World's Oldest President Returns After 74-Day Absence
World's Oldest President Returns After 74-Day Absence
The News
Cameroon's President Paul Biya, 93, returned home Thursday after more than two months abroad, ending an absence that fueled speculation about his health and about who was running the country.
Biya landed at the international airport in the capital, Yaounde, on a flight from Geneva, Switzerland, the Associated Press reported.
Bloomberg put the stay at 74 days — the longest the world's oldest president has spent outside Cameroon since taking power in 1982, nearly 44 years ago.
Timeline
Biya becomes president of Cameroon.
A constitutional amendment abolishes presidential term limits.
Biya wins a widely disputed election. Protests over the result left at least 16 people dead, according to government figures.
He is sworn in for an eighth term.
Cameroon's parliament reinstates the post of vice president, a job Biya can fill and empty at will.
Biya leaves the country for what his office calls "a brief private stay in Europe."
He flies back from Geneva after more than 10 weeks away.
Reactions
The homecoming was muted. Biya's close collaborators met him at the airport, but he was not shown coming down the steps of the plane and gave no briefings, according to the AP. He was seen waving to supporters from his vehicle.
Cameroon's constitution does not bar a president from leaving the country for months at a time. But with the vice presidency vacant — an appointment Biya alone controls — the opposition has described the country as running on "autopilot."
Opposition figures also called April's revival of the vice president's post a power grab, since Biya decides who holds it, when they go, and what powers the office actually has.
What's Next
Biya has not said whether he intends to name a vice president, and his office has not announced a public schedule since his return. His long stretches in France and Switzerland — during which governance is left to senior party officials and family members — have been a recurring feature of his rule, and nothing about Thursday's arrival suggests that pattern has changed.
More
The record of Biya's near half-century in power is mixed. Armed insurgencies by Boko Haram in the north and separatists in the west, along with a stagnant economy, have left many young Cameroonians disillusioned.
The math is stark: more than 70% of the country's nearly 30 million people are under 35, meaning most citizens have never known another president.
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