The campaign for maiden regional elections started in Cameroon on Saturday.
The campaign will last for two weeks and end at midnight on the eve of voting day scheduled for December 6.
A dozen political parties will try to win the votes of some 10,000 municipal councillors and traditional rulers who constitute the electoral college.
The ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM) has submitted candidates in all 58 electoral constituencies and is running unchallenged in 35 constituencies.
Cameroon’s two main opposition parties, Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) and Social Democratic Front (SDF) have boycotted the elections, citing a “biased” electoral code and insecurity in the country’s Anglophone regions.
According to Cameroonian constitutional law, the regional council is the assembly for the affairs of the region. The regional elections, contained in the Constitution for many years, have however never been organized.
Cameroon has made the first-ever regional elections a cornerstone of the decentralisation process which some local observers say will help appease the separatist crisis in two English-speaking regions.
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