The French government, the British High Commission, and the Commonwealth will all endorse the results in the name of “stability.” They will issue carefully worded statements about “peaceful elections,” while waiting for their kickbacks — cheap bananas, timber, oil, or whatever else can be extracted from a colonized economy.
By The Independentist editorial Desk
The “results” are out in La République du Cameroun, and Paul Biya has once again been crowned. But this coronation feels more hollow than ever. The man himself has not been seen in public for months. Nobody knows his whereabouts. Rumors of sickness and death circulate daily, recycled images are used to project normalcy, and yet the regime claims he has secured another landslide victory with 61% of the vote.
The Leaked Results
According to information leaked by journalist Boris Bertolt, the cooked results of the CPDM’s election-manufacturing machine are as follows:
Paul Biya — 61%
Bello Bouba — 22%
Issa Tchiroma — 8%
The remaining 9 candidates combined — 9%
It is the same old script, recycled since 1992. But the absurdity is starker this time. How does a president who cannot be seen, who may not even be capable of walking to a podium, emerge with such a commanding “mandate”? How can a ghost sweep the polls?
A Population in a Trance
Either Cameroonians are being duped, drugged, or dulled into submission. For four decades, Paul Biya has reduced elections to empty rituals. Opposition leaders participate only to lend credibility, before being rewarded with crumbs of power. Issa Tchiroma, who today sits at 8%, knows too well what John Fru Ndi discovered in 1992: crowds mean nothing when the ballot is rigged. The will of the people is irrelevant when France and the CPDM have already written the outcome.
Meanwhile, the people suffer. Roads are craters. Hospitals are graveyards. Teachers strike in vain. Youths flee across the seas. Yet, amid this misery, the regime insists the masses have voted overwhelmingly for the man they never see.
The French Connection
Behind this theatre stands Paris. Since Cameroun’s cosmetic independence in 1960, France has never left. The CFA franc, the military pacts, and the secret clauses of Françafrique bind Yaoundé more tightly than chains. Biya’s regime is the local mask of this colonial power. Every “victory” is not just Biya’s — it is France’s. The Élysée needs continuity to protect contracts, pipelines, timber, and oil fields. The Camerounese elite knows this, and in exchange for loyalty to Paris, they are rewarded with protection and spoils.
The price of this interference is paid by ordinary Cameroonians in poverty, repression, and silence.
The International Rubber Stamp
And if nothing happens, the story is tragically predictable. The French government, the British High Commission, and the Commonwealth will all endorse the results in the name of “stability.” They will issue carefully worded statements about “peaceful elections,” while waiting for their kickbacks — cheap bananas, timber, oil, or whatever else can be extracted from a colonized economy. Perhaps this time it will even be free, after all the French have been taking timber and oil for free for decades until Glencore blew the whistle and other multinationals joined the scramble. Only then were they caught red-handed.
This is the corruption of international complicity: colonial powers pretending to respect democracy while pocketing the spoils of dictatorship.
Corruption Beyond Numbers
This is corruption not only of the ballot but of the soul. A whole population is conditioned to accept the absurd: to clap for a man they do not see, to believe in victories that defy reality, to normalize deception as governance. When lies are accepted as truth, dictatorship wins without firing a shot.
And yet, cracks remain. The crowds Tchiroma commands reveal simmering anger. The online mockery of the regime shows truth seeping through propaganda. Most telling of all, Biya himself cannot show his face. The dictator fears the judgment of his people more than his enemies.
Ambazonia’s Lesson
For Ambazonia, these contradictions confirm the futility of tying our destiny to Yaoundé’s fraud. Their elections are not ours. Their “victories” are not our defeats. Their circus is not our stage. Ambazonia must stay focused on its sovereignty, not be distracted by manufactured percentages.
We are reminded that if 20 million people can be forced to cheer a ghost, then Ambazonians under such a system would forever be prisoners of lies. Our path is separation, not participation.
Conclusion: The Ghost That Haunts Cameroun
Paul Biya’s “victory” is the hollow triumph of a ghost. An absent man celebrated as omnipresent. A dying regime dressed up as victorious. A colonial power interfering with impunity.
The price of France’s continued meddling is clear: poverty, corruption, and silence. And if Britain and the Commonwealth once again line up behind this fraud, history will remember their complicity.
Biya’s ghost may win on paper today. But history is already writing a different verdict — one of shame for the regime and its foreign backers, and one of liberation for those who refuse to be drugged by lies.
The Independentist editorial Desk
