Osih, 54, who was previously the party’s first vice-president, succeeds John Fru Ndi, who died on June 12 after chairing the SDF since its creation in 1990. The SDF is the leading opposition movement represented in the National Assembly with 5 seats out of 180 in a chamber dominated by President Paul Biya’s party.
The 90-year-old is regularly accused by the UN and international NGOs of repressing opposition in this vast Central African country of nearly 30 million people.
Osih was elected with 62 percent of the votes of SDF activists at the congress against two other candidates, Jean Takougang, a member of the party’s electoral commission, told AFP.
John Fru Ndi had long been the main opponent, very close to winning the presidential election in 1992 with nearly 36% of the vote against nearly 40% for Mr. Biya. But, in recent years, the SDF has lost ground, from 43 MPs in 1997 to just 5 in 2023.
In the 2018 presidential election, the SDF recorded the worst score in its history, with Joshua Osih winning only 3.35% of the vote.
The Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) then positioned itself as the leading opposition party, with its leader Maurice Kamto winning 14.23% of the vote against 71.28% for Mr. Biya.
In June, Amnesty International accused the government of “human rights violations”, including “arbitrarily” imprisoning opponents, civilians, journalists and civil society leaders, and putting them on trial in military courts on charges of “terrorism”.
Kamto was imprisoned for nine months without trial in 2019 for peaceful protests against the government and was only released after international pressure. The CRM has no elected representatives in the Assembly because it boycotted the 2018 legislative elections.
In 2019 and 2020, nearly 700 CRM cadres and activists were arrested like Kamto, during and after “undeniably peaceful marches” but “objects of violent repression”, UN-mandated experts had accused in November 2022. Most were released after eight months of detention without trial, but 47 were sentenced to prison in 2021 by a military court.
Forty-four are still imprisoned.