Cameroon residents in France allegedly stormed into their President’s venue where he was meant to hold his party and turned it upside down.
According to online videos, the angry Cameroonians would be seen vandalizing property in the meant-to-be red-carpet event.
But who is the Cameroon President Paul Biya? And why does he elicit such negative emotion among his kinsmen?
He is the second-longest-ruling President in Africa
Having ascended to power in 1982, President Biya rose rapidly as a bureaucrat under President Ahmadou Ahidjo in the 1960s, serving as Secretary-General of the Presidency from 1968 to 1975 and then as Prime Minister of Cameroon from 1975 to 1982.
He succeeded Ahidjo as President upon the latter’s surprise resignation in 1982 and consolidated power in 1983–1984 staged attempted coup in which he eliminated all of his major rivals.
Oldest serving President in the world
President Biya, 89, is the oldest serving President in the world, having been born in February 1933. In Africa, he is closely followed by Namibia’s third president Hage Geignob who is 81.
President Biya should have retired at his age, but that is different, thanks to his constantly changing age and term limits. Under the constitution, Biya has sweeping executive and legislative powers.
He has considerable authority over the judiciary; the courts can only review a law’s constitutionality at his request. The RDPC continues to dominate the National Assembly, which does little more than approve its policies.
The second wife is 36 years younger
In 1961, he married Jeanne-Irene Biya, whom they did not have any children with, though she adopted Franck Biya, who had been born previously in a relationship between Paul Biya and another woman.
After Jeanne-Irène Biya died on July 29, 1992, Paul Biya married Chantal Biya, who is 36 years younger. On April 23, 1994, he had two more children with her.
Rarely spends time in Cameroon
Biya regularly spends extended periods in Switzerland at the Hotel InterContinental Geneva, where the former director Herbert Schott reportedly said he comes to work without being disturbed.
These extended stays away from Cameroon – while sometimes as short as two weeks and sometimes as long as three months – are almost always referred to as “short stays” in the state-owned press and other media.
Elections have constantly been marred with irregularities
Biya is credited with creative innovation in the world of phony elections.
He won the contentious 1992 presidential election with 40 percent of the plural, single-ballot vote and was re-elected by large margins in 1997, 2004, 2011, and 2018. Opposition politicians and Western governments have alleged voting irregularities and fraud on each of these occasions.
Many independent sources have provided evidence that he did not win the elections in 1992 and that subsequent elections suffered from rampant fraud.
His regime is supported by France, one of the former colonial powers in Cameroon, which supplies it with weapons and trains its military forces.
France is also the leading foreign investor in Cameroon, ahead of the United States.
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