The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
AFRICAN ARGUMENTS | Emmanuel Freudenthal | On the podium for the World’s Longest-Serving President, Paul Biya currently holds the silver medal. At an impressive 35-plus years in office, the Cameroonian leader’s ability to keep hold of power over the decades has been remarkable – perhaps all the more so because of how little he actually exercises it.
In our recent investigation with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, we found that Biya has spent huge chunks of his presidency outside Cameroon. In some years, he has been abroad for a third of the time. Overall, he has spent at least four and a half years on “brief private visits to Europe”, often at the 5-star Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva. His official foreign trips add up to at least one additional year.
In response to these eye-opening findings, the government in Yaoundé accused us being “a real office of destabilisation” and defended the president. “Even when Biya is abroad, for republican needs, he governs Cameroon in a very beautiful way,” said Higher Education Minister Jacques Fame Ndongo in a radio interview, “with ICT, it is possible to pilot an organisation from wherever you are”.
The reality, however, is that Biya is neither working from home nor working remotely. Rather, Cameroon is a country with a ghost captain at the helm, a Titanic knocking into one iceberg after another.
“Sooner or later though, the 85-year-old #Biya‘s rule will have to come to an end. Even for a ghostly president governing from far-flung lands, ruling #Cameroon from beyond the grave would surely be a step too far.” https://t.co/AADjxIv1KU
— African Arguments (@africaarguments) April 18, 2018
