YAOUND: One of Africa’s oldest leaders Paul Biya, who has ruled Cameroon with an iron fist since 1982, won a landslide victory on Monday in a controversial presidential election, as the government tightened security and gunfire erupted in the volatile Anglophone region.

The Constitutional Council, dominated by Biya loyalists, on Monday said the 85-year-old leader had won 71.3 per cent of the ballot in the Oct 7 election, marred by allegations of widespread fraud, a low turnout and violence in the poll run-up.

The Council’s head Clement Atangana said opposition challenger Maurice Kamto, was a far second with 14.2 per cent of the vote.

“Today, we cannot imagine a scenario where Mr. Biya will quit power normally,” said political expert Stephane Akoa.

“If Mr Biya thought about alternating power or democracy, he would not have put in place this machinery ... whose main task is modify the results in such a way that Mr Biya is the inevitable winner,” he said.

Voting was disrupted in Francophone Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions, where a separatist movement has unleashed a brutal government crackdown. Turnout here was below five per cent, according to the International Crisis Group think tank.

AFP journalists reported tight security around the main post office in the capital Yaounde after calls on social media for a protest rally against the results.

Anti-riot police trucks and security forces were deployed across the area.

The historic opposition party based in the west, the Social Democratic Front, has long stood against Biya. The party’s failure to demand outright independence has roused calls of “treason” among hardliners.

Biya became prime minister in 1975, but precisely how he was anointed to succeed Cameroon’s founding president Ahmadou Ahidjo in November 1982 remains a mystery.

Unlike more fiery and flamboyant peers in the club of long-standing African leaders, critics say Biya — who is nicknamed “The Sphinx” — is a quiet autocrat.

In a rare moment of candour, he once warned of his sweeping powers telling a Cameroonian journalist in 1986: “Just a little shake of my head and you’ll be reduced to nothing”.

Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2018

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