The 2018 Cameroonian Presidential Election as a Turn of Hope and Disillusion

• In Event: Democratic Consolidation and the Effects of Democratization in Africa

Abstract

Why was the 2018 Presidential Election in Cameroon followed by a democratic black-sliding? How to understand the observed participatory turn in local youth mobilization, boiling transnational social networks around the pre and post presidential election period in Cameroon and the sudden negative discourses raised after the Decree of the January 4, 2019 nominating new members of Government? Which significations to give to the new arisen forms of popular political movements which challenged the local political power at the transnational level?
By looking for answers to these questions, the idea of the proposed paper is to contrast the particularity of the 2018 Cameroonian presidential election as a most popular and specific one in terms of symbolic participation and youth involvement and the contradictory lost of hope of engaged political actors belonging to the ruling party, as well as the disaffection of young people who for the first time voted.
In fact, the 2018 presidential election in Cameroon not only took place within harsh times of social violence, as well as, political disgrace of the ruling political elites. Moreover, the years 2017 and 2018 in Cameroon have been characterized by a boiling national public sphere surrounded by discourses as well as social and popular mobilizations which, in turn, brought up about new figures of the political elites with relative popular success as opposed to the disgrace of the governing political power who had now been ruling for 36 years.
To answer to the main questions asked, the research methodology intends to use mixed method of inquiries (qualitative and quantitative) able to come out with explanations of changes in the political behaviors of both ordinary citizens and engaged political actors from the governing and new emerged political parties who had not stopped mentioning their disappointment or their lost of trust in the current political power since the Presidential Decree of January 4, appointing new technocrats and political elites.

Author

• Mireille Manga Edimo, University of Yaounde II, Cameroon