Editorial: Fate of CPDM without Biya!.

At 82 and 41 years in power, many political commentators have argued strongly that President Biya should not run for the seventh mandate at a period even a third term is considered an abomination in democratic parlance. 

However, ‘calls’ continue to stream in from across the country for him to seek re-election at the 2025 presidential election. 

As early as May 17, 2023, the Minister of Public Health, Dr Manaouda Malachie, launched the first appeal in a press release, for the incumbent to seek another seven years.

On September 9, 2023, before the football match between Cameroon and Burundi, on September 12, the same minister even campaigned by offering 1,000 match tickets to young people for them to support the candidacy of Paul Biya at the 2025 presidential election.

In November 2023, a meeting by CPDM supporters in France, in the presence of his eldest son, Emmanuel Franck Biya, called on the natural candidate of their party, Biya, to run for the 2025 presidential election.

CPDM elite from all of the country’s ten Regions have not been left out of the bandwagon of the ‘people's call’ for Biya to seek re-election, come October  2025.

For political commentators of mettle, such calls, be they from the heart or just mere flattering to reap favours from the president, are testimonies that without Paul Biya, the CPDM is history.

At the weekend, on ‘Club d’Elites’, a program on Vision 4 Television, a former Central Committee member of the ruling CPDM party, who was sanctioned but continues to pay unflattering allegiance to President Biya, said what many commentators consider as "gospel truth".

Prof Charlemagne Messanga Nyamding, said the ruling party is mainly supported by President Paul Biya. 

"After Paul Biya, there is no one behind it. It is Paul Biya who carries the CPDM. If you take away President Biya from the CPDM, the party is empty”.

Given that no one is indispensable, no party official, however, is overtly posing as a possible successor, which within the CPDM party is more like a taboo.

Those who aspire do so in secret. As Pan-African magazine, Jeune Afrique, once questioned, "Cameroon: After Biya, will the clan war take place?"

In attempting to answer its question, the authoritative magazine wrote that: "The future is on everyone's mind, but few have been able to display their ambitions without paying the price. Some are nevertheless preparing out of sight. No one will dare to speak about it openly".

In that suspicious nocturnal atmosphere, Paul Biya has not said he will run for office or not, keeping his supporters and the nation on worrying suspense.

That situation, however could be to the advantage of the opposition to bank on. Prof Nyamding at the weekend debate programme on Vision 4, had argued that it requires just a coalition of four political leaders to defeat the CPDM at the next presidential election.

“In 2025, if Maurice Kamto, Cabral Libii, Bello Bouba and Issa Tchiroma get together, no one will be able to beat them,” he declared. 

Bello Bouba and Issa Tchiroma, both from the Northern Regions, already have an alliance with the CPDM, where they were compensated with ministerial seats, so they may prefer a "bird in hand". 

But with politics nothing is impossible.What is sure, however, is that nobody is indispensable and President Biya, whether he takes another mandate or not, must one day leave the stage, which should not be considered as a crime of lèse-majesté. What then will be the future of the CPDM?

As Jeune Afrique postulated, "...everyone is waiting, feverishly or confidently, for a sign, a clue. It is certain, the barons say, Paul Biya, this political strategist whom everyone admires, must have a plan".

The president has however continued to keep that plan close to his chest. The more the plan remains covert, there will be the intensity of the suspense as elections come up next year.

If he must leave a legacy to befit his statute as "a great African patriarch who must be honored”, to quote Senator Françoise Puene alias Mamy Nyanga at a ceremony to renovate the CPDM party house in Bafang on Saturday, he should call a party congress.

It is at that congress which is supposed to hold every five years but has only taken place three times in 39 years, that President Biya can break the silence about the succession mystery.

What may not be questionable is that without a smooth transition, the "clan war" within the CPDM, which Jeune Afrique reported about, may just see the ruling party going, going and….