Paul Biya

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Paul Biya
Biya at Andrews Air Force Base (1986)

Paul Biya (born February 13, 1933 in Mvomeka'a , Cameroon as Paul Barthélemy Biya'a bi Mvondo ) has been the second president of Cameroon since 1982 . He comes from the Bulu people .

Life

Paul Biya comes from a Roman Catholic family who lived in modest circumstances. He attended a seminary in Yaoundé in the 1940s . In the 1950s he went to Paris, where he studied at several universities. He studied international relations at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and graduated there in 1961 with a diploma. In 1962 the first president of Cameroon, Ahmadou Ahidjo , called him back to the country and appointed him minister. From 1975 to 1982 he was Prime Minister . At the same time he rose in the unity party National Cameroonian Union (UNC).

After Ahidjo resigned from the office of president for health reasons, Biya was appointed as his successor two days later, on November 6, 1982. Ahidjo, who still headed the UNC, assumed that he would be able to return to office later. Biya replaced ministers loyal to Ahidjo with followers of their own. Because, among others, Biya accused Ahidjo of having initiated a coup in August 1983 to return to power, he went into exile in 1983. Biya now also became President of the UNC.

In April 1984 there was another unsuccessful attempted coup. In 1985, Biya founded the ruling Democratic Gathering of the Cameroonian People's Party (RDPC) as the successor party to the UNC, of ​​which he also became president. After Cameroon was ruled by only one party for a long time, a multi-party system was introduced under Biya in the 1990s. After the first presidential election, in which several candidates were allowed to run, on October 11, 1992, Biya declared himself the winner, while opposition candidate John Fru Ndi claimed that the election results had been manipulated. When large demonstrations ensued, Biya declared a state of emergency and let the military take action against supporters of the opposition. Amnesty International charged the police with unlawful arrests, torture and killings. The opposition parties boycotted the next presidential election in 1997.

Despite the domestic political tensions, Biya was able to improve the country's financial situation. In 2000, he signed a contract with the President of Chad , Idriss Déby , to build a pipeline from Chad to the Cameroonian port of Kribi . He intensified economic cooperation with the USA and China .

In the presidential election on October 11, 2004, Biya was elected for a further seven years, which the opposition saw as a large-scale fraud. Nevertheless, he was sworn in on November 3, 2004 for another term.

In 2005, Biya met with the then Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in Geneva to resolve the conflict over the Bakassi Peninsula that had been simmering since the 1960s .

In 2008, Biya managed to have the term limit lifted. He therefore ran again in the election on October 9, 2011 and was re-elected with 77 percent of the vote. In the election in October 2018 , at the age of 85, he ran again and won with 71 percent of the vote.

criticism

Paul Biya has been criticized by some for his strict leadership style and especially for his alienation from the people. He also met with strong rejection from the English- speaking Cameroonians. They accuse him of not paying enough attention to their problems and feel excluded from political and state events. Many of his opponents come from English-speaking South Cameroon . They think the country is governed only by the president's ethnicity. In fact, all high government offices are occupied by French-speaking politicians.

Biya is accused of taking advantage of a system of corruption and of undoing the country's democratic achievements.

In 2014, for example, an anti-terror law was passed that severely restricts freedom of expression and the political opposition in Cameroon.

His repeated absence from the country has also been criticized. He is said to often live in Swiss luxury hotels with an entourage of up to 50 people. He is said to have seldom met with his government and made few political decisions: all of his political oeuvre in 2017 should have consisted of a dozen laws that he signed within three days.

family

Paul Biya was first married to Jeanne-Irène Biya , from whom he divorced and who died in 1992. His first son Frank Biya comes from the marriage. In 1994 Paul Biya married Chantal Biya (born in Vigouroux). They have two children together, Paul Biya Junior and Brenda Biya. He is the adoptive father of his wife Chantal's two children, who come from a previous liaison.

Web links

Commons : Paul Biya  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Antonio Cascais : Paul Biya: Authoritarian long-term ruler and political survivor. In: Deutsche Welle . October 7, 2018, accessed October 23, 2018 .
  2. a b c d e f g h Catherine Victoria Donaldson: Paul Biya Biography. In: notablebiographies.com. 2018, accessed on November 4, 2018 (English, entry ends in 2005).
  3. a b Q&A: Cameroon presidential elections. In: BBC . October 7, 2011, accessed November 4, 2018 .
  4. Cameroon's Supreme Court confirms Biya's re-election . Notification of Agence France Presse of 5 October of 2004.
  5. a b Paul Biya: Cameroon's 'absentee president'. In: BBC . October 5, 2018, accessed November 4, 2018 .
  6. Cameroonians revolt against President Biya . Publication by the Peace Research Group at the University of Kassel .
  7. ^ Protest against the "African torture regime" . Publication by the Peace Research Group at the University of Kassel.
  8. Jefcoate O'Donnell, Robbie Gramer: Cameroon's Paul Biya Gives a Master Class in Fake Democracy. In: Foreign Policy . October 22, 2018, accessed November 4, 2018 .
  9. ^ Cameroon: German engineer indicted in military court . In: Spiegel Online . September 24, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed September 24, 2019]).
  10. ^ Emmanuel Freudenthal, Frank William Batchou, Gaelle Tjat: Paul Biya, Cameroon's Roaming President. In: occrp.org. Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, February 18, 2018, accessed November 4, 2018 .