Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa by Tobias Hagmann Filip Reyntjens

Author:Tobias Hagmann,Filip Reyntjens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2016-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

5 | Donors and the making of ‘credible’ elections in Cameroon

Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle

Introduction

Cameroon has never been a ‘donor darling’ like Uganda, Rwanda or Ghana. A good reason for this is that it has never been a model of economic and political liberalization and reforms (Konings, 2011). Nevertheless, the country has benefited from constant financial and political support, briefly questioned at the beginning of the nineties. In 1992, the first multi-party presidential election won by the incumbent Paul Biya (in power since 1982) was indeed hotly contested: his opponents as well as many international observers and some embassies stated that the victory of the opposition candidate John Fru Ndi was stolen. In this debate, Western diplomats strongly disagreed: the US and German ambassadors voiced their discontent and cut aid flows, while France drastically increased its financial support (Ebolo, 1998; Emmanuel, 2010). In 2011, almost twenty years later, Paul Biya was re-elected with 78 per cent of the vote.1 On that occasion, and amidst harsh criticisms made by NGOs – some funded by donors – and in unofficial conversations, embassies acknowledged that the electoral process was ‘acceptable’ and sent public messages of congratulation – accompanied by some recommendations and reservations – a few days after the electoral results were proclaimed.2 Admitting retrospectively that this election suffered from a voter register described as ‘worrying’ and even ‘tarnishing Biya’s victory’,3 donors have progressively reached a consensus on the acceptability of the last twenty years of Cameroonian elections. While pushing for reforms since then, constantly negotiating on this issue with a reluctant Cameroonian government, they have been endorsing the consecutive electoral victories of Paul Biya and the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM).

The objective of this chapter is to understand why, how and with what effects Western donors have continuously promoted electoral reforms in spite of multiple setbacks, and endorsed electoral results in spite of sometimes strong reservations. The reluctance of the Cameroonian government to follow national or international recommendations on electoral reforms could be easily explained by the economic and political leverage of the Cameroonian government, which was able to ‘pick and choose’ the projects funded by donors and even its donors. Since the beginning of the 1990s, overseas development assistance had accounted for only 5 to 10 per cent of GNI. Since 2009, with an equivalent volume of around 600 million dollars a year, it accounts for around 2.5 per cent of the country’s GNI (World Bank, 2013). Cameroon is thus not financially dependent on donors’ funding. Moreover, oil, mining and forest resources as well as the country’s positioning as an ‘island of stability’ in a troubled regional environment give the Cameroonian government additional political leverage (Peiffer & Englebert, 2012). This political leverage may well be illustrated by a 2009 speech by the minister of foreign affairs to diplomatic officials after their criticism of Elecam, the then new independent electoral body. In a short address, he bluntly asked Cameroonian ‘partners’ to ‘be self-disciplined towards Elecam, and to refrain from the temptation of this new form

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.