What a big joke and one in bad taste, because election registration is being computerised by the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, MINATD, Cameroonians will for once witness transparent elections.
eSince when did the Leopard learn to change its spots? Computer projected information is as good as the data fed into the computer. Garbage in, garbage out, they say. Add a single zero to two hundred and it becomes two thousand.
Elections computers in the hands of MINATD, God forbid! Asking Cameroonians to register massively and vote in an election managed by MINATD is like the fans of Canon and Tonnerre football clubs, asking their respective teams to train very hard for an up-coming football match whose central referee is Canon's coach. Who in Cameroon will doubt the outcome of such a match?
If the opposition parties and so-called civil society groups in Cameroon still have a modicum of respect and credibility, they should mobilise the populace and take up the battle cry of "No ELECAM, No Elections!" Anything short of this, they might as well shut up their mouths and hold their peace forever.
Most Cameroonians do appreciate the enormous efforts our foreign friends are making to bring sanity to our democratisation process. Worthy of mention and praise here, are the contributions so far made and still being made by the US, UK, Japan, Canada, Germany and the Commonwealth in this regard. However, Cameroonians are not that naïve to swallow everything ours friends say they can do, or promise to do. 
This writer is greatly amused by recent declarations of some of our foreign friends (be they diplomats or otherwise), as to the possibility of transparency in the upcoming municipal and parliamentary elections to be conducted by MINATD.For anyone who has the slightest idea of the track record of MINATD, such declarations
smack of either naivety at best or a hidden agenda at the worst. To distinguish the one from the other, such a person making the declarations must first answer the question whether it was by accident or design that the Government set an 18-month period of Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, to be put in place.
It is no longer news that ever since the return of multi-party politics in the 1990s in Cameroon, all elections conducted by MINATD have been characterised by massive fraud in favour of the ruling party. Prelude to each of these elections, the same old song of promises of transparency is sung. The end result is always what every Tom, Dick and Harry in Cameroon knows.
Not even the glaring eyes of foreign observers, diplomats and so on, have ever made the regime blink in its strategies and determination to falsify elections results. What then is the magic wand to be applied this time by our very good-intentioned foreign friends?
Do they intend to observe the elections this time around in Akwaya, Mulundu, Furawa, Ako, Arubami Figuil, Mundemba and so on? The same scenario has been played and replayed ever so often that even the dullest of Cameroonians would scoff at any idea, suggestion or promise from whichever quarter it emanates, that things will be any different this time.
The best Cameroonians have been treated to, at the end of each of these election rituals, are pious criticisms and condemnations and then some sweet talk of improvements to be made in subsequent elections.
After all, they would say, no electoral system is perfect. In the meantime, the rogue is clutching the loot close to his chest and moving away quietly with it. Enough of this hogwash of MINATD-conduced 'transparent' elections' that simply borders on taking ordinary Cameroonians for idiots.
Francis Munyamnji, Buea
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