Cameroon Ruling Party Expected to Win Legislative Polls

Voters in Cameroon began going to the polls Monday for legislative and local polls set to shore up the strong parliamentary majority of President Paul Biya's ruling party.

The election in the central African country began on schedule at 8:00 am (0700 GMT), but few people turned out in the early hours and some flaws in the electoral rolls were already noticed by an Agence France Presse correspondent in the capital Yaounde.

"I've just seen that the number on my voter's card is not the same as the one next to my name on the electoral roll," voter Tcheck Tcheck said at a polling station in a Yaounde school requisitioned for the ballot.

"I simply hope that everything will take place clearly, with justice and that there will be no cheating," said another voter, Marthe Mbazi.

Biya, 80, was prime minister in 1982 when then president Ahmadou Ahidjo stepped down, in a move that made his government chief head of state. Since winning a presidential election in 1984, Biya has ruled with extensive powers and has taken steps to prolong his term in office.

His Cameroonian People's Democratic Movement (RDPC) holds the majority of seats in the National Assembly and municipal authorities and is widely expected to make further gains.

The party wound up its campaign with a grandiose rally on Sunday on the forecourt of Yaounde's city hall.

The main goal of the opposition parties, including the Social Democratic Front (SDP) which currently holds 16 seats, is to avoid losing ground in both the assembly and the municipalities, according to political commentator Mathias Nguini Owona.

But the opposition is deeply fragmented and 29 parties are fielding candidates for parliament while 35 parties are in the running for local government seats.

Some 5.4 million voters have been called to the polls to elect 180 members of parliament and thousands of town councilors in 360 polling stations across the country in a single round of voting.

The terms of the current cohort of lawmakers elected in the last elections in 2007 expired in 2012, but have been extended on three separate occasions.

"We are likely to see a confirmation of the RDPC's hyper-domination because the electoral contest is greatly unequal," said Owona.

Opposition parties regularly accuse Biya's party of electoral fraud and of using state funds to wage their election campaigns while their opponents face financial troubles.

The government announced campaign funding totaling 1.7 billion CFA francs ($3.5 million, 2.6 million euros) and recently made half that sum available to parties contesting the election.

In October 2011, Biya was re-elected after beating long-time opponent John Fru Ndi, leader of the SDP, which has its roots in an English-speaking part of the country. The United States and France pointed to "irregularities" in the voting process.

After challenges to virtually every election result in the last two decades in the oil-rich but poverty-stricken country, both sides admit that the latest campaign has failed to capture the public's imagination.

"This lack of enthusiasm is indicative of the lack of confidence Cameroonians (have) in the electoral regulator Elecam," said Owona.

Polling stations are due to close at 6:00 pm and the country's borders, which have been closed since Saturday, are due to reopen Tuesday.

The government in 2006 launched a high-profile campaign to tackle rampant corruption, arresting a number of prominent figures including former ministers and heads of public companies.