BY SANDRA LUM
The 2018 Presidential election has come and gone with the Constitutional Council, headed by Clement Atangana, declaring the incumbent President Paul Biya, flag-bearer of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, that has been in power since 1982, winner of the polls with an overwhelming majority of votes.
But the outcome of the polls as declared by the Constitutional Council, didn’t go down well to the militants and sympathisers of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, CRM, better known in its French abbreviation, MRC.
The founder and presidential candidate for the MRC party, Professor Maurice Kamto, who was declared runner-up in the election by the Constitutional Council, in a press statement, declared that he won the elections going by the return sheets of the party’s polling agents at the various polling stations all over the national territory. Kamto alleged the election was rigged in favour of the CPDM Presidential candidate by both the elections managing body, Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, and the Constitutional Council.
It is against this backdrop that MRC Presidential candidate, Prof Maurice Kamto, announced a series of nationwide peaceful demonstrations and manifestations in protest of what he called their “stolen victory” at the 2018 presidential election.
The first of the peaceful protests and demonstrations took place in January 26, 2019, but received stiff resistance from security operatives who opened fire, tear-gassed, molested, tortured and arrested hundreds of militants and sympathisers
The leader of MRC, Professor Maurice Kamto; Secretary General, Alain Fogue, National Treasurer, Olivier Bibou Nissack, other party bigwigs, Paul Eric Kingue, Mamadou Mota, Albert Ndzonga, Barrister Ndocki Michele, and about 300 militants were also arrested and whisked to the Kondengui maximum security prison in Yaounde. They were incarcerated for endangering state security, hostilities against the fatherland, insurrection, propagation of false information, revolution, among others.
The arrest of MRC leader and his entire executive provoked militants and sympathisers of the party to take to the streets for massive protests with Douala the economic capital being the centre of attraction as militants and sympathisers of the party. They stormed the streets in April 2019, carrying placards denouncing what they called electoral fraud.
The protest in the streets of Douala met with brutal clampdown from the military. Many militants and sympathisers of the MRC were arrested including Enow Stanley Egbe, who, like many other Anglophone Cameroonians was fleeing threats from separatist fighters in the North West and South West Region.
Enow was already considered by separatist fighters a blackleg because he defied their calls for general boycott of the 2018 presidential election in the North West and South West Regions and voted.
Reports say Enow was later arrested in Douala amidst the MRC protest for taking videos. He was also accused of being a separatist fighter who was in Douala to destabilise the French-speaking part of Cameroon.
THE SUN gathered that Enow Stanley Egbe, alongside other MRC militants and sympathisers, miraculously escaped from custody after five months. His whereabouts since then is unknown.
The government has declared Enow and the others wanted.
As we went to press the government had launched fresh pursuit for their arrest alongside many other MRC supporters who were involved in the various post-2018 presidential election protest and manifestations.
Security operatives, according to family sources, are making constant patrols around their neighbourhoods to arrest and prosecute Enow and the others, for endangering state security, hostilities against the fatherland, insurrection propagation of false information and revolution, whose penalties range from five years to life imprisonment.
