As campaigning starts on Saturday for Cameroon’s presidential election, the nation is puzzling over the whereabouts of the lead candidate: its 92-year-old leader, Paul Biya, the world’s oldest head of state.

In power since 1982 and seeking an eighth term in office in the October 12 polls, Biya left the central African country on Sunday for a “private trip to Europe”, his office said, without elaborating.

Diplomatic sources said the leader, who is rarely seen in public, was in Geneva, his favourite destination for personal visits, with protesters camping outside the United Nations headquarters in the Swiss city on Friday to voice their anger at Biya.

The trip comes a week after his daughter Brenda called on Cameroonians not to vote for him, in a TikTok video that she later retracted.

A weeks-long trip to Switzerland by Biya last September had fuelled rumours of his death, forcing the government to issue a statement reassuring the public about his health.

This time, Biya appeared in good health in a video of his departure released by the presidency, showing him accompanied by his wife Chantal and three advisers.

But the president was absent on Thursday from his scheduled appearance at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, instead represented by his foreign minister.

‘Illusion’ of health

Biya is set to contend for another seven-year term against 11 other candidates.

His RDPC party is rumoured to have scheduled a rally on Sunday in the northern city of Maroua.

The party has not confirmed how many events it will organise and whether Biya will participate.

He announced his candidacy on July 13 on X but has not directly addressed his fellow citizens since.

“Initially, there were rumours that the president himself was not very motivated to run again,” and that his aides pushed him to do so, said Arrey Elvis Ntui, senior analyst for the International Crisis Group.

David Kiwuwa, head of the School of International Studies at the University of Nottingham’s China campus, pointed to Biya’s age and health.

“The more he stays out of the public eye, the more he maintains the illusion that he is mentally and physically suited for the office,” Kiwuwa said.

The opposition, meanwhile, had failed to name a consensus candidate, Maurice Kamto, Biya’s top opponent and runner up in the 2018 election, said on Friday.

“Many Cameroonians are frustrated that the opposition, which has been trying for nearly 30 years to replace President Biya, is still unable at this stage to agree,” said Ntui.

Criticised by daughter

With the opposition divided, Biya is favourite to win the election — despite the recent embarrassment involving his daughter.

Late on September 17, Brenda Biya, a regular at the luxury InterContinental hotel in Geneva, published her shock video on TikTok, calling on voters to abandon her father.

It circulated widely before being deleted from her account, sparking a wave of reactions that prompted her to post an apology days later.

“I know nothing about politics. Don’t follow my advice,” she said in the follow-up video on September 21.

Brenda Biya has also faced legal troubles, having been convicted of defaming a Cameroonian-Nigerian artist who accused her of insults and lies on social media.

The judgement noted that her family “frequently stays at the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva, where rooms are rented year-round”.

A 2018 investigation of economic crime by a consortium of journalists found Paul Biya had spent some 4.5 years of his presidency abroad, largely in Switzerland, at an estimated cost of $65 million.

‘Re-elected by default’

Protesters against Biya’s latest stay in Switzerland heeded a call by an association of Cameroonians in Europe Friday to rally in front of the UN headquarters in Geneva, chanting “Biya murderer” in the pouring rain.

The demonstration was initially organised to denounce opposition leader Kamto’s barring from the presidential ballot, but took on a new dimension.

Laurent, who came from Frankfurt in Germany to attend the protest, told AFP he was angry at Kamto’s rejection and Biya’s absence from the campaign trail.

“We’re getting the impression that the election is already stitched-up and that Paul Biya will be re-elected by default,” he said.

Diosky Moresmo, spokesperson for a Cameroonian diaspora association in Belgium, told AFP the protest wanted “to chase Paul Biya out of Europe”, criticising the president for spending the “the money of the Cameroonian people”, who have “no water, no electricity, no hospitals”, on the visits.

Nearly a quarter of Cameroon’s population lives under the poverty line, according to the World Bank.

“Every day, Cameroonians die,” the protest group said.

“How can he rest peacefully in Geneva, at taxpayers’ expense, while his people suffer?”

Culled from AFP

With weeks to go until an election that could extend the world’s oldest president’s 43 years in power, Cameroon‘s opposition is struggling. Its most popular figure has been barred from running, and the 11 candidates remaining are likely to divide the vote.

At 92, Paul Biya has spent nearly half his years on earth as president and is Africa’s second-longest serving leader, behind only Equatorial Guinea’s Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. If he wins an eighth seven-year term in the Oct. 12 vote, he could govern until he’s nearly 100.

During his decades in power, the Central African nation of nearly 30 million people has struggled with challenges from a deadly secessionist movement to chronic corruption that has stifled development despite rich natural resources like oil and minerals. At least 43% of the country’s citizens live in poverty as measured by core living standards such as income, education and health, according to U.N. estimates.

Biya is rarely seen in public and critics say his capacity to govern has been severely limited by his age.

Still, he’s likely to prevail over the 11 other candidates in the race, especially after Biya’s most threatening rival, Maurice Kamto, was barred from running. Katmo ran against Biya in 2018 and won 14% of the vote.

The election commission said it disqualified Kamto from the race because the African Movement for New Independence and Democracy party that sponsored him was also sponsoring another candidate. Kamto’s lawyers and the party’s president denied the claim, calling the decision politically motivated.

Most of Cameroon’s past elections have faced questions of credibility, with election authorities often accused of working in favor of Biya. Some of the election officers previously served in other roles in Biya’s government. A two-term presidential limit was removed through a parliamentary vote in 2008.

In the nation’s capital, Yaounde, Elvis Nghobo, a food vendor, said the election has ended even before it started. “It is needless voting when it is clear that Paul Biya will always be declared winner,” said Nghobo, 34.

Still, a united opposition could have a chance to defeat Biya, analysts say.

The opposition is divided

After a record 83 candidates applied to run, election authorities approved 12, including Biya, to appear on the ballot.

All 11 opposition candidates agree on the need to unite behind a single leader, but they’re struggling to agree on who that should be, with formal campaigning due to start on Sept. 27..

In a recent post on X, Kamto likened the election to a penalty shootout in a soccer match and urged the candidates to find the best kicker.

“Choose from among yourselves, or at least from among the most experienced, the kicker who has the best chance of scoring the liberating goal,” Kamto said.

Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a long-time Biya ally who quit his government post earlier this year to run in the election, was designated as a consensus candidate by the Union for Change 2025, an alliance of at least 20 political parties and several civil society groups.

However, the other candidates have so far either rebuffed or ignored the move.

“We have only one objective: To liberate Cameroon from the system that has strangled it for more than 40 years,” Bakary said at the time.

Tomaino Ndam Njoya, a mayor and only woman in the race, said in a recent statement that she is open to backing a consensus candidate. That would be “the price to pay to finally offer the Cameroonian people the change they expect and deserve,” she said.

Analysts say the opposition is still weak

The candidates appear to be more concerned with “individual political survival than with driving meaningful collective change,” said Munjah Vitalis Fagha, a senior politics lecturer at Cameroon’s University of Buea.

The lack of a key challenger for Biya shows how weak the opposition has been over the years in Cameroon, said Wilson Tamfuh, professor of public and international law at Cameroon’s University of Dschang.

“There would be no need for an opposition consensus if an opposition party had become strong enough in its own right to overcome the ruling party,” Tamfuh said.

Source: AP