5, September 2020
French Cameroun: Of Biya the holidaymaker and Swiss repatriation 0
The French Cameroun dictator who was given marching orders to leave Swiss territory in June 2019 after a massive protest by French Camerounians at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva has ever since been shuttling between Yaoundé and his native Mvomeka’a for the past 14 months.
To be sure, it is exactly 14 months since the French Cameroun chief executive left Europe and has never again embarked on his so-called “short private stay”.
On June 23, 2019, Paul Biya and his wife, Chantal Biya after spending nine months in the nation’s capital reportedly left the country to rest at the luxurious Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. But on July 5, only ten days later, the National Chairman of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate and Mrs. Chantal Biya were forced to return to Yaoundé.
French Cameroonian activists in the diaspora, grouped under the Anti-Sardinard Brigade (BAS), disrupted the presidential couple’s stay in Geneva with several demonstrations, including the most important on 29th June that witnessed attacks on Paul Biya’s close guards with a spilled over effect on a Swiss journalist who accused the Biya guards of having molested him. The guards were convicted and expelled from Swiss territory. Since then, Mr. Biya has not been on holiday on European soil.
He however, made two trips in France on the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron. The first was in Lyon in October 2019 for the 6th Replenishment Conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the second was to attend the Paris Peace Summit in November.
Paul Biya now spends most of his time between the Etoudi Palace in Yaoundé and Mvomeka’a, his home village in the South of the country. This is a surprising attitude for a President who has always been presented as a “holidaymaker”.
A report by Organize Crime and Corruption Reporting (OCCRP), as part of the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, indicated in 2018 that the Cameroonian President, in 35 years of reign, had spent the equivalent of 90 billion CFA francs for “short private stays” outside Cameroon, mainly in Geneva.
The same survey indicated that the Cameroonian treasury was releasing, on a daily basis for the same reasons, about CFAF 20 million only in hotel expenses of the Head of State and his delegation, excluding meals and other extras.
By Besong Esther Agbor in Halmstad
8, September 2020
Biya announces elections in December, despite unrest in Southern Cameroons 0
Paul Biya on Monday announced the country first regional elections in December, including in two western regions in the grip of a revolt by the anglophone minority.
The indirect elections on December 6 in the country’s 10 regions will put in place councils provided for in a 1996 constitution in a move towards decentralisation but not yet implemented.
These councils will also be elected in the two western regions where a nearly three-year-old insurgency has claimed over 3,000 lives.
The two restive anglophone regions are home to a large minority of English speakers in a country where French speakers are the overwhelming majority — a situation that is the legacy of the decolonisation of western Africa by France and Britain more than six decades ago.
Years of resentment at perceived discrimination against anglophones led to the declaration on October 1, 2017, of the self-described Republic of Ambazonia in the two regions, triggering a crackdown by the authorities.
Biya, 87, has been in power for nearly four decades and has promised these two regions a special status in a bid to quell the unrest.
The regions will elect 90 councillors, who will have limited powers on local issues. Twenty of them will be representatives of traditional chieftains.
John Fru Ndi, leader of a key opposition party, has said he will boycott the election unless there is a ceasefire first in the English-speaking regions.
Source: AFP