2018 presidential election:

What has become of “the people’s call”?

President Paul Biya

To this day, President Paul Biya has maintained stony silence in the face of an avalanche of infamous calls made since the start of the year by misguided supporters of his party for him to either be candidate in the 2018 presidential election or call an early election.

By Tanyi Kenneth Musa in Yaounde

What misguided supporters of the ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, CPDM, referred to as “the people’s call” was motions of support they made to President Paul Biya, either calling on him to be candidate in the 2018 presidential election or hold the election earlier than that year. In March this year, members of the CPDM went haywire with such calls in different parts of the country as though they were competing with one another.

                The only resistance to the call within CPDM circles came from the sultan of Bamoun, Ibrahim MbomboNjoya, a polit bureau member of the party, who took his comrades by surprise, saying such a call was not necessary. In fact, he warned the party president that he alone had the keys to the misfortune or happiness of Cameroonians.

                As expected, MbomboNjoya’s reaction provoked counter reactions from his fellow supporters, one of whom was GrégoireOwona, the assistant secretary-general of the party, who came out openly to announce that the party did not organize a movement to call for the candidature of President Biya in the coming election. Even the President himself is said to have reacted by convoking the sultan to the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva –Switzerland where he sojourned for a couple of weeks while on a private visit to Europe.  Nothing however filtered out of that meeting.

                The feeling that Cameroonians had in general was that President Biya would table a bill in parliament during the session of March 2016 for the revision of the constitution, in response to the infamous call. Nevertheless, in his characteristic manner, he dribbled everyone by staying completely mute.

                To this day, no one knows what President Biya has up his sleeves with respect to the issue. If we go by what the President insinuated during French President Francois Hollande’s visit to Cameroon last year, then we can be sure that he will be the flag bearer of his party in the said election.

                But The Median is obliged to ask a few questions which, we are sure, other Cameroonians are posing as well. Has he finally changed his mind, especially at this time when Cameroon’s Western economic partners are hostile to his continual hanging on to power? Is the June 2016 session of parliament the propitious occasion for him to table a bill in the National Assembly that would enable him to revise the constitution and do whatever he wants to do to smash any impediment to his life presidential bid? Or has it finally dawned on him that after more than three long decades in power, he should take a well-deserved rest?  And if the latter is the case, where would the architects of “the people’s call” hide their ugly heads? Only time will tell.