Technical assistance or international interference? ELECAM’s choice calls into question Cameroon’s sovereignty

Signing ceremony of the technical partnership between ELECAM and the United Nations system. 05/09/2025 – Elecam Archives

While the stated objective of signing the agreement is to ensure a peaceful electoral climate, the decision raises serious diplomatic and institutional questions. Since ELECAM is the body responsible for elections in Cameroon and is supposed to be independent, in practice, its initiative poses a fundamental challenge to national sovereignty.

Why would a state with its own electoral body financed by its public treasury need foreign assistance to organize its elections? Why is ELECAM acting without consulting political parties, without public consultation, while the national electoral list remains awaited and unpublished five months before the presidential election?

In the African context, this approach painfully recalls the events in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010-2011, where the UN’s direct involvement in the electoral process precipitated a dramatic post-election crisis. In Cameroon, some analysts fear a gradual externalization of the national democracy, where the electoral authority could become the technical arm of multilateral institutions that are more influential than supportive.

From a geopolitical perspective, the timing of this partnership is far from neutral. It comes at a time of intense internal sociopolitical tensions, with a divided political class and an increasingly distrustful civil society. It also coincides with an international climate marked by rising strategic rivalries, particularly between the West and Africa’s new partner powers, such as Russia, China, and Turkey.

By entrusting part of the technical organization of its elections to the United Nations system, Cameroon is sending an ambiguous message to the international community. Its need for external guarantees may legitimize its internal institutions and this could be interpreted both as a desire for openness and an admission of democratic fragility.

Elecam’s press release

Diplomatically, the initiative could shift the balance. On the one hand, it may reassure some international donors of the country’s commitment to respecting democratic standards. But on the other, it risks irritating domestic political forces excluded from the process and weakening popular confidence in ELECAM, which is accused of operating in a secretive manner.

This partnership, therefore, calls for increased vigilance. Cameroon, in its quest for political stability, should avoid transforming assistance into trusteeship. The United Nations system can offer useful expertise, but it cannot play a decision-making role in the conduct of a democratic process in a context where the UN itself is subject to widespread criticism for its failure to ensure stability, peace, and security in a burning world.

It is therefore not the UN that must interfere to guarantee democracy in Cameroon, but the Cameroonian people themselves. And this requires credible institutions, transparent processes, and sovereign and legal decisions, such as the publication of the national electoral roll, which has since been demanded by national opinion, and the involvement of all stakeholders in the electoral process.

By Yves Modeste Ngue