To dispel growing anxiety at home

Biya to announce new gov’t and order more arrests
The president is expected back home later today, after close to four weeks stay in Europe
By Ayukogem Steven Ojong in Yaounde

President Paul Biya

When President Paul Barthelemy bi Mvondo Biya returns home hopefully today evening he would have spent exactly 29 days abroad. This prolonged absence from home has raised questions about the president’s physical and mental ability to hold down his job. The consensus within and outside the government is that it is high time the president arranges for a smooth and democratic transfer of power, to a younger and more energetic successor.
    However, regime apologists hold a contrary view. A source in the president’s entourage in Europe has hinted The Median that far from what the public is made to believe, President Biya has been busy working and exercising his official duties throughout his stay in Europe. “The president was not gallivanting as some local press reports speculated,” reiterated the source.
         President Biya participated at the EU-Africa Security Summit in Brussels, Belgium and continued granting audiences to top EU and other officials. The president was also negotiating important deals for the country, the source said.

    Our source hinted that apart from the audiences he granted and the deals he struck, the president also took time enough in the luscious quiet of the Inter-continental Hotel in Genera, Switzerland to finalize his new government, that would be released sooner than later.
    It noted further that the president is not oblivious of the anxiety that currently characterizes the mood of the country, especially after his telling state-of-the-nation address on 31 December 2013, in which he lambasted the government for doing a poor job.

Anti-corruption campaign
    Our informant said that going by the popular enthusiasm that followed the unexpected arrest and almost immediate release of Secondary Education Minister, Louis Bapes Bapes, the president is now poised to undertake more arrests (including Bapes Bapes), if only to sweeten the nation’s sour mood of disappointment with the regime.
Unimpeachable sources at the judicial police and the special criminal court have hinted this newspaper that apart from Bapes Bapes, at least two more ministers would be arrested soon after the new government is announced. The ministers’ passports have already been confiscated by security agents. But our source did not reveal to us the names of the likely ministers to be arraigned. Other sources have however maintained that Bapes Bapes and at least two other ministers were unavoidably Epervier-bound.
    Our attention was also drawn to the Kondengui Prison and the SED where new VIP rooms have been prepared and made conducive for accommodation. We learnt that at least 16 new VIP rooms have been created at the Kondengui prison.
  It is believed that president Biya will use the arrests to get the masses to gradually overlook, at least for a while, the poverty, hardship and growing insecurity that now reigns in the country.
    Analysts contend that the announcement of new ministers would dispel the anxiety and uncertainty that reigns within the government, and also sweeten the sour mood of a wider segment of the population, who are increasingly disappointed and impatient with the regime.
The Anglophones especially, are expecting to be handed an equitable number of portfolio ministries in the new government, apart from the prime minister’s office that the current power configuration of the state naturally reserves for them.