REPUBLIC OF CAMEROUN

• Official name: Republic of Cameroun / Republique de Cameroun
• Location: West Africa
• International organisations: African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, African Union, Non-Aligned Movement, Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Organisation of Islamic Conference, United Nations, World Trade Organisation
• Borders: Central African Republic, Chad, Congo (Democratic Republic), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Nigeria
• Coastline: Bight of Biafra
• Land area: 475,440 Km2
• Population: 16,100,000
• Annual GDP (PPP) per capita: US$2,300 (2009 CIA estimate). World ranking: 147
• Ethnicity: Almost the entire population is of African stock, the largest groups being the Bamileke-Bamoun (known as the Highlanders), the Fulani and other related peoples in the north, and the Duala, Bulu and other Bantu peoples in the south.
• Languages: French and English are the official languages but French is dominant in government and business. There are 24 major African languages spoken.
• Religion: Indigenous beliefs 40%, Catholic Christian 40%, Sunni Moslem 20%. The north is mainly Moslem.
• Form of government: Presidential republic. Cameroun is divided into ten provinces
• Capital: Yaounde
• Constitution: The Constitution of the Republic of Cameroun came into effect on 20 May 1972. It was substantially amended in 1996.
• Head of state: The President, elected by direct universal suffrage for a seven-year term.
• Head of government: The Prime Minister, appointed by the President. The Prime Minister is in theory accountable to the legislature but in practice is accountable to the President.
• Legislature: Cameroun has a unicameral legislature. The Assemblee Nationale / National Assembly has 180 members, elected for five-year terms from single- and multi-member constituencies.
• Electoral authority: Elections are conducted by the Observatoire National des Elections / National Elections Observatory (This website has not been updated since 2004.) There is also a body called Elections Cameroun or ELECAM (no website), which was created in 2006 as a supposedly independent election commission. However eleven of its twelve board members are members of the President's party.
• Freedom House 2009 rating: Political Rights 6, Civil Liberties 6

Political history

The coastal region known as Cameroun was annexed by Germany in 1884. The territory was occupied by the British and French in 1914, and later the League of Nations divided the territory into the British Cameroons and French Cameroun as Mandated Territories. Pressure for independence in the French territory began to grow in the 1950s, and France granted internal self-government within the French Union in 1958, and full independence in 1960. The southern part of the British Cameroons voted in 1961 to federate with Cameroun, while the northern part voted to join Nigeria.

Ahmadou Ahidjo, the leading nationalist figure, became Prime Minister in 1958 and President in 1960. In 1972 he turned Cameroun into a one-party state and abolished the federal status of the former British Cameroons. Ahidjo remained in office until 1982 when he retired and was succeeded by his Prime Minister, Paul Biya, who has been President since.

In 1990 Biya reluctantly permitted the formation of political parties, after several attempts to crush the growing movement for democracy. The first officially multiparty presidential and legislative elections were held in 1992, but these were condemned by international observers as rigged. Biya continues to rule in an authoritarian way, and the opposition boycotted the 1997 presidential and legislative elections.

Biya should have faced re-election in 2002, but in 1998 he amended the Constitution to extend his term until 2004. Legislative elections in 2002 were again boycotted by the opposition. Biya was comfortably re-elected in 2004. Opposition parties contested the 2007 legislative elections (for which no figures have been published), but won only 27 seats out of 180. Hostility to Biya's corrupt and authoritarian rule has fuelled a secessionist movement in the territory of the former British Cameroons, which now suffers repression on top of incompetent government.

President Biya's party, the Cameroun People's Democratic Movement (RPDC), dominates national politics. Other parties are the Social-Democratic Front, the National Union for Democracy and Progress (UNDP) and the Democratic Union of Cameroun. In 2008 the National Assembly amended the constitution to allow Biya, who is 76, to stand for re-election in 2011.

Freedom House's 2009 report on Cameroun says: "Cameroon is not an electoral democracy. Although the 1996 constitutional revisions created an upper chamber for the legislature, a decentralized system of regional government, and a Constitutional Court, none of those changes have been implemented... Despite some high-profile convictions of former regime officials, corruption remains endemic. Biya's many years in power and the large number of cabinet ministries have encouraged cronyism, with members of Biya's Beti ethnic group dominating key positions... Cameroon was ranked 141 out of 180 countries in Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index and 164 out of 181 countries in the World Bank's 2009 Doing Business index... The constitution guarantees free speech, but genuine freedom of expression remains elusive... The judiciary is subordinate to the Ministry of Justice, and the courts are weakened by extensive political influence and corruption. Military tribunals exercise jurisdiction over civilians in cases involving civil unrest or organized armed violence, and various intelligence agencies operate with impunity."

Updated December 2009