Letter to the Editor
The Independentist
8 July 2025
Sir,
Your 7 July investigative brief warning that a “France-backed transition plan” could postpone Cameroon’s 2025 presidential election by two years has proved eerily prescient. Barely twenty-four hours later the regime in Yaoundé began speaking out of both sides of its mouth, delivering the clearest evidence yet that a constitutional sleight-of-hand is being prepared behind closed doors.
On Radio France Internationale yesterday, Government Spokesman René-Emmanuel Sadi—one of President Paul Biya’s most trusted lieutenants—openly conceded that the Head of State’s candidacy is “du 50-50” (no better than a coin-toss).
Coming from the man who has choreographed the President’s public messaging for decades, that admission is seismic: it signals that the palace itself no longer believes the 92-year-old can endure another campaign, let alone another seven-year mandate.
But within hours, the ruling party’s ideological commissar Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo rushed onto state and social media to brand Mr Sadi’s remarks “supposition” and to insist there is “no doubt—Paul Biya is our candidate.” In December he even described Biya’s re-election as “irrefragable,” a word chosen precisely to foreclose debate.
The spectacle of two cabinet heavyweights publicly contradicting each other is unprecedented in Cameroon’s tightly-controlled information space. It strongly suggests that:
A battle is raging inside the governing CPDM over how to manage the succession;
Factions are floating mutually exclusive narratives to test domestic and international reaction;
Most alarmingly, the option of postponing the vote and installing Prime Minister Dion Ngute as “interim” leader—the very scenario outlined in your pages—remains on the table.
If the Biya camp were genuinely preparing for a normal election, party discipline would forbid such discord. Instead, Cameroonians are being conditioned for uncertainty while foreign partners are quietly lobbied to accept an extra-constitutional transition marketed as a “stability measure.”
Why this matters for Ambazonia
For the people of the Southern Cameroons, a delayed election in La République du Cameroun is more than a procedural quibble; it is a direct threat to our right of self-determination. A two-year “transition” led by the very architects of repression would:
Entrench the military occupation of our territory;
Freeze the international diplomatic clock just as momentum is building for mediated talks;
Hand Paris—and its chosen proxies—two additional years to re-engineer the political landscape to their advantage.
A call to action
I therefore urge The Independentist’s readership—and all observers of Central African affairs—to treat the Sadi–Ndongo contradiction as a flashing red light. We must demand:
An unequivocal timetable for the 5 October 2025 ballot, published in the official gazette;
Full, real-time access for independent media and election monitors;
A clear statement from international partners that any postponement outside the constitution will trigger targeted sanctions.
Anything less would reward duplicity and invite a repeat of 1983, 2004, and 2018—moments when outside actors blessed improvised “transitions” that only prolonged authoritarian rule.
As your editorial rightly concluded, “If we break this time, it will be high treason—and the cost may be eternal.” The events of the past 48 hours show that break is already being engineered. Let us not sleep-walk into another lost decade.
Yours faithfully,
Peter M. (Ambazonian in the diaspora)
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