Anti-corruption campaign: Who is Biya fooling with new arrest?

With increasing pressure on President Biya to give up his ambition to continue in office after 2011 he has embarked upon a resumed anti-corruption campaign hoping to please his foreign and domestic publics that are opposed to it. Will he succeed?

By Roland Akong Wuwih in Yaounde

After two long years of self doubt Paul Biya again ordered the arrest of two former ministers on charges of corruption.

They are former Finance minister Polycarpe Abah Abah, and former Public Health minister Urbain Olanguena Awono.

The last time he undertook similar arrest was in February-March 2006. On that occasion, he arrested six DGs and a former minister stalwarts of the regime. The 2006 arrest that since led to imprisonment for almost all so far were a necessary component of the government’s application file for admission into debt cancellation (HIPC initiative). The government succeeded.

Since then, President Paul Biya has been evidently reluctant to continue with the campaign, in spite of much domestic and foreign pressure.

When he embarked on the new waves of arrest on Monday with all the drama accompanying it, and promising even more to be pick up, it was everybody’s guess that he was up to another trick.

Analysts believe that President Paul Biya is seeking to hoodwink and foreign opinion to soften towards his plans to review the constitution to continue in office beyond 2011 by the wide public, which have been enthusiastically received.

The timing of the arrests which have been enthusiastically received by the wide public appears
deliberately intended to coincide with the president’s much rumoured intention to send the constitutional revision bill to the Assembly during the on-going March session.

It is also note worthy as cause or effect that the arrests came right after the European Union
discouraged the President from his political ambitions.

France and Britain two long time bilateral partners of Cameroon also expressed their total support for EU statement which they instantly adopted for their own individual positions.

Essentially, the statement expressed preference to power alternation in Cameroon, urging President Biya if he really must revise the constitution, to throw it open to the wide public, ad be honest in accepting the views of the majority.

The United States government has also taken a similar position and even gone further.

State department officials in Washington have been urging President Biya to redeem the promise that he voluntarily made to President George W. Bush, during his visit to White House five years ago, that he would retire in 2011 at the end of his second seven year term.

Analysts believe that there isn’t any argument that the President has to swing round the opposition of the public at home and of his partners abroad. Not even including the calculated resumption of anti-corruption arrests.

A February gallup poll on Cameroon showed that up to 84 per cent of Cameroonians disapprove of the President’s policies.