Laudable efforts deployed in 2015 to boost voter registration met lesser enthusiasm from new voters.

The exercise of the revision of voters’ registers that held from January 1 to August 31, 2015 recorded just 240,000 newly registered voters. The figure, critics say, is below expectations since it falls short of meeting the 8-million-voter potential that the country possesses at the moment given its over 20-million head count.

Several reasons to justify the low rate of voter enthusiasm have been given. For the elections management body, Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, traditional and religious beliefs were to blame for the institution’s failure to attract the desired number of women and youths targeted during the 2015. Other stakeholders complained of the unattractiveness and unreliability of the political process and Elecam’s weak financial, material and human resource capacity to conduct the process.

Some political parties sidelined the process for reasons of low motivation while rural populations blamed Elecam for concentrating their teams in urban areas and undermining the involvement of administrative and traditional authorities. Meanwhile, others blamed the low number of biometric registration kits; just 1200, which was deemed insufficient for 360 councils nationwide.

As solutions, Aloys Parfait of the SDF party and Kuma Peter Kombain of the UNDP party proposed an overhaul of the Electoral Code while Basile Louka of the UPC party advised that political dialogue between stakeholders will upbeat the process. On his part, the political scientist, Prof. Manasse Aboya Endong recommended that Elecam should endeavour to identify the category of persons lacking on the voters’ rolls and reach out to them through target strategies. Available statistics could help better understanding and orientation of redeployment of Elecam teams.