Paul Biya, the leader who never loses

It was not at all surprising that the Constitutional Council of Cameroon announced the re-election of 92-year-old President Paul Biya, the oldest head of state in the world, for an eighth consecutive term.

Amid rumors of a close result and claims that his main rival, former government minister Issa Chiroma Bakare, had won, excitement and tension mounted in the run-up to Monday’s announcement.

The official result, Biya winning with 53.7%, ahead of Chiroma Bakare with 35.2%, came as a shock, but for many Cameroonians it was a shock.

Biya’s decision to run for another seven-year term, after 43 years in power, was inevitably controversial. Not only because of his long stay in power, but also because his style of governance has raised questions.

Extended stays abroad, usually at the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva or at more discreet alternative locations around the Swiss lakeside city, have repeatedly sparked speculation about the extent to which he actually governs Cameroon – or whether most decisions are in fact made by the Prime Minister and ministers or by the powerful Secretary-General of the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.

Last year, after speaking at a World War II commemoration ceremony in southern France in August and attending a China-Africa summit in Beijing the following month, the president disappeared from sight for nearly six weeks without any announcement or explanation. Which raised speculation about his health.

Even after senior officials indicated that he was, once again, in Geneva, reportedly business as usual, there was no real news until the announcement of his imminent return to his home country, the capital, Yaounde, where he was photographed being greeted by supporters.

This year, it was no real surprise when he included another visit to Geneva a few weeks before polling day on his agenda.

Biya’s ambiguous style of national leadership, in which he rarely calls formal meetings of the full Cabinet or publicly addresses complex issues, leaves a cloud of uncertainty over his administration’s goals and the shaping of government policy.

At the technical level, competent ministers and officials are pursuing a wide range of initiatives and programmes. But political vision and sense of direction were largely absent.

His regime has intermittently shown a willingness to suppress protests or arrest more of its critics. But this is not the only, or perhaps even the most important, factor that has kept him in power.

Because it must be said that Biya also played a distinguished political role.

He served as a balancing figure in a complex country, characterized by significant social, regional and linguistic differences – for example, between the tropical south and the savannah north, or the majority French-speaking regions and the English-speaking north-west and south-west, with their different educational and institutional traditions.

In a state whose early post-independence years were characterized by debates over federalism and tensions over what form national unity should take, he succeeded in bringing together governments that included representatives from a wide range of backgrounds.

Despite occasional pressure from the IMF and international creditors, its administration has managed to avoid a debt catastrophe and, in recent years, has gradually consolidated national finances.

Moreover, the past decade or so has seen Biya increasingly appear like a constitutional monarch, a symbolic figure who may decide some key issues but leave others to determine the course in most policy areas.

His continuation in this role was facilitated by competitive rivalries among senior figures in the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement. While there, succession need not be determined.

However, with no identified or preferred political heir, and with some figures who were from the “next generation” of the DCP now on the rise for years, Biya’s continuation in office has fueled an ongoing succession rumor mill.

Increasingly, his son Frank’s name was cited, even though he showed little interest in politics or government.

On the other hand, there is no shortage of development or security challenges for the President despite Cameroon’s rich diversity of natural resources.

Is it possible that today we are witnessing a decisive erosion in popular tolerance for Biya’s version of semi-authoritarian rule?

Are Cameroonians fed up with a system that offers them multi-party electoral expression but little hope of actually changing their rulers?

He has The bloody crisis in the English-speaking regions Revealed the limits of the president’s cautious and distant approach?

When protests demanding reform first broke out there in 2016, Biya was slow to respond. By the time he introduced real change and national dialogue, the momentum of violence had accelerated, eroding the space for a real settlement.

At the same time, his minimalist approach failed to sell a vision for Cameroon’s economic and social development or instill a sense of progress toward the goal.

Biya was already testing the limits of popular tolerance with his decision to run for a seventh consecutive term in 2018.

But he was eventually able to fend off a strong opposition challenge from Maurice Kamto, the leader of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement – ​​and when Kamto contested the official results that gave him just 14% of the vote, he was detained for more than eight months.

But this time, Chiroma’s candidacy succeeded in shifting the mood and sense of possibility in a way that no previous contender had been able to do, at least since 1992, when official results showed John Fru Ndi, of the Social Democratic Front, with 36% of the vote, just behind Biya on 40%.

This time, not only is Pia seven years older, she is less intrusive than before.

The problem is also that Tchiroma, a Muslim northerner, in contrast to Kamto – who struggled to reach beyond his core electorate – attracted support from a broad cross-section of society and from Cameroon’s regions, including especially the two English-speaking regions.

This former political prisoner, who later reached a settlement with Biya and accepted a ministerial position, had the courage to go to Bamenda, the largest English-speaking city, and apologize for his role in the government’s actions.

Over recent days, as tensions rose in the run-up to the announcement of the result, Chiroma smartly remained in his home city of Garoua in the north, where crowds of young supporters gathered to protect him from the risk of arrest by security forces.

Now, with expectations so high, there is intense frustration and anger among opposition supporters over the official result, no matter how expected.

There have already been reports of security forces shooting at demonstrators in Douala, the southern port city that is the economic hub. Shooting has now been reported from Garoua as well.

For Cameroon, Biya’s insistence on securing an eighth presidential term brought great risks and painful costs.

Paul Melly is a consulting fellow in the Africa Program at Chatham House in London.