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Cameroon President Paul Biya is alive and in “wonderful” well being, the central African nation’s authorities has stated in an try to quell intense hypothesis concerning the wellbeing and whereabouts of the world’s oldest chief who had not been seen in public for greater than a month.
The 91-year-old, who has been in energy since 1982, has not been pictured since attending a China-Africa summit in Beijing initially of September.
He missed the UN Basic Meeting assembly in New York on the finish of final month and cancelled a deliberate look eventually week’s Worldwide Organisation of La Francophonie summit in Paris.
The Paris no-show specifically raised eyebrows, given his nation’s heat ties with France and his presence on the opening ceremony of the Olympic Video games within the metropolis in July.
The top of the cupboard sought to elucidate Biya’s absence by saying the president was in Geneva, the Swiss metropolis the place he spends a substantial quantity of his time. Certainly, Biya’s visits to Geneva are so widespread that he has earned the nickname “President of the Lodge InterContinental”, a reference to the posh lodging the place he’s stated to base himself whereas within the metropolis.
That Biya didn’t make the quick flight to Paris fuelled hypothesis in his residence nation that he was significantly sick, and even lifeless.
The Guardian Submit, a revered newspaper within the capital Yaoundé, channelled the nationwide temper on Tuesday when it splashed its entrance web page with the headline: “One month after China-Africa summit: Biya’s whereabouts unknown!”
“Biya’s authorities doesn’t talk a lot. That’s at all times been the case for the previous 25 years of his travels,” stated a political marketing consultant with ties to the Biya authorities. “However there’s one thing totally different this time.”
The clamour was such that the Cameroon authorities was pressured to concern an announcement late on Tuesday, with spokesperson René Sadi saying Biya was on a “temporary non-public keep in Europe” and would return to Cameroon within the “subsequent few days”.
The cupboard secretary additionally sought to “reassure all our compatriots in addition to the worldwide neighborhood concerning the wonderful state of well being of the top of state”.
He continued: “For a while now, a couple of individuals, malicious via social networks, have undertaken to make consider that the president of the republic can be significantly sick, and even handed from life to demise.”
The statements are unlikely to quell unease in Cameroon, the place the nonagenarian president has grow to be an more and more remoted determine, with solely a small band of advisers and members of the family, together with first woman Chantal Biya, having unfettered entry to him.
Cameroon, which has had solely two presidents since turning into an impartial nation greater than six many years in the past, is beset by a long-running secessionist battle between authorities troops and English-speaking guerrilla fighters in search of an impartial state alongside the border with Nigeria.
Cameroon can also be in a part of Africa the place Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Chad, Sudan, Niger and Gabon have suffered coups since 2020.
Beneath the Cameroon structure, the president of the senate would grow to be head of state within the occasion of the president’s demise. That will be 89-year-old Marcel Niat Njifenji.
“Their hand has been pressured,” the particular person conversant in the federal government’s considering stated of the federal government’s assertion insisting Biya was alive.
“There are worries that if one thing have been to occur, who would take over? Biya has centralised energy a lot round him that each one the potential presidential hopefuls are both in jail or — as a result of he’s been there so lengthy — they’ve handed away.”