Cameroon: Is Franck Biya the president’s son and successor?

In latest years, the controversy over who will succeed Cameroon’s long-time president, Paul Biya, has turn into a degree of political rivalry. The 88-year-old, who has held the highest workplace since 1982, is because of finish his newest time period in 2025.
Until just lately, Biya’s eldest son saved a comparatively low profile. Most Cameroonians knew little about Franck Biya, who has labored as a businessman and entrepreneur.
But now, hypothesis is mounting that he could also be making ready to take over his father’s position as chief. Social media has been flooded with pictures of Franck Biya as he allegedly gathers help for his personal political celebration. Some of the movies are calling for his candidacy.
A bunch of businessmen, politicians and authorities allies has even fashioned The Frankistes Citizen Movement for the Peace and Unity of Cameroon. Led by businessman Mohamed Rahim Noumeau, they’re calling on Franck Biya to run for the presidency within the subsequent basic election.
An anticipated flip of occasions
Across the nation, opinions range on Franck Biya’s doable ascension to energy.
But it’s the style of the transition that has most Cameroonians involved. While some suppose it’s doable that Franck Biya will undergo the democratic course of, others imagine a free and truthful energy changeover is solely a pipe dream for the central African nation.
“It has been normal in Africa and in the Francophone system, which France has harnessed and upheld, that [authorities] always work with the children as successors of various presidents,” political analyst Ako John Ako instructed DW.
Franck Biya’s presidential ambitions don’t come as a complete shock within the context of the area. Togo’s present president Faure Gnassingbe was instantly put in because the nation’s chief in 2005 following the demise of his father, President Gnassingbe Eyadema, who dominated for 38 years.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), incumbent president Felix Tshisekedi was elected to guide the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) after his father, former president Etienne Tshisekedi, died in 2017.
As with these comparable circumstances on the continent, Ako says it’s doubtless that Franck Biya’s run for his father’s job will provoke resentment amongst many in Cameroon and even worsen the nation’s present crises.
“Franck Biya becoming president will anger many Cameroonians and may provoke other conflicts,” he says. “From fighting Boko Haram in the north, the Seleka [rebels] in the east and the [Anglophone] crisis in the north-west and south-west. It will keep Cameroon in pieces.”
Democratic transition needed
But not everybody agrees with this outlook. Njang Denis, the chief of Cameroon’s Popular Action Party (PAP) says there’s nothing inherently mistaken with Franck Biya ultimately turning into president of Cameroon. However, he stresses that he have to be elected by a democratic course of, in any other case his rule can be in violation of Cameroon’s structure.
“I will have a problem when it becomes unconstitutional, where it becomes a backdoor game,” Denis instructed DW.
Cameroon’s structure stipulates that if the president leaves energy earlier than the tip of his time period, the president of the senate will in the end succeed him. Since its independence in 1961, Cameroon has solely had two heads of state. Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo appointed Biya as president of Cameroon in 1982 following the latter’s resignation. Biya later consolidated energy in a staged tried coup in 1983-84 with a purpose to eradicate his rivals. He ultimately launched a multiparty system within the early Nineteen Nineties, however opposition politicians have lengthy alleged voting irregularities.
Biya has now held his place for nearly 30 years and has amended his nation’s structure to permit him to face for reelection indefinitely. Denis is cautious of Cameroon’s subsequent president following the identical path.
“We do not want the same scenario where Ahidjo prepared the terrain for Biya to come in…I do not want a situation where it looks like we are in a monarchy,” Denis stated.
A good-for-all course of
However, not everyone seems to be as involved with the doable pitfalls of Franck Biya’s candidacy. For Cameroonian historical past trainer Kedia Robert, anybody has the correct to face for election — and Franck Biya shouldn’t routinely be discredited as a result of he’s the president’s son.
“Franck Biya is a Cameroonian,” Robert instructed DW. “He has his legitimate right and political right to step in for any position. We could not discredit him because his father is a president.”
Robert factors out comparable conditions around the globe by which the kids of a former sitting president in the end took on the identical position, together with the Bush household within the United States and Gabon’s President Ali Bongo Ondimba, who was elected following his father’s demise in 2009 — albeit amid accusation of voting irregularities.
“It will not be a problem in Cameroon,” Robert stated. “That is democracy. If people vote for him, then it’s good.”