1 of 2 | Cameroonian President Paul Biya (pictured December 2022 in Washington, D.C.) said Sunday that his decision to be a candidate for an eighth term arrived after “numerous and insistent” calls by people from all regions in Cameroon. If he wins, Biya could be president until nearly age 100. File Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI | License Photo
Cameroon’s President Paul Biya, the world’s oldest head of state, says he will again run for re-election in the country’s October election as he seeks to extend a 43-year grip on power.
Biya, 92, said Sunday afternoon in a social media post that his decision to be a candidate for an eighth term arrived after “numerous and insistent” calls by people from all regions in Cameroon and other places.
“Rest assured that my determination to serve you matches the urgency of the challenges we face,” he wrote on X.
It was expected he would run for another seven-year term but wasn’t official until Sunday. If he wins, Biya could be president until nearly the age of 100.
Biya, who took office in 1982, has never lost an election despite credible accusations of voter manipulation, corruption, embezzlement and growing calls to step aside in order to give way for fresh leadership.
Multiple opponents have announced their candidacies to challenge Biya.
On Sunday, the aging leader argued that, despite it all, “much remains to be done.”
He abolished term limits in 2008 and won re-election in 2018 with over 71% of the electorate in a national election opposition leaders claimed saw widespread irregularities.
Since last year, members of Cameroon’s governing People’s Democratic Movement party have publicly called on Biya to seek another presidential term.
“In the face of an increasingly difficult international environment, the challenges facing us are more and more pressing,” Biya, the party leader, stated this week on his candidacy.
But in addition to public concern over Biya’s health, his absence last year from public view for nearly two months fueled speculation on his well-being and rumors that Biya died.
A 2018 report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found that, in 35 years, Biya spent more than four years on “brief private visits” out of Cameroon.
Late last year, top officials advised the press to refrain from discussing Biya’s health as Cameroon’s government, in a letter to its 10 regional governors, urged a ban enforcement.
“Any misguided attempt to censor reporting about his health for national security reasons simply fuels rampant speculation,” the New York City-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in October.
The OCCRP investigation further discovered he spent a third of the year away from the country in 2006 and 2009 missing amid violent crackdowns on public demonstrations.
Biya’s odds for a successful re-election campaign are high with over 300 political parties comprising Cameroon’s fragmented political opposition.
“They (the opposition) don’t stand a chance as individual candidates,” Germany-based political analyst Collins Molua Ikome told CNN on Monday. “If they form a transitional coalition then maybe they might,” he added.
Meanwhile, the people of Cameroon remain fearful to speak openly on politics over fear of retribution.
A public sector worker says Biya “still has much to offer the Cameroonian people” while a consultant suggested maybe “there’s no one better.”
“If he is a candidate, it means he’s capable to lead,” Ngono Marius told the BBC.
“Never in the political history of nations have I seen or heard that a man of that age, is declaring his candidacy in a presidential election,” added a Cameroon citizen on condition of anonymity.
