President Paul Biya has been rated Africa’s longest serving leader, after Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea that rose to power in 1979.
The rating is contained in an article in the US authoritative newspaper, The Washington Post, published on the eve of the 32nd anniversary of the President’s accession to power last Tuesday, November 04.
The article titled: “The World Leaders who just won’t Step Down” is by-lined by the foreign affairs correspondent of the newspaper, Adams Taylor. To the American newspaper, Biya is among the African Presidents who are scheming to eternalise their stay in power.
On Thursday, November 6, Biya Clocked exactly 11,712 days in power (32 years). It was on November 04, 1982 that Cameroon’s first post-independence President, Ahmadou Ahidjo, resigned and handed over power to his Prime Minister, Paul Biya.
Political observers hold that Biya who promised to give Cameroon a veneer of democracy, rigour and moralisation, suddenly metamorphosed into a full-fledged dictator, after the failed coup d’etat of April 6, 1984. Since then, critics have described the New Deal apostle as a dictator in democratic garments.
Foreign policy, a magazine published by The Washington Post, described Biya as a sit-tight President who has amassed excessive wealth to the tune of 200,000 US dollars (CFAF100 billion) and the mansions that go with it.
In a rating of 40 dictatorial leaders in the world, the Magazine qualifies Biya as the 23rd worst dictator on earth. It equally stigmatises Cameroon’s president for virtually disarming the opposition by way of election rigging. “Biya has co-opted the opposition into complete submission. Not that he is worried about elections; he has rigged the lawful term limit twice to make sure that the party does not end anytime soon,” partly reads the article by a Ghanaian journalist cum economist, George B. N. Ayittey.
The article pours scorn on Cameroon’s octogenarian president for changing the constitution of his country in 2008 to eternalise his stay in power. Since the beginning of the Biya regime, the article points out, Cameroonians have never known free, fair and transparent elections, adding that the elections management body, Elections Cameroon, ELECAM is made up of cohorts of the ruling CPDM party.
While commenting on the articles published in The Washington Post, the Secretary General of the main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front, SDF, Dr Elizabeth Tamajong, said the facts were a faithful rendition of what president Biya has been doing in over three decades. She said the reign of the New Deal has been bleak.
She recalled that it was during the New Deal regime that Cameroon was disgraced twice as the world champion of corruption. She went on to say, Cameroon, a Country endowed with enormous natural and human resources, was qualified a heavily indebted poor country during the New Deal Regime. She buttressed claims by the French Media which said while Cameroon was sinking deep in the abyss of poverty, Biya and his entourage was amassing wealth by every means.
It is worth noting that French newspapers published articles a few years back, exposing the extravagance and the opulence with which President Biya and his entourage were living in the French resort town of La Baule, a few years back.
They reportedly hired 43 rooms in two expensive hotels in which they paid over FCFA 31 million a night for three weeks. This would mean that the president spent over FCFA 65million of the tax payers’ money during their sojourn in France at the time.
While reacting to the articles, the Minister of Communication and Government Spokesperson, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, described them as the handiwork of Cameroon’s enemies.
He said President Biya, in 32 years, has transformed Cameroon into a modern state. He said it was Biya who brought multi- party politics, press freedom and launched a relentless war against corruption. For his part, CPDM, bigwig, Professor Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, said nobody who is truthful can gainsay the fact that president Biya has upgraded Cameroon to the rank of a modern democratic state in the world.
He said the close to 300 political parties and a multiplicity of newspapers, private radio and TV stations; represent a tell-tale that Cameroonians are breathing an air of freedom under the New Deal regime. He argued that the development Biya has brought is so visible and palpable that one can see, touch and feel it.
Another baron of the regime, Prof. Jacques Fame Ndongo said in an interview on CRTV radio that President Biya’s balance sheet is largely positive, especially in the diplomatic, political and the economic spheres. It was in this perspective that he called on militants of the ruling CPDM party to roll out the drums and celebrate the achievements of a president who brought peace, progress and unity to Cameroon.
