The leadership of the ruling CPDM party in Kumbo in Bui Division in Southern Cameroons was visibly stunned when several militants staged a parade during the so-called National Day celebrations and displayed placards in support of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium. The humiliation suffered by the CPDM barons who had trooped in from Yaoundé, the nation’s capital was complete and total. The party has failed to win most of the elections in Bui ever since the advent of multiparty politics and was attempting to use the 45^th edition of the National Day to rally support.

The Bui CPDM is bitterly divided over whether the party should stick with Southern Cameroon demands for an independent state or remain an integral part of La Republique du Cameroun with an 84 year old leader who intends to run in 2018. Most political commentators are wary of putting it more firmly—that, whether or not Mr Paul Biya stays at its head, the CPDM’s mighty cash-laden machine may lose power. And that could turn the Francophone Beti Ewondo politics upside down.

The Bui CPDM militants have taken it upon themselves to rescue the party from its dictatorial leadership and have accused President Biya and his ruling Francophone elites of allowing “political repression, restrictions of freedom of association and arbitrary arrest of Anglophones.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroon Intelligence Report