One dead as Cameroon elects new regional councils
A regional official in Cameroon was killed by suspected Anglophone separatists near the city of Bamenda after casting his vote in Sunday’s regional council elections, the first ever such polls in the country.
The government hopes the election of 900 regional councillors in the country’s 10 regions will pave the way for decentralisation as recommended during last year’s national dialogue on the Anglophone crisis.
But the vote was boycotted by some members of the opposition SDF and MRC parties, and many in Cameroon are sceptical it goes far enough to end the four-year separatist insurgency in the English-speaking regions.
“It is not because we will have regional delegates that gunshots will stop and everything will be all right,” Cameroonian political analyst Stephane Akoa told Reuters.
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