Nicolas Sarkozy urged to help Cameroonians settle acute problem of a proper and transparent change of power

Paul Biya’s back is on the wall after Mamadou Tandja of Niger backs out

By successfully dissuading Niger’s president to drop plans for a third term after only a few hours of talks last Friday, Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrates that he can effectively help the cause of democracy and good governance in Africa। That is a welcome departure from the complacency of previous French presidents who spoilt things for Africans. Cameroonians are encouraged not only by Sarkozy’s success in Niamey, but also for the tough, no-nonsense manner in which he relates to Paul Biya who seems determined to sit tight in office at the least opportunity. Given the enormous clout at his disposal we now believe that it is fully within the ability of Nicolas Sarkozy to help Cameroonians settle this thorny problem of a proper and transparent change of power in
Cameroon in 2011. Let him do us that favour.

It is not ordinary to accomplish as much as Nicolas Sarkozy did in his forty-eight hour flying visit to Africa last week. The French President was in Kinshasa, Brazzaville and Niamey on Thursday and Friday.
Sarkozy traveled with a planeload of businessmen who did business especially in Kishasa and Niamey. But it was the political outcome of the visit that is striking.
At all three stops, the French president met opposition leaders as well. He addressed parliament in Kinshasa and deplored the cavalier manner in which its president Vital Kamerhe had been forced out of office just the day before.
In Brazzaville where a presidential election in Congo is in preparation for next July, Sarkozy openly called on President Denis Sassou Nguessou to make sure it will be transparent.
It was in Niamey that Sarkozy had palpable success. He persuaded Mamadou Tandja, Niger’s president to drop plans to extend his mandate beyond his second term that ends in November.
The French president even got Tandja to make a public declaration to that effect at a joint press conference in his presence, which he did to the nation’s relief. “I want to tell the nation that I will respect the constitution which puts a limit to two presidential terms and leave office honourably. I have never asked, and will never ask any persons to change the constitution so that I can stand again for another term.”

Street demonstrations
For the last several months Tandja’s partisans (ministers and provincial governors included) had organized street demonstrations calling on the president to modify the constitution and stand again for office.
It was the first time the Niger president made himself clear on the issue. He had so far been silent, like Olusegun Obasanjo, former Nigerian president who nursed a similar project until it collapsed.
That makes the role played by the French president quite instrumental. Not only did he make up his mind with the arrival of Sarkozy, Mamadou Tandja also went right ahead to make his decision public. That was important.
Cameroonians congratulate both the Niger and French presidents on this important step forward for democracy in Africa. At that rate Sarkozy will soon become Africa’s saviour. We urge him very much to help Cameroonians out of the clutches of the dictatorship of the Biya regime. He has the clout; he can do it.
One thing is now certain. The French president has deliberately avoided accepting Paul Biya’s invitation to Cameroon as a sign of his displeasure at the latter’s desire to continue in office beyond 2011 when he should quit, by the constitution.

Sarkozy tells African presidents that two terms of hard work at the helm of any country is more than enough for anybody. Soon after he himself became president, Sarkozy used a parliamentary bill to limit the French presidency to two terms of five years each. Isn’t that teaching by example?
It is certain that the French president sees Paul Biya as a truly pathetic case. Why would he want to continue in office after more than two and a half decades, and at age 79?

Paul Biya ignored two separate messages from him expressing reservation over his amendment of the constitution a year ago. Sarkozy appealed to him then both as president of the European Union, and as French president.
Paul Biya took the gamble, hoping that somewhere along the line things would work out, in spite of this initial opposition। The Cameroonian president has often gotten away taking big political risks.But this time it may not be so.
Paul Biya has so far remained unpunished by the Commonwealth whose conditions of membership he has arrogantly ignored, thirteen years into membership. Also the president has repeatedly escaped sanctions for his long history of abusive elections.
Much of this happened with the complacency of France in whose sphere of influence Cameroon thrives. But times are changing, and changing fast. Paul Biya himself weakened the historical bond with France in a flight of fancy with the US, using the opportunity offered by Iraq in 2003.
But keeping his relationship with Washington didn’t prove easy, conditioned as it was on institutional reforms that the Cameroonian president has a visceral dislike for. Rebuffed by Washington, Biya found it only logical to return to France. But time, circumstances and people since changed.

Complacency
Sarkozy decided to end the relationship of complacency (reseau) by his predecessors with French African countries and their leaders in a new policy of rupture. He is also a more faithful ally of France’s western partners, unlike his immediate predecessor Jacques Chirac.
Sarkozy’s unusually active and highly successful presidency of the EU very much won the admiration of other Europeans. That raised the personal profile of the French president as a super European player. The global economic downturn has offered Sarkozy other opportunities to stamp himself as an inevitable European player, even after his EU presidency.

These strong factors, added to his young age at 55, and his not being an enarque, a graduate of France’s school of administration, where the bulk of its ruling elite comes from, combine to give the present tenant of the Elysee Palace a completely different outlook and scale of diplomatic values.
In Johannesburg last year, for instance, the French president called for the revision of military defence pacts made since the 1960s. That will mean a drastic cut in the number of French soldiers and military bases in Africa. The agreements also require France to fight with African countries that are attacked or go to war. Sarkozy sees that as completely archaic!
Such is the different sort of French president that Paul Biya, an old Indian who knows no change, is dealing with. Without compromising France’s traditional relations with Cameroon and its people, Sarkozy is nonetheless far from being a give-away to Biya. The French president is proving a hard nut for Yaounde to crack.

In refusing to accept Biya’s invitation to Yaounde and deliberately dropping Cameroon from his last week’s flying visit Sarkozy has let Biya understand that any real friendship with the Elysee would be based on Biya respecting principles of good governance, and respecting friends by listening to them.
It was a deliberate diplomatic affront for Paul Biya to have brushed off with the back of the hand, Sarkozy’s reservation on the constitutional amendment of last year.
In fact, Paul Biya received the French ambassador who came with Sarkozy’s letters. Throwing them in the dustbin, the president went ahead later in the afternoon to introduce the constitutional bill in parliament. Not even the most forgiving interpretation of Paul Biya’s behaviour would have considered that as kind.
No doubt Sarkozy is being tough with Biya.

Cameroonians urge him very much to straighten out their erring president. That would be a great service rendered to the 18 million Cameroonians that the faltering and greedy policies of the Yaounde regime have rendered poor, even when Cameroon is not a poor country in its resource potential.
The question for Biya is: If Mamadou Tandja who has been in power for only ten years will respect his country’s constitution and leave honourably in November why can’t Paul Biya who will be clocking twenty-nine years in office not understand that the way forward for Cameroon is to retire and let another succeed in a free and fair election?

Public decision
It is certain that when the two meet at the Elysee Palace in summer, at Sarkozy’s invitation, Paul Biya will pre-empt his host by telling him that in spite of the constitutional amendment to cancel term limits, he will not stand again for president in 2011. Deja-vu!
That is exactly how the president approached the Pope during the latter’s visit to Yaounde recently. The question is if Paul Biya will not stand for office again why does he not make the decision public like the Niger president?

Isn’t that a decision that belongs to the public domain which when taken ought to be made known to Cameroonians? Why does the Cameroonian president choose to make such an important decision a secret that he tells only favoured friends or partners? Isn’t it true that a public announcement commits the president; and until that happens he can always change his mind.
That is what he did after assuring George Bush and Tony Blair, unsolicited, on separate occasions. We urge Nicolas Sarkozy to understand that the immediate political destiny of Cameroon could be very much influenced if he is straight and tough with Paul Biya at their coming summer meeting in Paris.

Knowing that Biya does not keep his promises, Sarkozy will be of great help to Cameroonians if he could press Biya, in addition to a public statement not to stand for office again in 2011, to further promise and give the nation a transition plan towards 2011.
Topmost about this plan should be the creation of an independent electoral organ to begin preparing the 2011 presidential election that should be free and fair.
Sarkozy must not underestimate his role in pressing Paul Biya to do the right thing. Biya is presently isolated and without friends because of his untrustworthiness. Biya is practically on his knees begging to cultivate a personal relationship with the French president. That is Sarkozy’s leverage that he ought to wield powerfully.
For Paul Biya, let him understand that the international community is learning to speak with one voice, forced to do so by the nature of the solutions now on the table for discussion against the global economic downturn.
With funds shrinking for poor African countries, new rules for aid might become not only tighter but also supervised by a globally designed mechanism. Cameroon might be forced to comply in most unpleasant ways that are presently not imaginable. A little foresight could help Paul Biya anticipate the future with some grace.
Whatever is the case Cameroon in its present institutional structure cannot survive the test of the coming months, whether Paul Biya continues in office or not. And should he, by some misfortune for Cameroonians, continue in office in 2011 he would surely find the experience a very different and burdensome one.

But Nicolas Sarkozy stands in good stead to save Cameroonians that sad prospect. That is not a difficult task to fulfill for Cameroonians. Let him do it.

Source: The Herald