Anglophone Crisis: How True Is The Allegation That Biya Is Being Misled By Hardliners?

Anglophone Crisis:
How True Is The Allegation That Biya Is Being Misled By Hardliners? (Is President Biya himself a moderate or a hardliner?).

Following the communique of January 23, 2023, signed by the Minister of Communication / Government’s Spokesman, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, distancing the Cameroon Government from the announced peace process in Canada aimed at resolving the long escalated Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon, some people have again taken to social media to blame the Government’s decision on those they term hardliners in the regime. According to them, President Biya is being manipulated by hardliners in the regime, and some of those being cited include Jacques Fame Ndongo, Paul Atanga Nji, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, Emmanuel Rene Sadi among others. These personalities are said to be misleading President Biya, by advising him to persistently continue to pursue the military option rather than dialogue to resolve the Anglophone Crisis. This school of thought expresses the conviction that these hardliners are taking advantage of President Biya’s situation (old age), to push him to take a hard position on the Anglophone Crisis. It is not only on the Anglophone issue that Biya is alleged to be misled by hardliners in the regime. There are also political issues like the Government’s tough stance against Maurice Kamto and his MRC party, the refusal to create a veritable independent electoral commission, and so on, that many Cameroonians think President Biya is being misled by hardliners. All this makes me laugh. How many members of Government, including the Prime Minister, are even able to see Biya for a one-on-one discussion in a year? Whatever the case, as a political observer and analyst, when I look at President Biya’s position on political issues today, I don’t see any difference from the position he took on major political issues 20, 30 years ago. He has not changed. What has changed is that in the past when Biya took a hardline position, some people would say then that it was France that imposed it on him. Today, the story has changed that it is so-called hardliners that are exploiting Biya’s situation to mislead him. Sorry.

Biya Is In Charge

Some people talk as if Biya does not have the capacity to take decisions on his own or the capacity to take his own political stand on issues as President of the Republic. Some people talk as if President Biya does not have the brains to think or to make decisions of his own. This is a man who studied Law in one of the best universities in the world, the University of Sorbonne, Paris, France. He also studied political science at ‘Institut d’Etudes Politique de Paris, and as well obtained a post-graduate diploma in Public Law at ‘Institut des Hautes Études d’Outre-Mer’, Paris. What I am trying to stress here is the fact that the President is responsible for any decision that he takes or that is taken in his name. The blame for any such decision has thus to be put on the President himself, and not on any other person. He is the one that Cameroonians ‘elected’ in 2018 as President of the Republic, and not Fame Ndongo, Atanga Nji, Mvondo Ayolo, or whoever. Biya is in charge.

Franck Biya As Special Adviser

What many Cameroonians do not also know is that President Biya’s son, Franck, is officially a Special Adviser to the President of the Republic. The appointment was not announced probably for political reasons. It was in the capacity of Special Adviser to the President that Franck Biya attended the press conference that was jointly granted by Presidents Macron and Biya at the Unity Palace during the visit of the French President last July. Many Cameroonians questioned what the President’s son was doing at the press conference. Franck was not there as the President’s son but rather he was there in his capacity as Special Adviser to the President of the Republic. And that was why he sat close to the Director of Civil Cabinet, Samuel Mvondo Ayolo. Meanwhile, with Franck by his father at the Presidency as well as in Mvomeka’a, no minister or whoever can get to President Biya and try to take advantage of his age to manipulate him. Not even Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh or Samuel Mvondo Ayolo can succeed in doing that. It is true that President Biya has officially handed to the Secretary General at the Presidency, part of his functions as President of the Republic. But this is not even the first time. He did the same some years ago when Laurent Esso was Secretary General at the Presidency.

Even Ahidjo Did Not Know Biya Well

Well, one can understand some of these misjudgments of Biya. President Biya by nature looks a calm character, somebody who is reserved, and that is perhaps why some Cameroonians misjudge him as somebody who cannot kill a fly. Even President Ahidjo under whom Biya worked for many years, seemingly did not understand him. Ahidjo seemingly mistook Biya’s calm posture for a weak personality. That was probably why President Ahidjo chose Biya as his Constitutional successor, instead of his long-time close collaborators and friends like Samuel Eboua. Ahidjo erroneously or apparently thought that Biya was somebody that could be led by the nose. By the time he realised the real colour of Biya, it was too late.

Biya Is A Hardliner

In a special programme put together in the form of a documentary, that CRTV did last year in commemoration of the 50th of the so-called unitary state, a political elite of the Grand North and former member of Government, Senator Dakole Daissala (now of blessed memory), asserted the point that many Cameroonians don’t know President Biya well. He said that is why whenever the President takes certain decisions or takes a certain stance, many people would erroneously say or think that he has been manipulated, influenced, or misled by those around him. The Northern elite said from what he knew of Biya, he is somebody that when he takes a stand especially on a political issue, nothing on earth would make him change his decision. The fact of the matter is that politically Biya is a hardliner, though many people erroneously think that he is a moderate and that he is rather being misled or manipulated by hardliners in his regime. Some of those personalities that are being branded as hardliners, are in reality not hardliners. Rather they understand the President’s position on burning issues and try to defend or project it in an overzealous manner.

Sovereign National Conference

Let me present just two examples, one of several years back, and the other a current situation, to substantiate the assertion that President Biya is not only a hardliner but is consistent in his hardline position. In the early 90s, there were incessant calls by opposition parties and civil society organizations, for the holding of a Sovereign National Conference as happened in some countries like Benin. But President Biya bluntly rejected the call and said that a National Conference was ‘Sans Objet’, meaning that there was no concrete or rational reason to organise it. The powerful Coordination of Opposition Parties and Civil Society Organizations, launched a no-nonsense Operation Ghost Town and Civil Disobedience, which was quite effective. The country was paralysed for a number of months from each Monday to Friday in a week. Businesses opened only during the weekends. Taxis were all grounded from Mondays to Fridays. By then there were no commercial motorcycles commonly known as okadas or bendskins, in the Southern part of the country. Imagine that above all, the economic capital of the country, Douala, was paralysed from Mondays to Fridays. The Douala Port which then was handling 95 % of the import and export trade of Cameroon, and which was also serving landlocked neighbouring countries (Chad and Central African Republic), opened only on Saturdays and Sundays. As for the Civil Disobedience, there was no payment of taxes as well as water and electricity bills by the population. Cameroon’s economy was down. The State coffer was empty. Yet, Biya would not budge. And as usual, many Cameroonians were instead blaming France than Biya, the President of the Republic.

Tripartite Talks

Meanwhile in his typical character of doing things his own way and not as demanded by the opposition and civil society organizations, President Biya later organised the so-called Tripartite Talks on his own terms. The whole thing was controlled by his CPDM loyalists. The National Chairman of the SDF, Ni John Fru Ndi even ended up walking out of the thing in disgust. The Tripartite Talks were very much to the advantage of President Biya. The new or revised Constitution of the country, that is the 1996 Constitution, was a recommendation of the Tripartite Talks. The committee to do the job was controlled by Biya loyalists like Prof Joseph Owona and Prof Bipoum, who prepared the Constitution more for President Biya than for the President of the Republic of Cameroon. The Constitution gave a lot of power to the President.

The Anglophone Crisis

Meanwhile, if we look at the way President Biya is handling the Anglophone Crisis, it is the same hardline way he handled the call for a Sovereign National Conference in the early 90s. The long unresolved Anglophone Problem degenerated into the Anglophone Crisis in late 2016. When the Anglophone Consortium headed by Barrister Agbor Balla presented the demand of the Anglophone people for a return of the country to the federal system, as was agreed at reunification in 1961 and inscribed in the 1961 Federal Constitution of the country, President Biya simply responded by banning the Consortium. He had many of its leaders, including Agbor Balla and Dr. Fontem Neba, arrested and detained. What I saw in this was the same way Biya rejected the call for a Sovereign National Conference in the early 90s. And to date, the President is still sticking to his position against the federal system.

Bilingualism and Multiculturalism

As President Biya had his way in the early 90s by not holding a Sovereign National Conference but instead the so-called Tripartite Talks, he also came up with his own thing in 2017, the creation of the so-called National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism to resolve the Anglophone Crisis. But this is another subject.