Paul Biya is a Cameroonian politician who has been the President of Cameroon
since 6 November 1982. A native of Cameroon's south, 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 a 1983–1984
power struggle with his predecessor. Biya introduced political reforms within
the context of a single-party system in the 1980s. Under pressure, he accepted
the introduction of multiparty politics in the early 1990s. He narrowly won the
1992 presidential election with 40% of the plural, single-ballot vote and was
re-elected by large margins in 1997, 2004, and 2011. Opposition politicians
and Western governments have alleged voting irregularities and fraud on each
of these occasions. Biya has maintained Cameroon's close
relationship with France, Cameroon's former colonial ruler.
Personal life Paul Biya was born in the village of
Mvomeka'a in the South Region of Cameroon. He studied at lycée Louis
Legrand, Sorbonne and Sciences Po Paris, where he graduated in 1961 with a
diploma in International Relations. He married Jeanne-Irène Biya, who did not
have any children, though she adopted Franck Biya who was born from a
relationship of Paul Biya with another woman. After Jeanne-Irène Biya died on
29 July 1992, Paul Biya married Chantal Biya on 23 April 1994, and had two more
children with her. Political career
As an official in post-independence 1960s Cameroon, Biya rose to prominence
under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. After becoming Director of the Cabinet of the
Minister of National Education in January 1964 and Secretary-General of
the Ministry of National Education in July 1965, he was named Director of the
Civil Cabinet of the President in December 1967 and Secretary-General of
the Presidency in January 1968. He gained the rank of Minister in August
1968 and the rank of Minister of State in June 1970, while remaining
Secretary-General of the Presidency. Following the creation of a unitary
state in 1972, he became Prime Minister of Cameroon on 30 June 1975. In June
1979, a law designated the Prime Minister as the President's
constitutional successor. Ahidjo unexpectedly announced his resignation
on 4 November 1982, and Biya accordingly succeeded him as President of Cameroon
on 6 November. Because Biya is a Christian from
southern Cameroon, it was considered surprising that he was chosen by Ahidjo,
a Muslim from the north, as his successor. After Biya became President,
Ahidjo initially remained head of the ruling Cameroon National Union. Biya was
brought into the CNU Central Committee and Political Bureau and was elected as
the Vice-President of the CNU. On 11 December 1982, he was placed in charge
of managing party affairs in Ahidjo's absence. During the first months after
Biya's succession, he continued to show loyalty to Ahidjo, and Ahidjo continued
to show support for Biya, but in 1983 a deep rift developed between the two.
Ahidjo went into exile in France, and from there he publicly accused Biya of
abuse of power and paranoia about plots against him. The two could not be
reconciled despite efforts by several foreign leaders. After Ahidjo resigned
as CNU leader, Biya took the helm of the party at an "extraordinary session" of
the CNU party held on 14 September 1983. In November 1983, Biya announced that
the next presidential election would be held on 14 January 1984; it had been
previously scheduled for 1985. He was the sole candidate in this election and
won 99.98% of the vote. In February 1984, Ahidjo was put on trial in
absentia for alleged involvement in a 1983 coup plot, along with two others;
they were sentenced to death, although Biya commuted their sentences to life in
prison, a gesture seen by many as a sign of weakness. Biya survived a military
coup attempt on 6 April 1984, following his decision on the previous day to
disband the Republican Guard and disperse its members across the
military. Estimates of the death toll ranged from 71 to about 1,000. Northern
Muslims were the primary participants in this coup attempt, which was seen by
many as an attempt to restore that group's supremacy; Biya, however, chose
to emphasize national unity and did not focus blame on northern Muslims. Ahidjo
was widely believed to have orchestrated the coup attempt, and Biya is thought to
have learned of the plot in advance and to have disbanded the Republican Guard
as a reaction, forcing the coup plotters to act earlier than they had planned,
which may have been a crucial factor in the coup's failure.
In 1985, the CNU was transformed into the Cameroon People's Democratic
Movement, in Bamenda the political capital of the north west region and
Biya was elected as its President. He was also re-elected as President of
Cameroon on 24 April 1988. Biya initially took some steps to open
up the regime, culminating in the decision to legalize opposition parties
in 1990. According to official results, Biya won the first multiparty
presidential election, held on 11 October 1992, with about 40% of the
vote; the second placed candidate, John Fru Ndi of the opposition Social
Democratic Front, officially received about 36%. The results were strongly
disputed by the opposition, which alleged fraud. In the October 1997
presidential election, which was boycotted by the main opposition
parties, Biya was re-elected with 92.6 percent of the vote; he was sworn in on
3 November. Biya won another seven-year term in the
11 October 2004 presidential election, officially taking 70.92 percent of the
vote, although the opposition alleged widespread fraud. Biya was sworn in on 3
November. After being re-elected in 2004, Biya was
barred by a two-term limit in the 1996 Constitution from running for President
again in 2011, but he sought to revise this to allow him to run again. In his
2008 New Year's message, Biya expressed support for revising the Constitution,
saying that it was undemocratic to limit the people's choice. The proposed
removal of term limits was among the grievances expressed during violent
protests in late February 2008. Nevertheless, on 10 April 2008, the
National Assembly voted to change the Constitution to remove term limits.
Given the RDPC's control of the National Assembly, the change was overwhelmingly
approved, with 157 votes in favor and five opposed; the 15 deputies of the SDF
chose to boycott the vote in protest. The change also provided for the
President to enjoy immunity from prosecution for his actions as President
after leaving office. He has been consistently re-elected as
the National President of the RDPC; he was re-elected at the party's second
extraordinary congress on 7 July 2001 and its third extraordinary congress on
21 July 2006. On 12 June 2006 he signed the Greentree
Agreement with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo which formally put an
end to the Bakassi peninsula border dispute.
In the October 2011 presidential election, Biya secured a sixth term in
office, polling 77.9% of votes cast. John Fru Ndi was his nearest rival,
polling 10%. Biya's opponents alleged wide-scale fraud in the election and
procedural irregularities were noted by the French and US governments. In his
victory speech, Biya promised to stimulate growth and create jobs with a
programme of public works which would "transform our country into a vast
construction site". On 3 November 2011, he was sworn in for another term as
President. Opposition and criticism
Biya is sometimes characterized as aloof, making relatively few public
appearances. Since the early 1990s, he has faced his strongest opposition from
the Anglophone population of the former Southern Cameroons in the western part
of the country. Although Biya made some efforts to open
up the political environment, his regime still retains clear authoritarian
characteristics and has largely bucked the trend toward democracy in Africa
since the 1990s. Under the constitution, Biya has sweeping executive and
legislative powers. He even 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 his policies. "Tyrants, the World's 20 Worst Living
Dictators", by David Wallechinsky, ranked Biya with three others commonly
in sub-Saharan Africa: Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
of Equatorial Guinea, and King Mswati of Swaziland. He describes Cameroon's
electoral process in these terms: "Every few years, Biya stages an election to
justify his continuing reign, but these elections have no credibility. In fact,
Biya is credited with a creative innovation in the world of phony
elections. In 2004, annoyed by the criticisms of international
vote-monitoring groups, he paid for his own set of international observers, six
ex-U.S. congressmen, who certified his election as free and fair."
Biya regularly spends extended periods of time 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 – are sometimes as long as
three months and are almost always referred to as "short stays" in the
state-owned press and other media. In February 2008, he passed a bill that
allows for having an additional term in office as president which was followed
by civil unrests throughout the country. The main violent riots took place in the
Western, English-speaking part of the country starting with a "strike"
initiated by taxi drivers in Douala, allegedly causing more than 200
casualties in the end. In 2009, his holiday in France allegedly cost $40,000
a day spent on 43 hotel rooms. In 2009, Biya was ranked 19th in Parade
Magazine's Top 20 list of "The World's Worst Dictators".
In November 2010, Bertrand Teyou published a book titled La belle de la
république bananière: Chantal Biya, de la rue au palais, tracing Chantal Biya's
rise from humble origins to become Paul Biya's First Lady. He was subsequently
given a two-year prison term on charges of "insult to character" and organizing
an "illegal demonstration" for attempting to hold a public reading.
Amnesty International and International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee both
protested his arrest and issued appeals on his behalf; Amnesty International
also named him a prisoner of conscience. He was freed on 2 May 2011 when the
London chapter of International PEN agreed to pay his fine in order that he
might seek treatment for his worsening health condition.
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