Biya's Gamble - 40 days to avoid an uprising.

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Paul Biya's Security forces harass opposition leader Dr Tobie Mbida in Cameroon

For the past 36 years, Paul Biya has been holding without interruption one of the two top positions in Cameroon. First, in June 1975, he became Prime minister, and then following the abrupt resignation of Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1982, he became President of the country. Deep seated corruption, tribalism, systematic elimination of real or perceived political rivals, and crumbling infrastructure have characterized his rule. On Sunday the 28th of August 2011, Emmanuel Kemta, a Cameroonian activist who had had enough of the Biya regime took action in Birmingham, and forced Biya to give a date for the presidential elections to be held in under 40 days! Obviously, M. Biya hopes to foil any attempts for the Cameroonian opposition to come up with a concerted strategy to escape from his grasp. It is a wild gamble - and he may lose.

The aspirations of Cameroonians are legitimate, one you would find in any human being whether it be in the hilly favelas of Rio de Janeiro, or the shanty towns of Soweto. People just want a better life, and good health with a matching education to make living meaningful. Despotic regimes thrive in raising the bar for access to these basic amenities, so that only the most unrepentant supporters are compensated. This is the model M Paul Biya has implemented in Cameroon during his rule. If you look at the ruling class, it is essentially the same people who have ruled the country since 1982 when he came to power. There has been little or no progress. Roads constructed under Ahmadou Ahidjo 25 years ago are crumbling. No new health centres are planned and Biya never bothers to visit the countryside.

A good look at his method of administration shows that he has his operations based out of  Geneva in Switzerland. From there, he uses only chartered wide bodied aircraft for flights as he considers the Cameroonian Air Force to be inferior, and not worthy to provide presidential transport.

His children attend Swiss schools, of course, because Cameroonian schools under his tutelage are below standard. They come every so often to Yaounde to replenish their accounts with money derived from the sale of Cameroonian crude oil and taxes and head back to the calm shores of Lake Geneva while babies die in hundreds from lack of basic health facilities and malnourishment in Cameroon.

All of M Biya's children with Chantal Biya were born on foreign soil, not by accident, but by design. Of course, once more, he ranks Cameroonian hospitals which he could have improved in 35 years of rule as below his standard, so there is no reason why he should use their services. When he has a cold, a Boeing 737 is chartered with Cameroonian oil revenue to take the demented despot to Switzerland for treatment.

With the foregoing, it is a surprise that Cameroonians still allow Biya to have privileges when he comes to pillage the state treasury in Yaounde. It is also understandable why M Emmanuel Kemta would be so mad as to take on single handedly, Biya's cronies who are mostly naturalized British Nationals, hence, according to Biya's logic, should have no voice in internal politics in Cameroon.

Biya has given the Cameroonian people a challenge. The window is tiny. But history can be made. If M Emmanuel Kemta's actions can force Biya to give a date for the presidential elections withing 48 hours, then continued pressure will probably convince some more principled individuals who are currently in league with M Biya to jump ship, for he is of a dying breed on par with Muamar Ghadaffi of Libya, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Ben Ali of Tunisia, and Bashar Assad of Syria. 

A hundred years from now, when the glorious history of Cameroon will be reviewed, it will be noted that Emmanuel Kemta was a champion for the voiceless and oppressed who helped take the case of Cameroon to the International community. Biya's descendants would have changed their names.