difficult to form an agreement or a platform around.

Conclusion  

Though these resignations are signs that the regime is fragmenting, the President and his party enjoy strong institutional support. Biya possesses strong and historic connections with the ruling elite of the country. Consequently, limitations on critical media and the targeting of political opponents using state resources have been and will continue to be features of Cameroonian public life through the election period. Biya is widely expected to win an eighth term, contingent on his health. The opposition, splintered during the 2018 election, is expected to remain so in this year’s election, although the exact degree of fragmentation is uncertain. Biya’s victory would see the continuation of his pro-French foreign policy and a preservation of the status quo. If Biya, or a replacement CPDM candidate, were to lose, it would send a wake-up call to neighboring countries that autocracy need not be a permanent fixture in their politics.