THE BETRAYAL WE WILL NEVER FORGET
An Open Letter to the CPDM Elites and ELECAM Officials of the North West and South West Regions
By John P. K. Semirnyuy | October 2025
A Day That Shamed the Spirit of Democracy
On October 12, 2025, the world watched — or perhaps pretended not to see — as you desecrated the last sacred remnant of democracy on Ambazonian soil.
In towns long scarred by bullets and tears, you staged a performance of loyalty, not to your people, but to tyranny. In doing so, you joined the ranks of those who have mocked justice with ceremony — from Ahidjo’s fraudulent 1972 referendum that buried the federation, to Biya’s rigged elections that turned governance into servitude.
You stuffed ballot boxes and silenced voices, as if the ghost of 1961’s unfulfilled promise had returned to witness your treachery. You did not vote for peace — you voted against memory.
And yet, even deceit has limits.
According to ELECAM’s own records, in the North West Region, the number of registered voters who participated in the 2018 presidential election was 33,302 — a figure already controversial due to widespread insecurity. But in 2025, despite seven more years of war, mass displacement, and entire towns reduced to ashes, ELECAM declared a miraculous 397,875 voters.
Such a mathematical resurrection could only occur in the land of fiction — not democracy. You did not conduct an election; you performed an illusion.
The Historical Continuum of Betrayal
History has long recorded those who traded truth for comfort. When the British abandoned Southern Cameroons to a forced union without treaty or constitutional safeguards, they betrayed a trust.
When Ahidjo dismantled the federation, he betrayed a nation. And when you — their inheritors — stood before cameras and declared “massive turnout” amid ruins and corpses, you joined that same shameful lineage.
Each betrayal has had its consequence.
1961’s deception birthed 1972’s annexation.
1972’s annexation gave rise to 2016’s resistance.
2025’s forgery has now sealed the irreversible divorce between Ambazonia and French Cameroon.
The soil remembers; it does not forget.
The Moral Collapse of a Compromised Elite
You sold your conscience for vanity, your dignity for appointments, and your people for political favour.
You called it participation — but participation without truth is collaboration.
You did not merely steal votes; you desecrated the moral covenant between leader and people.
In every era, tyrannies survive not by the strength of dictators, but by the weakness of collaborators.
You have become the local instruments of a foreign system, enforcing the will of Yaoundé’s colonial machinery upon your own kin. History has a name for such conduct — treason of the soul.
The Cry of the Land and the Weight of Conscience
“When truth dies in a nation, the nation itself begins to die.” — Bernard N. Fonlon. You have slain truth on the altar of greed. And from this day, every time you sleep, the land will whisper the names of those who perished in silence. No official title can insulate you from that whisper, no motorcade can drown it.
You will see it in the eyes of orphans, hear it in the wind that passes through abandoned schools, and feel it in the earth that buries our dead.
You may enjoy your rewards — for a season — but history is a patient accountant. When the day of reckoning comes, your names will not be remembered among leaders but among those who betrayed their nation for a meal of crumbs.
The Call to Redemption
This letter is not only condemnation — it is also a mirror. Perhaps, by looking into it, you may still see what remains of your humanity. For history is cruel but sometimes merciful to those who repent.
Bow before the truth. Ask forgiveness of the people you deceived. Stand once more on the side of justice, and history may yet record that you found your conscience before eternity demanded it.
The Verdict of Time
The day will come when Ambazonia rises from its ashes. When that dawn breaks, no false tally will matter, no forged certificate will survive, no act of betrayal will remain hidden. Time will strip away illusion, and history will deliver its verdict — unflinching, impartial, eternal.
The land remembers.
The people remember.
And the betrayal of October 12, 2025, will forever echo in the conscience of those who chose falsehood over freedom.
The Immortal Voice of Truth
To betray your people is to declare war against the future. But truth, like sunrise, cannot be buried.
From the graves of the slain and the exile of the living will rise a generation that remembers not your names, but your choices — and will build anew where you sought to destroy. Hear their cry. Feel their pain. Know that the land will never stop speaking.
— John P. K. Semirnyuy
October 2025
