The prolonged absence of Paul Biya abroad has led Cameroonians to believe that the president has lost interest in his job. The long absence also gave room for some of the most senior assistants to display their disloyalty to the president who is more and more considered as having overstayed his welcome. Paul Biya’s health is also a major factor disenabling him from any hard work. Put together these personal and domestic factors plus the distrust of Paul Biya abroad by powerful partners then the president must think again if indeed he really wants to continue. The odds are too strong against him. The Herald urges the president to think of leaving it honourably at this point.
Dear Mr President,
It behoves us to take this first opportunity of your return home from your long stay abroad to wish you well and also to express ourselves on current issues of great concern to Cameroonians. We trust that you will, as you usually do, give much consideration to what we have to say.
We can assure you that we give deepest thought to everything we say. And we say it with the greatest consideration for your dear person, and, of course, for Cameroon our country too, of which it has been your privilege to lead for 26 years so far.
We are sorry that your health has not been at its very best. For a long time now your vitality has been sagging. Your energy level is sometimes so low you simply cannot work but must take a long rest. Last week just when you had planned to travel home you felt so faint (some say you collapsed) that a doctor had to be summoned to your help.
We are very sorry about this, but feel confident that you will soon come over it. Be sure we want to see you quickly back on your feet with brimming energy to face the huge, sometimes daunting, task that is yours as head of state.
Mr President, you have been out of Cameroon since you left on Thursday, 18th September for what an official announcement simply said was a short private stay in Europe. You must have been informed that the wide public has expressed concern about this long absence that actually created a power vacuum.
The press, radio and television have discussed it almost without end. Your return on Saturday after forty-five days of absence rekindled the discussion. Cameroonians are saying that you returned just in time to escape being technically forced to resign as president!
Sorry, most people hardly realise that you since took off that provision from the constitution, freeing you to stay out as long as you like. It would nevertheless be ill-advised to ignore the depth and extent of popular feeling on this matter.
The wide, wide public is of the view that your prolonged absence abroad is an unmistakable indicator of loss of interest in your job as president of Cameroon. What is surprising is that this view is also common within the government and among senior officials of your regime.
We challenge you to verify this with the use of an independent foreign opinion researcher. The conduct of leaders of other countries who travel back home right after their official business abroad tells Cameroonians that their own president does not do the right thing.
Moreover, Mr President, Cameroonians believe that the increasing number of incidents endangering the security of the nation in the last few weeks actually happened because of your prolonged absence abroad.
These incidents are all believed to be the handiwork of senior public officials who take advantage of your absence, i.e. the absence of anyone in control.
Limbe robbery
Take for example the circumstances of the terror robbery in Limbe. However you look at it, there must have been collusion by top security brass. And, how about the kidnapping of the Equatorial Guinea army colonel on asylum in Yaounde?
These security incidents, Mr President, are only the more dramatic consequences of your absence. Surely there are many other important, if less dramatic, things taking place because of your absence. Your own work itself stagnates! Why have the corruption cases stalled?
We beg to say, Mr President, that the overall effect of your absence is that of a country without a leader and things happening helter-skelter. In fact there is an abiding feeling of a country adrift. That only strengthens the feeling inside and outside the government that you are tired and no longer really interested in doing a good job.
This feeling at home, we are sorry to say, Mr President, is matched by a similar lack of support for you abroad. Abroad Mr President, you have lost the confidence of powerful partners who strongly disagreed with your mandate extension ambition. In Washington, Brussels, Paris and London nobody wants to do business with you. They all say you are not trustworthy.
During your trips to The White House and 10 Downing Street in 2003 and 2004 you promised George Bush and Tony Blair that you would retire in 2011. Why, Mr President, have you not lived up to your honour?
During the CPDM campaign to justify mandate extension your partisans cited France as an example of a presidential system without mandate limitation. Mr, President, I hope you since know what happened right after that. Nicolas Sarkozy decided by parliamentary law to limit the number of presidential mandates in France to two.
His reason? After two five-year terms any president who works hard has nothing left to offer. It was exactly for the same reason that Kofi Annan, former UN secretary-general, only a fortnight ago expressed his total disagreement with you, Paul Biya, over your mandate extension intention.
Kofi Annan promised to meet you personally to urge you to let go of the idea. Like you he is a distinguished citizen of Geneva. We hope you took his well-meant advice. Having helped you as much as he did over Bakassi there must be reason to believe him to be sincere. He said he helped to dissuade Olusegun Obasanjo from a similar ambition.
Dear Mr President, it is with delight that we of this newspaper join the distinguished company of George W. Bush, Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown and Kofi Annan, the European Union and other and other friends and well-meaning partners of yours to urge you to consider retiring in the nearest future.
This entire letter so far is to convey you this message and to point out that all indicators now suggest the absolute need for you to leave, and not delay in doing so. We sincerely urge you to give this matter your deepest thought. In doing so, consider that all the powerful odds that should make life comfortable for you are now stacked against you.
To refresh your mind, we have just talked about the most powerful foreign partners and friends whose support and company you need but who have turned their backs on you. You can’t underestimate that; you need it, and badly so, to succeed.
Revealing behaviour
At home everything is wrong for you. You have yourself given reason for Cameroonians not to believe that you are anymore capable or interested in the job. That behaviour is more revealing than you know. The constitution may be silent on the matter but good political and leadership judgement would not permit that.
The loyalty of your most trusted aides and of your regime is eroding faster than you know. They no longer believe in you and would let you fall as soon as they must! They say you have outlived your usefulness and that you ought to give way to someone else.
In this regard, Mr President, could you say what more sins Niger’s president Mainassara or Indira Ghandi, the Indian prime minister, committed for their personal guards at the appropriate moment to turn their weapons violently, hatefully against the same one they had sworn on oath to protect even with their lives? The danger ahead is far greater than you know!
Then your health: we believe you will get over your present problem, and we wish you a speedy recovery. But the problem is that you have a chronic vitality problem. You are most unlikely anymore to generate all the energy and vitality you need to be an effective commander-in-chief. Your failing enthusiasm for the job already sets a limit to how strong you can become to face the work.
Mr President there is absolutely no need to pretend on this. The public knows your limitations. The noble thing is to leave in good time and not allow your health to degenerate to the point where you lose consciousness about what happens next.
Remember, Houphouet Boigny, the Ivorian founding father, did not know how to leave when he should have. That miserable demise was no honour, neither to him nor to Ivorians who attribute their present problems to that untidy departure.
Habib Bourgiba, Tunisia’s independence president ended similarly. Clinging to power, he wasted away in office, becoming so senile and unconscious that he didn’t even know when power had quit him!
Lansana Conte of Guinea is presently tracing a similar path. Practically bed-ridden for the last several years, he still wouldn’t let go. Guinea stagnates, if not drift, because of real absence of leadership.
Paul Biya should not do that. We want to think, Mr President, that you are more honourable and considerate of Cameroonians. As we close this letter we feel inclined to recall two more points that Kofi Annan made against mandate extension.
For the incumbent to be there someone must have left the place for him to come in, Annan said. If the incumbent wouldn’t leave how will the next one come in? Annan completes his good governance thinking with the argument that it is a fallacy for those who want to stay in office to believe that they are the only ones capable of leadership in their country.
One last thing. Mr President, We ask you to open up the transition process so that in transparency Cameroonians may freely choose a leader they want through a really credible election. You can’t imagine what a legacy you would have left with just this.
We welcome you back home and wish you, once again, a speedy recovery. Cheers.
Yours Sincerely,
Boniface Forbin.
Publisher/Editor
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