The writer and political activist expressed her disappointment and anger towards the opponent Issa Tchiroma Bakary whom she supported during the 2025 election period.
The unsuccessful candidate in the October 12, 2025 presidential election in Cameroon, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, loses an unconditional supporter. Calixthe Beyala, an influential woman whose writing reaches beyond the African continent, expresses her disappointment with the politician. “The first to support this candidate” who ranked second at the end of the election, the writer no longer believes in the one she had “fully committed to.” A guest on the show “Decrypt Africa” on Mediatude on May 27, 2026, she expressed her stance towards Tchiroma by presenting the reasons for her distance.
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Calixthe Beyala withdraws her support for Issa Tchiroma Bakary because he could not withstand the pressure from the authorities after calling for street protests to claim his alleged victory. “He left abandoning the children facing weapons, facing the wrath of the leaders… Our children found themselves with no one to comfort them. They died alone without a leader. Our children are in prison alone without a leader,” laments the writer who is outraged that the politician called people to protest knowing he had no means to protect them and abandoned them to their fate.
She who struggles to forgive the political leader’s flight and the abandonment of the children he called to protest refuses to continue believing in a leader who does not keep his word. After promising the people liberation and change, the politician did not follow through with this momentum, preferring to withdraw in the face of obstacles to seek refuge in Gambia. “And I believe that when you make a commitment to a people to accompany them, support them, defend them at the cost of your blood, you do not leave. You keep your word,” she declares, drawing a comparison with Maurice Kamto who, after the 2018 election, stayed in Cameroon “with his people.” The MRC president was arrested, detained, then released.
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However, Issa Tchiroma Bakary has taken refuge in Gambia, from where he continues to call for protests. “Giving orders to bang pots from Gambia, to do what then? What orders could he give that would make something work or function? I don’t see them,” concludes Calixthe Beyala who declared the day after October 12 based on trends that “Tchiroma is ahead with a Soviet-style score.”
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