Biya to amend constitution in March

President Paul Biya is set to amend the constitution in March to review presidential term limits to four-year renewable once - Create Vice Presidency post for Anglophones - Precipitate early elections in October 2016.

If everything goes as planned, according to our sources, the government will table bills on the creation of the post of vice president, precipitation of early elections in October 2016 and the revision of presidential term limits during the first parliamentary session for 2016 in March.

According to dependable sources, President Paul Biya is poised to create the post of vice president that would be occupied by an Anglophone in consonance with the bicultural and linguistic nature of the country.

The SUN has learnt that the President Biya is in search of a successor and the post of vice president will go a long way to familiarise his successor with the workings of the state machinery.

Biya’s government will table a bill in parliament for the amendment of presidential term limits from seven years renewable to four-year renewable.

Drawing from revelations by our high profile sources, Presidential elections will then hold in October 2016 following the content of another bill that is already under examination at high quarters.

Biya will contest the elections with his running mate, the Vice President.

After the first four-year mandate that ends in October 2020, Biya will take another term that will end in 2024, a date he had set for his departure.

In June 2004, rumours went wild announcing the death of President Biya.

Upon return from Europe, where he had been on a private stay, on June 9, 2004, such rumours were laid to rest.

In a brief exclusive interview granted to the CRTV upon his arrival, and reacting to the rumour about his death, the President said he learnt like everybody else, that he was dead. He said the rumour was a non-event. The president added, that the rumour was a bad joke, and ridiculous. He also said, those who wish for his death should wait for the next twenty years.

Given that the promised twenty years will be in 2024, Biya is seemingly mapping out a succession plan should he quit the Unity Palace.

Observers say if Biya’s succession plan becomes a reality; it will be a feeble attempt by President Biya to render political justice to Anglophones who have been complaining about marginalisation. Until things went wrong, it was an unwritten law that once the Head of State is a Francophone, the second would be an Anglophone.

This rule was respected until Hon. Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, a Francophone from the Far North Region replaced Hon. Lawrence Fonka Shang, an Anglophone from the Northwest Region, as Speaker of the National Assembly in the early 90s.

This move relegated Anglophones to the post of prime minister which is the third position regarding state protocol. This situation held sway until President Biya pushed Anglophones further down by appointing Marcel Niat Njifenji President of the Senate in 2013, rendering even the Prime Minister fourth in position.

The Post of Vice President will render redundant the office of Prime Minister, with signals pointing to the fact that Prime Minister Philemon Yang may become Cameroon’s last Prime Minister in the Ahidjo-Biya era.

CPDM party songbirds have already been calling for Biya to contest the next presidential elections while others have added to these calls by enjoining him to precipitate the 2018 presidential elections.

President Biya is said to be doing all to convince the Bretton Woods Institutions and the West that he is not in power because he wants it, but because he can.