Camer360

Let’s say the quiet part out loud: 15 million CFA francs per candidate is not campaign finance; it’s optics. With twelve contenders cleared by the Constitutional Council and a 30 million CFA deposit already paid just to get on the ballot, a 15m state grant reads less like support for pluralism and more like a token designed to claim “level playing field” while leaving real asymmetries untouched.

Run the math. A national race across ten regions needs travel, field teams, printing, media buys, legal compliance, logistics and security. One week of balanced radio and outdoor can swallow 15m. The message to smaller parties is blunt: bring your own money—or don’t compete.

Worse, starvation financing pushes campaigns toward opaque private and foreign funding, precisely where influence is traded in the shadows. Who gives? What strings? Voters deserve to know before—not after—the vote.

Meanwhile, the CPDM—the only force with routine access to public infrastructure and state media lanes—continues to benefit from structural advantages that no token grant counterbalances. Its defenders will say the rules exist and everyone must “organise better.” Fine. Then let’s enforce rules that make organisation, not patronage, decisive.

A credible fix isn’t complicated:

• Publish the exact grant amount and disbursement calendar now.

• Set enforceable spending caps and real-time disclosure of donations and buys.

• Guarantee equal, timed access to public media with audited logs.

• Criminalise and sanction the misuse of state resources for any campaign—swiftly and publicly.

• Mandate audited post-election accounts for every candidate, published online.

Until those basics are in place, the 15m headline is a distraction. Democracy is not a photo-op of twelve faces on a poster; it’s the hard, documented work of making sure each of those faces can actually be heard.