Cameroon: Parliament Extends Mandate of MPs, Municipal Councillors Despite Opposition Outcry

By Boris Esono Nwenfor

BUEA, Cameroon – Cameroon's National Assembly has approved a bill extending the mandate for its current lawmakers for a year from March 10, 2025, to March 30, 2026. House Speaker Cavaye Yeguie Djibril said that the extension was imperative to "decongest" the electoral calendar next year which will see presidential, parliamentary, municipal and regional council elections.

Last week, President Paul Biya asked his government to pass a bill extending terms for all 180 members of Parliament by 12 months — well into 2026. The government said that the extension will "spread the elections over the years 2025 and 2026, to ensure better organization.

The lawmakers were elected in 2020 to serve a five-year term expiring on March 10, 2025. Lawmakers of the CPDM-control House say Cameroon's constitution gives President Biya the power to consult the Constitutional Council and ask parliament to vote on extensions and postpone elections whenever circumstances warrant.

CPDM Members applaud

President Biya has not said if he will be a candidate. But CPDM supporters across the country have marched in the streets urging the world's oldest leader to run for office in the 2025 presidential election, potentially extending his more than four-decade rule. Biya's supporters say he is a democrat and has won all elections since Cameroon's 1990 return to multi-party politics. If re-elected, Biya will be President up to 2032. By then, he will be 98 years old.

“I think it is a good thing for us, first and foremost, and for the country, that it will give time for us to prepare adequately for all of the next steps,” Honourable Lawson Tabot, CPDM Member of Parliament for Meme said. “And it will give opportunity for every Cameroonian to express his political rights.”

“So I think it is welcome. And even those colleagues who questioned the decision were also right in their approach. But what carries the weight of the decision of the head of state is what it is constitutionally described.”

SDF calls for postponement of Regional Council Election

Many in the opposition fear the extension could weaken the challenge to Biya, because holding legislative and municipal elections next year could have given them momentum ahead of a presidential election scheduled for October 2025.

The electoral code stipulates that a presidential candidate can only be nominated by a political party that has representation in the National Assembly, Senate, Regional Council or Municipal Council, or via a recommendation from at least 300 dignitaries.

“To make our decentralization work, it would be most appropriate for the Regional Council Election to be postponed as well to enable,” said Honourable Joshua Osih, Chairman of the Social Democratic Front, SDF Party.

 “I'm saying this from a party that has no one regional councillor, it would be legitimate for this election to be postponed as well, to permit the new municipal councillors to be able to play their constitutional role of electing regional councillors.”

Honourable Joshua Oshih added: “It is part of the reasons we go and vote for our councillors, because we vote for people in whom we trust our choice of regional councillors, knowing the importance that we put into our decentralization.”

“I would like, if you have no answer to my question, to take it as a plea to make sure that everything is done to assure that this peace is possible for the simple reason that our development comes from the base and our regions is very important.”

For the leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, MRC, headed by Maurice Kamto, Biya's main challenger in 2018, the postponement hits hard. Kamto does not have such representation as his party boycotted the last municipal and legislative elections over the lack of electoral reforms.

Kamto said the law extending the term of parliamentarians, along with a presidential decision postponing local elections, is another ploy by 91-year-old Biya to remain leader for life.