Franck Biya to run for president ⁰

The ruling CPDM is planning to hold an extraordinary congress of the party that will nominate Franck Biya, the eldest son of the 89-year-old dictator as a presidential candidate, Cameroon Intelligence Report has learnt from a well-placed source in the nation’s capital Yaoundé.

Cameroon, the so-called giant in the Sub Saharan region littered with French backed dictators is one of Africa’s most repressive, corrupt states and little is known about how the Biya Francophone regime makes day-to-day decisions. The country has never held any free and fair vote, and Biya’s next-of-kin will almost certainly face no real opponents in the next presidential election.

The country has no free media, honours President Biya’s acolytes with lucrative political positions and is yet to make any major arrest ever since it was revealed coronavirus funds were siphoned by top government officials including the Prime Minister and Head of Government Joseph Dion Ngute.

Paul Biya who is the country’s president and commander-in-chief since 1982 hardly chairs cabinet meetings but has been Cameroon’s decision-maker for the last 40 years.

His pastimes –holidaying in rural areas in the South of France, long stays at the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva and encouraging internal divisions deep within his ruling party including returning to Cameroon to fill his pocket with tax payer’s money — have made him a curiosity across the globe.

At 89, his followers mainly from his Beti-Ewondo tribal extractions say he is still the right man for the nation’s powerful job.

Franck Biya is currently nothing in Cameroon government’s political chain of command but underneath that nothingness is a young man with a broad influence over the politics and economy that key Biya family allies think is now eligible to run for president.

It is expected that both the political bureau and the congress of the ruling CPDM party will unanimously support the candidacy of Franck Biya for the post of President of Cameroon in the next presidential election.

Recently, he has been boosting his national profile with bereavement visits to his dad’s loyalists in the North and West regions of the country.

Franck Biya’s exposure on media only began to grow after the Biya family invested on the television channel Groupe L’Anecdote headed by Amougou Belinga.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai