Cameroon’s opposition on Monday said ”massive fraud” marred the country’s legislative elections and vowed to challenge the results in court even as votes were still being counted.
”These elections were a catastrophe,” said Joseph Lavoisier Tsapy of the main opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF).
”On the whole, they were not different from previous elections,” he said. ”They were marked by massive fraud.”
Tsapy accused authorities of having distributed electoral cards to young people to have them vote for President Paul Biya’s party, the Democratic Rally of the Cameroonian People (RDPC).
”We are going to systematically file challenges in all districts where we have lost,” he said.
The government’s Minister for Territorial Administration, Marafa Hamidou Yaya, said on Sunday ”no major malfunctioning likely to distort the results of the vote has been recorded”.
He called the elections ”free and transparent”.
Meanwhile, authorities said one person was seriously hurt on Sunday evening when a supporter of another opposition party, the Cameroonian Democratic Union (UDC), attacked an official in Magba, north of the capital, Yaounde.
The incident occurred as opposition supporters stormed a building and tried to burn ballot boxes, according to local official Dieudonne Bapes Bilong.
A UDC official said the incident resulted from frustration with electoral fraud and claimed the injured person was a UDC supporter.
Even before Sunday’s vote, the opposition claimed Biya was trying to preserve his stranglehold over the West African nation at any cost.
Others, however, said the elections were far better planned than in 2002, when they had to be deferred due to poor organisation.
Jacob Beide, coordinator for a group of election observers from African NGOs, said on Sunday: ”Fraud attempts and fraud have been reported — at least one case of ballot-box stuffing and the majority of people are voting without identity cards.”
Graft is rampant in oil-rich Cameroon, with the country regularly listed as among Africa’s most corrupt by Transparency International, and Biya is accused by critics of trampling on democracy and human rights.
Oil wealth has not trickled down to the millions of poor.
Biya’s party held 149 of 180 seats in Parliament before the election. He was appointed prime minister in 1975 and has been president since 1982.
The first preliminary results were expected on Monday. — Sapa-AFP