Hanging On: Nonagenarian Cameroonian Leader Vies For Another Term

The world’s oldest president still has some gas in the tank. 

President Paul Biya, 92, has run the west-central African nation of Cameroon for 40 years. In 2018, he won 70 percent of the vote. Even so, critics said irregularities and crackdowns on political protests propelled his victory, while turnout was low due to violence related to separatists and jihadists, reported Africa News. 

Now, since a 2008 constitutional change that has allowed him to run for office repeatedly, he’s asking voters for an eighth term when polls open on Oct. 12, even though he suffers from ill health and frequently seeks medical attention abroad. 

Biya and his allies appear to have little patience for those who might question his commitment to running the country and his ability to do so. 

Rival presidential candidate Akere Muna challenged Biya’s reelection bid in court, saying “President Biya reigns but he doesn’t govern,” reported Business Inside Africa. But the court rejected Muna’s complaint. 

Another would-be rival, Maurice Kamto, continued campaigning after hundreds of police officers prevented him from leaving his campaign headquarters in Douala, the country’s largest city, for two days in June after he made comments at a rally in France that apparently angered Biya and his allies, the BBC added. 

Electoral officials then barred Kamto from running based on a technicality, Human Rights Watch wrote. Cameroon’s top court upheld the ban. 

These opposition figures are divided, however, meaning Biya could likely win again, reported Radio France Internationale. 

That victory could come despite Biya’s poor track record. 

He has failed to quell the separatist movement in the English-speaking northwest and southwest regions of the country. The rebels have imposed a month-long lockdown to prevent people in their region from casting ballots. 

The president has kept vital cocoa, crude oil, and other commodity exports flowing, but environmental news outlet Mongabay detailed the problems associated with this model, including how cocoa farming causes deforestation. Cameroon, for instance, is also trying to build a new refinery so that it can convert its own crude into fuel to operate vehicles, power plants, and other facilities, noted Daba, a financial news outlet. 

None of this economic activity has translated into better lives for most Cameroonians, many of whom live in fear, caught between the violence of the separatists and the government forces fighting them. 

In a pastoral letter quoted in Crux, a Catholic news website, Archbishop Samuel Kleda blasted Biya’s policies that have kept the country down: “Poor governance and corruption, distorted democracy, widespread poverty and unemployment, illegal immigration, the dilapidated road network, difficult access to water and electricity, the murky management of oil, injustices in mining, and the Anglophone and security crises in the Far North.”