LIFE PRESIDENCY PROJECT:

Paul Biya loses a strategic ally; time to count the cost?

With his decision to go ahead with plans to continue in power beyond 2011, Paul Biya has opened a Pandora’s Box. The first shocking surprise out of it is the loss of a long-time ally who promises to be a real danger. The president and his partisans are in shock. Wouldn’t he count the cost of the venture that will only bring him more troubles?

The New Year has not begun well for Paul Biya. He and his partisans are in shock over the sudden and unexplainable appearance in the weekly Jeune Afrique newsmagazine of an article critical of the president’s decision to revise the constitution.

The highly influential newspaper is well known for its editorial sympathy for Paul Biya. As a rule it
never carries material critical of Biya or the Cameroon government. In typical Cameroonian parlance, “the newspaper is bought”.

That is why the publication has hit the president with the devastating power of a thunderbolt. Under the title, “Paul Biya: Moi ou le Chaos”, François Soudan, Jeune Afrique’s celebrated senior International correspondent, who for years frequents the power corridors of Yaounde, as of all other African capitals, undertakes a highly critical analysis of the president’s intention to revise the constitution with the objective of continuing in office after 2011.

François Soudan, who knows Biya and his regime better than most Cameroonians, captures Biya’s reason for wanting to stay in power with an expression of former French President Charles de Gaulle at the presidential election of 1965: “It’s me or chaos”.

Among other points made the article points out that a Biya’s intention suppresses the ambitions of some of his subordinates. It concludes, tellingly, that with the opposition weak and helpless in blocking Biya, the president’s real challengers will come but from his own very ranks.

In content, the article offers little new for anyone familiar with developments in Cameroon in recent months. The real significant and power of the article lie but in the fact that it was written and published at all, by Jeune Afrique, and by François Soudan and without warning!

Paul Biya won’t get over that for a long time. Lately the President awakened to a new sense of the role communication could play in helping his controversial political project. He raised government aid to private media, revised the government’s communication policy
to generate and give out positive information on Cameroon.

Biya also invited his Parisian public relations consultants to discuss new project to enhance his
politics. Wasn’t it a blow to the heart for him at this time to lose what was easily the cornerstone of this communication edifice?

What provoked the u-turn? Why was it sudden without warning? Did Biya fail in his commitment somewhere? What else is in the pipeline? Are we to see in the coming weeks more damaging attacks from an organ that knows Biya inside out? Are there any persons behind pulling the strings? Who would they be?

These are the many questions now giving Biya sleepless nights. One easy hypothesis is that the u-turn is the handwork of influential subordinates whose succession ambitions are being thwarted.

Or could it simply be a change of policy in favour of greater Independence by the very influential French weekly? Whichever way the answer goes, the message for
Biya is unmistaken.

The journey beyond 2011 is perilous! The destination can be reached only at too high a cost, if it is reached at all. This is the time for Paul Biya to count the cost.

Courtesy; The Herald