Culled from Actu 24
While Paul Biya has been out of contact for weeks, his ‘death’ is stirring the country. A television channel based in South Africa announced the death of Paul Biya, reinforcing a ‘rumor’ that had been circulating for a few days. Immediately, the ruling regime became agitated. On their digital platforms, regime officials launched hostilities against the propagators of this ‘fake news’. Grégoire Owona , Minister of Labor and Deputy Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Rdpc, the ruling party, called on ‘the appropriate institutions [to] ‘crack down’ on these impostors, wherever they come from and wherever they broadcast from’. For his part, Jacques Fame Ndongo, Minister of Higher Education and Secretary for Communication of the Rdpc, believes that ‘this phantasmagoric scheme should not shake the political maturity, lucidity, and patriotism of Cameroonians and friends of our dear and beautiful country. Universal journalism relies on facts and not on fabrications or deceitful news’.
Meanwhile, the High Commissioner of South Africa to Cameroon was announced at the Ministry of External Relations to be reprimanded about this ‘false information’ broadcast by this television channel operating from South Africa and owned by separatist leaders. The events seem to fuel the ‘false information’. Yaoundé is forced to communicate officially. During the radio and television news broadcasts of public service media, the messages are relayed. First, the Minister of Communication, the government spokesperson, denounces ‘peremptory announcements accompanied by comments as tendentious as each other, but with no relation to the reality of the facts’. For René Emmanuel Sadi, ‘the government of the Republic unequivocally asserts that these rumors are fantasies and pure imagination of their authors, and intends to formally refute them’. Subsequently, it is Samuel Mvondo Ayolo, the Director of the Civil Cabinet (DCC) of the Presidency of the Republic, who takes the stage during the same news editions, and ‘firmly condemns behaviors that abuse freedom of expression to try to disturb national and international opinion’.
This comes as whistleblower Paul Chouta recently announced that Paul Biya was evacuated from Switzerland to France for emergency surgery.
Health
While unofficial government communicators were busy denying and discrediting the whistleblower, the man reaffirmed his statements by providing details on the flight taken by the presidential couple and its destination. Today, as the public increasingly questions their president, who has not been heard from since the end of the China-Africa summit held from September 4 to 6, in this context of rumors about Paul Biya’s death, René Emmanuel Sadi states, ‘the government wishes to inform that the day after the China-Africa summit, in which he actively participated, the head of state took a brief private stay in Europe’, without specifying the destination. ‘However, he remains, as usual, attentive to the evolution of national life wherever he is’. Inviting partners and friendly countries not to be distracted by disinformation, manipulation, and destabilization maneuvers orchestrated by pernicious groups and individuals for undisclosed purposes. And above all, ‘the head of state is in good health and will return to Cameroon in the very near future’, he assures. The Civil Cabinet confirms ‘the excellent health of the head of state, who is working and attending to his duties in Geneva, where he has remained since his arrival from Beijing’.
Here, Samuel Mvondo Ayolo, the DCC, goes a step further than the government spokesperson by indicating where Paul Biya is, something he had not previously disclosed since the end of the Beijing summit. It has been 36 days since the president of the Republic left the country and 34 days without any news.
