The UDC National President says Kamto’s departure from the MRC presidency should not be reduced to a party affair, warning that the weakening of political parties threatens democracy in Cameroon.
She calls for stronger political competition based on ideas and programmes, while urging militants not to allow current difficulties to turn their political engagement into resignation.
The National President of the Cameroon Democratic Union (UDC), Hon. Tomaino Ndam Njoya, said the resignation of Professor Maurice Kamto as National President of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC), is an important political event that deserves careful reflection.
In a statement dated September 9, 2026, Ndam Njoya said she would not speculate on Kamto’s reasons for leaving the leadership of the MRC beyond what the former party president himself had stated.
However, she argued that the development should not simply be treated as an internal affair of the MRC, stressing that what happens to a political party ultimately concerns the wider democratic community.
“There are political events which one must resist the temptation of easy commentary,” Ndam Njoya stated, referring to Kamto’s decision to leave the MRC presidency.
She said Cameroon has for too long witnessed what she described as a worrying decline in the place and role of politics, with political parties becoming weakened, leaders facing constant challenges to their legitimacy and militants subjected to pressure, intimidation and discouragement.
According to the CDU leader, when competition between ideas is gradually replaced by unequal battles, persistent controversies over the legitimacy of political actors and obstacles that exhaust political organisations, the country can no longer claim to be experiencing normal political competition.
“At some point, it is no longer only the opponent that is weakened; it is political engagement itself that ends up being suffocated,” she said.
Tomaino Ndam Njoya maintained that politics should be based on competition between ideas, programmes and records, allowing Cameroonians to freely make their choice.
She argued that political opponents should be confronted politically through ideas and programmes rather than through practices that undermine democratic competition.
The CDU leader also called for a different relationship between the State and opposition political parties.
She stressed that a political party is not an enemy of the State and that an opposition figure is not an enemy of the Republic.
According to her, challenging a government that has been in power for decades and pointing out signs of poor institutional governance should not be considered an act against Cameroon.
She further warned those in positions of state responsibility that the strength of government should not be measured by the silence of its opponents.
“The strength of a democratic State is not having a weakened opposition; it is being able to face a strong opposition without being afraid of democracy,” she said.
Ndam Njoya urged militants of the MRC, as well as members of other political parties, not to allow the difficulties of Cameroonian politics to discourage them from participating in public life.
She said Cameroon would need all its political forces and generations to build the next stage of its history.
The CDU National President also expressed his respect for the decisions taken by Professor Maurice Kamto and Mamadou Mota, saying that history would ultimately judge the choices made by political actors.
While reflecting on the state of democracy in Cameroon, Ndam Njoya said the key question now was what citizens collectively wanted to make of the country's political future.
For the CDU, she said, the objective is to build a Republic where nobody needs to disappear for another person to exist, where people do not have to be afraid to preserve their political convictions and where political power is won through the confidence of the people and lost when that confidence disappears.
She ended her statement with a call for Cameroon to restore politics to what she described as its more noble purpose.
“The state of our democracy concerns us. The question that now arises for all of us is what we collectively want to make of it,” Ndam Njoya said.
Her statement came one day after Professor Maurice Kamto announced his resignation as National President of the MRC, a decision he said was taken in the interest of the party, its militants and sympathisers, and the wider “People of Change.”
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