Камерун президенті Пол Бия: 40 жыл билікте

President of Cameroon since 1982

Paul Biya (born Paul Barthélemy Biya'a bi Mvondo; 13 February 1933) is a Cameroonian politician who is the second president of Cameroon since 6 November 1982, having previously been the prime minister of Cameroon from 1975 to 1982. He is the second longest ruling president in Africa, the longest consecutively serving current non royal national leader in the world and the oldest head of state in the world. He is regarded as an authoritarian leader and dictator. A native of Cameroon's south, Biya rose rapidly as a bureaucrat under President Ahmadou Ahidjo in the 1960s, as Secretary General of the Presidency from 1968 to 1975 and then as Prime Minister. He succeeded Ahidjo as President upon the latter's surprise resignation in 1982 and consolidated power in a 1983–1984 staged attempted coup in which he eliminated all of his major rivals. Biya introduced political reforms within the context of a one party system in the 1980s, later accepting the introduction of multiparty politics in the early 1990s under serious pressure. He won the contentious 1992 presidential election with 40% of the plural, single ballot vote and was re elected by large margins in 1997, 2004, 2011, and 2018. Opposition politicians and Western governments have alleged voting irregularities and fraud on each of these occasions. Many independent sources have provided evidence that he did not win the elections in 1992 and that subsequent elections suffered from rampant fraud.

As an official in post independence 1960s Cameroon, Biya rose to prominence under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. After becoming director of the Cabinet of the minister of national education in January 1964 and secretary general of the ministry of national education in July 1965, he was named director of the civil cabinet of the president in December 1967 and secretary general of the presidency (while remaining director of the civil cabinet) in January 1968. He gained the rank of minister in August 1968 and the rank of minister of state in June 1970, while remaining secretary general of the presidency. Following the creation of a unitary state in 1972, he became Prime Minister of Cameroon on 30 June 1975. In June 1979, a new law designated the prime minister as the president's constitutional successor. Ahidjo unexpectedly announced his resignation on 4 November 1982, and Biya accordingly succeeded him as president of Cameroon on 6 November. On 11 December 1982, he was placed in charge of managing party affairs in Ahidjo's absence. During the first months after Biya's succession, he continued to show loyalty to Ahidjo, and Ahidjo continued to show support for Biya, but in 1983 a deep rift developed between the two. Ahidjo went into exile in France, and from there he publicly accused Biya of abuse of power and paranoia about plots against him. After Ahidjo resigned as CNU leader, Biya took the helm of the party at an "extraordinary session" of the CNU party held on 14 September 1983. In November 1983, Biya announced that the next presidential election would be held on 14 January 1984; it had been previously scheduled for 1985. He was the sole candidate in this election and won 99.98% of the vote. Biya survived a military coup attempt on 6 April 1984, following his decision on the previous day to disband the Republican Guard and disperse its members across the military. The results were strongly disputed by the opposition, which alleged fraud. he was sworn in on 3 November. He has been consistently re elected as the National President of the RDPC; he was re elected at the party's second extraordinary congress on 7 July 2001 and its third extraordinary congress on 21 July 2006. Biya won another seven year term in the 11 October 2004 presidential election, officially taking 70.92 percent of the vote, although the opposition again alleged widespread fraud. The proposed removal of term limits was among the grievances expressed during violent protests in late February 2008. Nevertheless, on 10 April 2008, the National Assembly voted to change the Constitution to remove term limits. Given the RDPC's control of the National Assembly, the change was overwhelmingly approved, with 157 votes in favor and five opposed; the 15 deputies of the SDF chose to boycott the vote in protest. The change also provided for the President to enjoy immunity from prosecution for his actions as President after leaving office. On 12 June 2006, he signed the Greentree Agreement with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo which formally put an end to the Bakassi peninsula border dispute. In February 2008, riots broke out, calling for lower prices and the departure of Paul Biya as president. The demonstrators were severely repressed with reports of a hundred dead and thousands of arrests. In the October 2011 presidential election, Biya secured a sixth term in office, polling 77.9% of votes cast. John Fru Ndi was his nearest rival, polling 10%. Biya's opponents alleged wide scale fraud in the election and procedural irregularities were noted by the French and US governments. In his victory speech, Biya promised to stimulate growth and create jobs with a programme of public works which would "transform our country into a vast construction site". Biya won the 2018 presidential election with 71.3% of the vote. The election was marred by violence and low voter turnout. As of 2022, he is the longest serving non royal head of state, having been in power since 30 June 1975.

During 2016 and 2017, under Paul Biya's reign, large scale protests broke out among Anglophone Cameroonians in the area of the formerly British Southern Cameroons. Protestors complained that Anglophone regions in Cameroon (the Northwest Region and the Southwest Region) were neglected by Biya's government, and excluded from power. During this time, Anglophone separatists claim that government forces murdered protestors en masse, and committed crimes against humanity, including genocide. Certain protestors had called upon Biya and the Cameroonian government to grant them independence. Eventually, separatists declared independence in October 2017 under the name Ambazonia. Numerous civilians and activists have accused Biya's government forces of burning villages, raping women, extrajudicial killings of civilians, and acts of genocide. A petition to the United Nations gave details of police raping students at a university. The National Commission for Human Rights and Freedoms embarked on a fact finding mission in Buea to investigate allegations of human rights abuses in the region. A June 2018 report by the BBC News found a widespread pattern of villages throughout the Southwest Region being burnt, including one video of men wearing government issued BIR (Bataillon d'Intervention Rapide) equipment. due to identity differences, thus triggering the conflict.

Biya became a naturalized citizen of France when he studied there, but he later relinquished his French citizenship when he returned to Cameroon to serve in government positions. In 1961, he married Jeanne Irène Biya, who did not have any children, though she adopted Franck Emmanuel Olivier Biya, who had been born in 1971 from a relationship between Biya and Jeanne Irène's sister or niece. Paul Biya married Chantal Vigouroux, who is 36 years his junior, on 23 April 1994, and had two more children with her, Paul Jr. and Anastasia Brenda.