World’s oldest leader readies for another shot at power

Paul Biya is such a devotee of democracy, his critics joke, that at 92 he’s running for an eighth term.

The world’s oldest head of state has survived coup attempts, a secessionist movement and multiple rumours of his own death to return — often from the Swiss hotel where he spends much of his time — again and again as Cameroon’s president.

On Sunday Biya, who has been president for 43 years and was prime minister before that, will be seeking yet another seven years at the helm of the west African oil exporter of 30mn people.

When Biya started out as prime minister in 1975, Harold Wilson was the UK’s leader and Mao Zedong was in charge of China. If he wins again, by the time his term ends in 2032, he will be just a few months shy of 100.

“After 43 years, the guy is still there standing — well, sitting — and at 92 he wants to run again,” said Akere Muna, a prominent lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner. “This is so surreal.”

Before July, when he announced his intention to run in a brief post on X, there had been speculation that Biya might finally be prepared to step aside.

Biya, though, appears so confident of securing another victory — or at least of being declared the winner — that he has hardly campaigned.

Framed photographs of the president have been schlepped around political rallies in his absence and set in place of honour at official gatherings. In at least one rally, giant puppets of the president and the generously coiffed first lady Chantal, Biya’s second wife and the daughter of a beauty queen, were paraded through the streets.

Some 83 candidates, including former loyalists, declared their intention to stand against him, a list that through disqualifications and dropouts has been whittled down to roughly 10.

One main challenger, Maurice Kamto, co-founder of the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement, was disqualified in August by the electoral commission on the grounds that his party had boycotted a previous poll.

Some 8.2mn voters are eligible to vote on Sunday, though turnout in previous elections has been thin. Despite the predictability engendered by Biya’s long reign in Cameroon — one of only two African countries not to recognise Palestine — security has badly deteriorated, poverty levels have deepened and a once-promising economy has stagnated.

Boko Haram, a militant Islamist group, has carried out repeated attacks in the north with a fractured army seemingly unable to stop them. In English-speaking western Cameroon, a conflict with separatists has displaced hundreds of thousands of people amid widespread resentment at the perceived dominance of the majority French-speaking provinces.

“The amount of injustice, the inequality, cheating and stealing, the lack of infrastructure, garbage disposal, the health system — everything is falling apart,” said Muna, who dropped out of the presidential race after failing to convince enough candidates to join an anti-Biya coalition. “To assume everybody is happy with this, you must have your head in the sand.”

Chris Fomunyoh, regional director of the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, said Biya had remained a distant and uncharismatic figure despite ruling for as long as most Cameroonians, whose median age is 18, can remember.

“He remains a mystery for many people both inside Cameroon and outside,” Fomunyoh, a Cameroonian, said. “The way in which he governs and comports himself makes it difficult to read the man or understand what he is trying to accomplish.”

Critics say Biya and his allies, many from the same Beti ethnic group, control the entire electoral process from ballot printing to counting. Credible international election observers have long since stopped monitoring Cameroonian polls. Biya has always contended that the elections have been free and fair.

“He stages this charade every seven years,” said Eric Acha, a Cameroonian exile who describes himself as having “struggled against this regime for many, many years”. Biya had survived by creating a “clientelist system within the military where everyone gets a piece of the cake”, Acha said.

Last month, with only a few weeks of the campaign remaining, Biya — who has been described as an “absentee president” because of his long sojourns abroad — left the country for a week in Switzerland.

For decades, he has stayed on the same floor of the Intercontinental Hotel, where he and a rowdy entourage enjoy views of Lake Geneva, according to numerous witnesses.

Herbert Schott, a former manager of the hotel, told the Financial Times that Biya had been staying for decades. He first met him in 1969 when the then presidential adviser, a Catholic who had once been destined for the priesthood, started coming to the hotel.

“He’s a great president [and] an unbelievable personality,” said Schott, who said Biya continues to stay once or twice a year. The two still dined together, he said.

Many Cameroonians have been less well-disposed to their president’s prolonged absences, with members of the diaspora repeatedly organising a picket of the hotel while he is abroad.

In 2016, Biya returned to Cameroon belatedly after 35 days away to declare “fairly positive” his government’s response to a fatal train crash in which 79 people died.

Although Biya has given the impression that he is cruising to yet another victory, some analysts suggest that discontent could finally bubble over.

Issa Tchiroma Bakary, a longtime Biya ally who served as his minister of employment and vocational training until he resigned this June to run against his old boss, has attracted large crowds.

A relatively sprightly 75 and a member of Cameroon’s Muslim minority, Tchiroma issued a scathing manifesto in which he lambasted his former mentor.

“A country cannot exist in the service of one man,” he said in the manifesto. “This model, long presented as a safeguard of stability, has gradually stifled progress, paralysed our institutions, and broken the bond of trust between the state and its citizens.”

Fomunyoh, of the National Democratic Institute, said Tchiroma could lead big demonstrations if Biya is declared the winner after Sunday’s vote.

Back from Switzerland, Biya broke his silence this week by giving a short speech, his only one of the campaign so far, in Maroua in the far north of Cameroon.

He acknowledged the country’s difficulties, saying: “I am aware of the unfulfilled expectations that make you doubt the future.” But he went on to thank his audience for the “support you have continued to show me, year in, year out”.

Mo Ibrahim, whose eponymous foundation campaigns for good governance in Africa, said he had interacted with Biya on several occasions. “It’s perhaps time he should retire,” he said.

Yet Biya appears to believe he still needs more time to make his mark. In his Maroua speech, he told the crowd: “I can assure you that the best is still to come.”

Additional reporting by Aanu Adeoye from Lagos